We chat with author Sonia Patel about Gita Desai is Not Here to Shut Up, which is a sharply written YA about a girl grappling with a dark, painful secret from her past, perfect for fans of All My Rage and The Way I Used to Be.
Hi, Sonia! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hello! Thank you for having me! I’m a psychiatrist and young adult novelist. In both capacities, I seek context and the expression of reality as opposed to labels and sugar coating. All of my young adult novels are based on my own personal experiences and/or those of my teen patients. It’s important to me that I depict inconvenient characters and messy stories because that was my reality and has been the reality for the teens I’ve treated for over two decades.
My parents had an arranged marriage in Gujarat, India and then immigrated to New York where I was born nine months later. I grew up in Connecticut and on Molokai. I attended Stanford for undergrad and the University of Hawaii for medical school. I live on Oahu with my husband and we’re lucky to have two awesome kiddos in college.
In my free time, I love reading, running, hiking, listening to hip hop and trying to keep up with the latest hip hop dance moves, and watching foreign films.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I grew up during the golden age of hip hop and naturally gravitated towards rap. I loved writing rap and poetry. But it wasn’t until I was forty that I began writing stories, and it began out of necessity. I’d hit a rock bottom in my life and I’d assigned myself the homework I often recommended to my patients: journaling. I filled up journal after journal, including poetry and rap. I found that if I put the rap in a certain order, it told a story. My story. That was how my first young adult novel Rani Patel In Full Effect was born. After that, I was hooked.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: Nancy Drew
- The one that made you want to become an author: Gabi, A Girl in Pieces by: Isabel Quintero
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: The Bone People by: Keri Hulme
Your latest novel, Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Secrets, silence, abuse, voice, empowerment
What can readers expect?
Readers can expect a transcription of the silent, biological language of abuse. I’ve tried to take the natural, automatic brain adaptations that occur in response to incest and emotional invalidation and show how those things realistically manifest years later in thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, particularly how it leaves someone vulnerable to repeating her role as an object for men. And, as I know personally and from work as a psychiatrist, only when Gita is able to acknowledge and validate her past experiences—which occurred and continued unchecked because of secrets, denial, and enabling as is always the case in this context—can she begin to find agency, empowerment, and positive behavior change.
Where did the inspiration for Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up come from?
The inspiration came from my own experiences in college. Back then, I had no language to conceptualize or describe what was done to me. I had no idea that chronic childhood abuse and emotional invalidation caused damage to the developing structures and functions of a my brain, resulting in hardwired neuronal stress adaptations and living in a chronic “survivor mode.” I had no idea that in that survivor mode, I had no free will in situations and relationships that resembled my past adverse situations and abusive relationships. I had no idea that the brain adaptations manifested as the “double life/double self” I was living.
In writing Gita, I wanted to expose those things. They are things/experiences I also commonly see and hear about from my patients. I wanted to show that young women who think, feel, and behave in a way that isn’t healthy aren’t shameless, bad, or terrible people, instead, they might have been through something and their actions might be an expected response. I wanted to show that behavioral repetition is the silent language of the chronically abused child, something I hadn’t read before in another young adult book.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I loved writing the moments and interactions between Gita and Sai and Gita and Pinky Auntie. In those loving and accepting relationships, she could be more herself than be in “survivor mode.” And in her relationship with Pinky Auntie, Gita found agency and empowerment and was able to begin the process of confronting her painful past.
This explores an array of topics from the toxicity of college party and hookup culture to PTSD. How did you go about approaching these topics and what do you hope readers may take away from Gita Desai?
I approached these topics as realistically as possible based on my own college experiences and what I’ve witnessed and heard from other women in my life and in my psychiatry practice (and, not all of those women endured incest, there are other experiences that can lead to similar long-term patterns of difficulty with boundary-setting and lingering shame). That type of realism takes away the power of secrets and shame. I hope that vulnerable readers can find emotional validation in how those topics/scenes are addressed and begin to contemplate what might make it difficult for them to set boundaries with others. I hope that those topics/scenes allow all readers to expand their understanding and empathy of young women who grow up confusing sex as validation, and that those women might have other deeper, painful issues that they aren’t yet aware of, or are avoiding.
What’s next for you?
I am working on another young adult novel, this one with a male protagonist who has endured a different kind of adversity in his life. I’m excited at the possibilities of this new project!
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed so far this year and are there any that you can’t wait to get your hands on?
I read some incredible books this year! My favorites so far were: Hurdles in the Dark by Elvira K. Gonzalez, Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi, and A Man of Two Faces by Viet Thanh Nguyen. I can’t wait to get my hands on Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel and Knife by Salman Rushdie.
