Guest post written by author Sonya Lalli
Sonya Lalli is a romance and women’s fiction author of Indian heritage. Her debut novel The Matchmaker’s List was a Target Diverse Book Club Pick, Cityline Book Club Pick, and Apple Best Book of the Month. Grown-Up Pose (2020) was a Globe and Mail national bestseller and Amazon Best Book of the Month. Her latest novel, Serena Singh Flips the Script, publishes in February 2021.
I am in that stage of life where many of my friends and peers are getting married and having families. Before the pandemic my summers were full of weddings, bachelorette parties and showers, memories that I treasure even more now that we can’t so easily see one another. My social media feed is filled – to my delight – with baby photos and family portraits, which I like and comment on without fail. I am overwhelmed with excitement when someone I love enters a new stage of life, or announces a baby is the way, or finds someone to share their life with.
Yet, as married woman in her early thirties, I find myself defensive about my own journey. I have family members, friends, and even acquaintances who seem to be waiting with bated breaths for my next big announcement. I have had several professional accomplishments since my wedding day more than two years ago, but when I call them up to share the happy news, I’ve had to learn how to be careful in my approach.
Because many times when I’ve said “Guess what?”, or “I have something to tell you!”, or “I have news”, you can only imagine where their minds went. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a married woman in her thirties must be in want of a baby. Right?
Wrong.
More and more women are choosing not to lead conventional lives when it comes to marriage and motherhood, yet we have been socialized to expect certain milestones from ourselves and others. And it’s not that I disagree with conventional choices, or that I don’t eventually plan to make more of them for myself, I am simply frustrated by the expectation that we make them. That a romantic partnership of a certain number of years should lead to marriage. That family happiness is dependent on children – and that those offspring be produced within a predetermined timeline. That domestic bliss is an inevitably if we women want to be happy.
I think part of the reason so many of us turn to women’s fiction is because it’s rife with smart, bold, and interesting characters who must battle against what’s expected of them. Often, they feature unconventional women, or women who have followed the tried and tested path, but now find themselves unhappy and at a crossroad.
Their journeys can be complicated and harrowing, emotional and physical, depending on the genre. In The Girl on the Train, the main character must reconcile with the choices she’s made not only to grow as a person, but literally to save her own life. Twin sisters in historical novel The Vanishing Half defy their community’s norms in very different ways, and must learn how to live with both the advantages and consequences of their respective choices. And the titular character in Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine has chosen to live her life in solitude, until a new friendship forces her to come out of her shell.
Women’s fiction author Saumya Dave also deftly writes characters in the South Asian diaspora who struggle with cultural expectations, both in her debut novel Well Behaved Indian Women as well as her forthcoming novel What A Happy Family. And perhaps one of the most memorable women’s fiction heroines of our time is Bernadette Fox, in Maria Semple’s Where’d You go Bernadette. Here, our eccentric, loveable protagonist has always defied the norm, personally and professionally, until her life comes to a breaking point and she simply disappears.
In my latest novel Serena Singh Flips the Script, the main character has long decided that she does not want to have children, but faces intense scrutiny by not only society but also her traditional Indian community and family. However, on her journey she realizes that her rejection of one societal norm does not mean she does not want or cannot have others, such as a fulfilling relationship with a romantic partner, friends, and her judgmental family.
Women have always faced barriers, whether we choose the conventional path or not. I love that women’s fiction celebrates all of us.
