#267 - Author Chat w/ Sheila Sundar

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Hey everyone, it's Marvin PERSON. This episode of Books in Boba is brought to you by Home Interrupted, a new podcast from our partners at Feet in Two Worlds ORG. Climate change affects everyone, but it doesn't affect everyone equally. Immigrants often bear a unique burden due to climate change, but they're also leading the way with impactful solutions. Feet in Two Worlds, the news outlet and journalism training organization for immigrant voices presents Home Interrupted ORG. From flooded basement apartments in New York City to indigenous Maya farming practices in Nebraska GPE,feet into world's Home Interrupted brings you deeply reported original stories from across the United States GPE. Episodes drop each week starting April 2nd.

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Find Feet Into World's Home Interrupted wherever you listen to podcasts. And hey, welcome to Books M. Boba, a book club and podcast featuring books by Asian and Asian American NORP authors.

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My name is Marvin U.S.

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And I'm Riyahue PERSON.

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And on this episode, we are bringing you an author chat with Sheila Sunder PERSON about her debut novel habitations.

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As always, Books and Bolivia ORG is supported in part by our listeners over at patreon.com

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Yeah, we had a lovely chat with Sheila PERSON about her book, which pretty much focuses on a young

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academic who moves from

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South India to the States GPE. And she's, you know, trying to figure out her life, like all 20-something

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year olds. And it follows her up until her 40s. So it follows her as she navigates love, a green card marriage, affairs, single motherhood. There is just so much

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life in this book. Yeah, so without further ado, please enjoy our author chat with Sheila Sundar PERSON. And we are here with Sheila Sundar, who is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Mississippi ORG.

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Her writing has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Massachusetts Review, and many other publications. And we are here to talk about her debut novel, Habitations WORK_OF_ART. Welcome to the show, Sheila PERSON. Thank you so much, Rira PERSON. Thank you, Marvin PERSON. Yeah.

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So as we always like to start off our author chats, we'd love to hear about what your journey was like to become a published novelist. Can you tell us how you became a writer and how you got to write this novel? Yeah.

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I had a pretty long path. I was telling a friend earlier today that I had at one point fantasized about being 2,525 and then 3,5-135. And now I'm really happy that I was neither of those things. I was a teacher for a good long while before I became a writer at least in this capacity. And I had, was at the time, for years and years, I've probably since my, since undergrad,I was always writing. I was taking writing classes. It was always, I always had the sense that one day I would become a writer. But it never was quite the right time. I never felt that I worked on the craft for, for over a decade. And I technically, I think this might be an important technical detail,that I worked at a novel that I never published, but I poured myself into it. And in the process of working on it, learned so much about writing. Learned a lot about what I felt I did well as a writer, but also learned so much about what makes a novel not work.What I really, I learned at the end of that process so much about how you shape characters, how you shape voice, how you world build. But I ultimately found myself, as I, in my late 30s, with a novel that reflected my best efforts over the course of 10 years. And Lisa co-talks about this about her, like how when you write a novel that reflected my best efforts over the course of 10 years. And Lisa PERSON Co-talks about this about her, like, how when you write a novel over the course of 10 years, where it is, by the end of it is very different from where it was at the beginning.And so I had a novel that was, there are almost different shades of me in it. The shades of me that started the book, the shades of me that that, that, that, that, that, that, that I became a few years into writing it. The shades of me that started the book, the shades of me that that I became a few years into writing it. But I really had something that was this a beautiful, beautiful mess. It was just abeautiful mess. There was so much good language and it's so much good character. But it didn't come together as a novel that would I came to believe be a success in a traditional sense.I wouldn't publish it. But I really go back to that. And I think I've learned to love this novel for what it was. It was just a beautiful mess. And so I had a couple of realizations around my late 30s. One, which was that the novel would not sell.Two, I still wanted more than anything to be a novelist, that I would not be happy in like the fullest, realest, deepest sense. I would not be happy unless I were writing fiction. And writing fiction in the way that I wanted to. And I also knew that I had more books in me. So it was a, it was just a really, it was a nice and maybe cathartic moment.I just, I shelved the book. I, you know, I was grateful for what it had given me. And I decided that I was going to take my writing much more seriously. And I was going to apply that dedication to an entirely new project. And I had this woman in the back of my mind, this character in the back of my mind, and a very different version of her, a very skeletal version of her, was kind of like, I don't know, like what sound do bones make in your head? It was clanging aboutin my head. And so when I realized that I needed the kind of focused environment that would turn me from somebody who wrote a bit to somebody who really was a writer. And I had been putting off an MFA or deciding that maybe I could work around getting an MFA. But I decided at that moment that I would go do that. So I started my MFA at Boston GPE University, which is where I'm sitting now in Boston. And my family at the time lived in New Orleans. my MFA at Boston GPE University, which is where I'm sitting now, not in Boston. And I am,and my family at the time lived in New Orleans GPE. And so I got in and I started commuting back and forth to Boston. And I would come home every other weekend and be with my, my spouse and my three kids. And then I would go back up. And it was a hard year in that respect. But it was also an incredibly focused year where I just, I came in with the full commitment that I was going to begin what would be at the end, a novel that to me captured what I, the skill and craft and voice that I loved in my first novel, but really was a fresh project. And this was that. It's funny that you

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say that this book, you know, it took like 10 years of like honing your craft and really like getting to know yourself as a writer because as I was reading this novel, I was like, I wonder if she would have been able to write this in her late 20s and early 30s because it follows a woman from her 20s all the way to like her 40s pretty much. And it's like, oh, I wonder like if it took you a long time to write it. And sure enough, it did take you a long time to write it. But before we get into the nitty-gritty of the book, you know, your bio says you're a professor of English LANGUAGE andcreative writing. And I am just curious as to, because like Marvin PERSON and I, we are not critics. We're not like publishing professionals. So there's always kind of like this imposter's syndrome of like, oh, like I don't like we don't think that we are like the most qualified to review books. So, like, as, as like an English LANGUAGE professor, like, what are some books that impacted you when you were younger and helped shape you as a writer?

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Yeah. I don't know if any of us thinks were qualified. I mean, if you do think you're qualified, you're probably not. The idea that any of us thinks were qualified. I mean, if you do think you're qualified, you're probably not. The idea that any of us thinks were qualified to weigh in on stories and the written word, I mean, probably I think the most insecure among us or the best among us. And, but I was, I mean, I think like a lot of us, I just, I devoured books when I was a kid. And they were such a big part of my realization that the world was bigger than my own narrow experience. And I loved it. I mean, I loved the feeling of just beingdropped into another story. And as much as I love literature now, I don't think anything compared the experience of being a kid in reading. So I always go back to the books that shape me. And my pivotal ones were the Anne of Green Gable WORK_OF_ART series, which I don't think I could have become anything without those books. And the Mildre D. Taylor, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry WORK_OF_ART series. Those were like, those were just, those, those consumed me. They ate me up. And then beyond that, anything by Judy Bloom was apretty big part of my life. I wanted, I wanted to hang out with Peter Hatcher PERSON. I wanted to move to New York GPE and live in his building and all of these things. I think I'm borrowing this term from Zadie Smith PERSON that she called herself a voyeur in this regard. But I was just like somebody who always wanted to look in on other people's lives. And I felt like books I was doing that. So there are different books that have made a huge impact on me in later years.Barbara King Solver is probably my favorite working writer today. I was profoundly shaped by Jumbahiri PERSON. We're very different writers stylistically, but the permission that she granted herself to write about her own people. And I think for Barbara Kingsolver PERSON, the permission she granted herself to step across boundaries of what was hers and what was familiar. Both of those moves, both of that, both of those ways of letting yourself go as a writer were hugely impactful for me.And I know more will come up. There's so many books that I just felt like I couldn't have done anything without. But yeah, those were really significant. Another individual book that really impacted me was Tiari Jones in American Marriage WORK_OF_ART. And in both the novel and also some of the conversations that she had following that book, because she talks a lot about writingabout issues that have real sociological importance, significance. And she, and she talks about the work of a novelist when you are addressing a societal ill and, and how what we want to do as novelist is focus on the story. And for me, that was really, really important. I read an interview that she had Paris Review ORG multiple, multiple times to almost give myself the permission that I talked about, King Solver and Lahiri PERSON giving themselves. When you are writing about characters who are moving their way through a complex worldand are subject to, who are the receiving end to some degree of systemic injustice, but are sometimes drivers of it and sometimes bear witness to it, the authorial voice, the sociological voice wants to step in. And you've got to leave that out of the room when you're writing fiction. And so I went back over and over to Tiari Jones's PERSON interview and read about the choices that she made in writing an American NORP marriage and just giving herself permission to focus on the story of the characterswithout feeling that she was required to make a larger point. The characters were capable of carrying that narrative and making that point for her. So I really valued that.

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Yeah, I mean, like one thing you don't want to do as an author is to just bang, like, a message onto, like, your reader's head. Like, you hope that they are smart enough. And readers are smart to catch, like, all of those allegories and metaphors and what the characters represent and their growth. So for our listeners out there who have not heard about your book, can you give us a brief synopsis? Yeah.

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So Habitations is a story of Vega-Gopolin PERSON, who is at the beginning of the book, a young undergraduate, sort of a young graduate student who is just beginning her academic coursework in the field of sociology. Has long been somebody who aspired to be a sociologist, who's long been somebody who carried this particular intellectual impulse and curiosity. She's also somebody who's long been somebody who carried this particular intellectual impulse and curiosity. She's also somebody who's grieving the loss of a young sister who died when her sister was 14 and Vega was 17. And that is the shadow that follows her throughout her adult life. And early in thenovel, she moves to the United States. She moves to New York City from Chennai GPE to pursue a master's degree at Columbia ORG in sociology and ultimately stays to get her doctorate. But the novel takes readers through about two decades of her life from her mid-20s to her early 40s and explores what it is to make a home, what it is to make an adult life, what it is to be a migrant, an intellectual, how you navigate desires. The novel is very much an exploration of herexperience as a mother. And it is, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's the story of, of an immigrant

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woman finding, finding homes. Yeah, I would say this book is definitely what I consider to be like a portrait of a woman who is coming into her own identity and like figuring out all the things that we ask ourselves when we are younger, like where do we belong and like who are we outside of the labels that society gives us? And I, like, one thing that I was really impressed by your novel was, I guess, like, in writing, we often hear show, not tell.And, but like in your book, there's just so much interiority with a Vega PERSON's voice, and we're in her head so much. And I just want to ask, like, how did her voice come to you?

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Over a long period of time, in the early drafts, she was not as developed because I didn't know her. She was much more of an acquaintance in the early drafts. And I felt that way so much. Like, I need to tell her story, but I was chasing her to figure out who she was. And then with revision upon revision, I felt as though I was getting, I was able to see her very fully. And so I remember tellingone of my graduate professors, when I first envisioned Vega PERSON, that I would know her well when I really knew what kind of snacks she ate when nobody was looking. And at the end of the book, I thought, man, like,I know this one with snack habits, which I know sounds, it sounds small, but there's something about, sometimes when we're writing, we have a sense of the big pictureof characters lives. We can tell you where they study and where they're from and we can take the reader back generations and trace you through their family history, or take you through their family history, trace their family history. But we don't often know at an intimate level what their fears and desires or vices are. We don't often let ourselves really stepinto their shoes and imagine them in moments when they are feeling the most vulnerable, the most lost, and the most scared. And so I really focused a lot on her desires and needs in, as I, as I revised the novel. And by the end, I had a real sense of the detail that made her human. The not necessarily compelling detail, not necessarily the biographical information that you would use to describe a person if you were introducing them, which is how I started off the book. I knew that her father was a lawyer. I had a sense of her mother. I knew where she lived. I could tell you where she went to school.I did all of the work that you do at the initial stage when you're getting to know a character. But there was something I knew about her that came upon revision that didn't have to do with the kind of sketch of her life, but had a lot more to do with the quiet desires and fears and the things that she wouldn't necessarily disclose to a stranger. It does not disclose to many strangers or even close friends throughout the book. She's fairly, she keeps a lot from from other people around her that only

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the reader is privy to. Yeah, I feel like you captured all the little pigments of her thoughts very, very well. As you mentioned, Vega PERSON is a sociologist or she's studying sociology. And I'm curious as to like why you decide to make her study that. And how does her choice of study provide a lens to the world that she inhabits?

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I had read so many novels about immigrant women who moved to the U.S. GPE at a time when their sense of their own country didn't necessarily translate to an understanding of the way that their new country operated. So as smart and savvy and capable as they were at home, they arrived in the states and the rules were different. The political conversation was different. And so I was really curious about what I started to imagine her.I realized that I was craving a character who came to the U.S. GPE and demanded a seat at the table. And had she been that forthright at the very beginning of the book, I don't think it would have been as believable, but she came to the U.S. GPE really believing that she had something to learn and something to say. And so I knew always that she was going to be somebody who was a social critic of some sort. And then she just, as I drafted, she became smarter and smarter.And suddenly I was able to imagine the books she had read and the beliefs that she held. And she's at the early stage of figuring out how she is situated and positioned within Indian society. She's young still. But she has some sense that the system is broken, that it's rigged against some people, that there is, it's pervasive injustice, and she understands that that's not just a misfortune that can be addressed by talking about it orgiving a little bit of charity, but that it is by design. It is a systemic injustice that she is starting to understand that surrounds her, that she has not necessarily really been a victim of, but that, of course, is complicated given her sister's medical condition.Once she moves to the U.S. GPE,

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she realizes much of the way in which

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just being a person from India GPE,

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being a person from the global South

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does actually affect the access that her family has had. But when she's coming of age, she's not someone who just accepts the rules and order of the world around her. And so what I was really excited about was throughout the revision process,she just, again, she just became sharper and sharper. And then I began to imagine somebody who didn't just stumble upon ideas, but was actively seeking them out, who was really hungry for a more thoughtful approach to understanding the complexities of the world around her. And what was important to me was when she arrives in the U.S. GPE, she is trying to make sense of it, but she also understands that her job is to make sense of that, too.That in the U.S. GPE, the work of figuring out justice and systems of injustice, that's not finished business either. And so I wanted her to jump in and investigate that. And I spent quite a bit of time talking to Indian sociologists and Indian social scientists and trying to understand what it felt like for them to take their sharpness. They were honing at this really, really young age and moved that to a different political and cultural context. And they, it was, it was just, and once I did speakwith them, I realized how fascinated I was by that experience, by being a smart person, a smart woman, a smart academic who is, whose smartness is not defined by by national borders.

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Yeah. And like Rira mentioned, Vega PERSON being a sociologist was a really clever way to fold in discussion of social issues without the book feeling, you know, didactic because these are just her observations as someone who studies this stuff. And, you know, class and privilege are big themes in your novel. And, you know, reading the book as an Asian American, I couldn't help but think about how even coming to the States GPE, immigrating here for education as a scholar, is a form of privilege in itself. And, you know, it's not my personal immigration story, although I did have an aunt who did come to the States GPE as a scholar. But I do know plenty of people whose American immigration story does start with a family member coming to the States GPE for education. And that'salso the case with a lot of the characters in your story as well. So I want to ask, what made you

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want to tell a story about these immigrant scholars? Well, I think maybe what I was less aware of. It's the experiences and memories you have that are lodged so deep within you that you don't realize until you're writing that they were, that how profoundly your shape, you're affected by this. But I had a number, I suppose similarly, I mean, I guess I have a little bit of, of immigrant scholar background to you.My father came to the U.S. GPE as a graduate student in engineering and then eventually we started coming over. But when I was a teenager, I had a stream of family members, two cousins in particular, who came to the U.S. GPE to study, to get their bachelor's degree in Massachusetts. And so they would, my family lived in New Jersey GPE and they would come stay with us during, you know, during holidays. And I became so close to them. And I became, I just, I foundthem utterly fascinating and utterly unapologetic and like having these boundaryless lives. And at a young age, I was, you know, I was 13, 14 and my life felt only circumscribed. It felt like I had no control over, over the rules, the order. And here are these two young women who were studying at Mount Holyoke ORG and just, when we're studying whatever they wanted to, had these wild and exciting intellectual pursuits, and I just loved being around them.And I don't know that I was conscious, as I wrote Vega PERSON, of how compelled I was by the world in which they operated then and then continue to operate as they moved through the U.S. in their own journeys and all of the people that they would bring home for the holidays, all the other, the other international students who wanted a place to go for Thanksgiving or Christmas or summer. And, but it just seemed like the most badass, ballsy thing you could do to show up in another country and say,like, I've got something to fucking say. Like, I want to, you know, like, let me in that to your women's studies class. I just, I mean, there are so many balsy ways to immigrant. And I realize we're talking about a very, very privileged experience within a much larger world of people, people who migrate. But this was the one that I saw, and it remained, I think, lodged within me, this belief that, like, people do this. And I know I saw people of very gender backgrounds doing this, but the people that I paid closest attention to were women. And women who had the instincts of social scientists.And I saw the books they were reading. And then when I went to college myself and later grad school, I was always aware of the presence of international students around me. And of course, as an Asian American NORP student, as a South Asian NORP American student, I was very close with all of,I felt a certain cultural kinship with all of the South Asians NORP around me when I went to school. I don't know that I realized I was South Asian NORP until I was suddenly not surrounded by them anymore. And I craved the presence of people whose culture felt somewhat familiar. And that, of course, encompassed a number of international students as well. And I was always just taken in by them.And I was also taken by the found family that so many of them just created, cultivated. And one of them, who was a dear friend of mine in college, is coming to my reading this evening. And that, you know, 20-year friendship is, it's a testament to the power of friendship, which, you know, is a big part of my book as well. But I just, I feel, I was so lucky to bear witness, close witness, to the incredible work that immigrants and immigrants students do to build lives of real worth and meaning and substance and contribution as well as kinship within the U.S.And I just, whether or not I intended to, I don't know, I wrote so much of my novel became a love letter to those people, particularly to those women.

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I mean, we often forget that, like, immigrants and migrants, like, they are, they are very skilled at adapting.

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But at the same time, they carry their culture with them.

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And they can be very, you know, like, confident in that culture and be like, you can't. It's like, I know that the society that I moved into is telling me that I have to, I have to bow down to their rules of their institution, but I refuse. That's not the case where I come from. And as they move, like, their definition of home changes. And each place that they move to, like, they come out transformed.And you mentioned how you lived in New Jersey and New Orleans GPE. And Vega lives in New Jersey and New Orleans GPE. So I was curious as to like how your own personal, I guess, habitations shaped Vega PERSON's journey.

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Well, she, I hadn't decided where she would end up after New Jersey GPE. I had a sense. I actually, I wanted her to, she, she settles in Baton Rouge, and I had originally thought, well, maybe I can move her to New Orleans GPE, but for some reason it just wasn't clicking. I didn't see her there. I didn't quite believe it. And so I saw her in Baton Rouge GPE, which is a place where I do have family, I do have some family connection,but it was just a kind of landscape where I saw her arriving. It was a place that seemed like there was some feeling of familiarity because it was, she, she's back, she's back in a place that, that shares some elements of some common landscape, some common features,the heat is familiar to her, the smells are familiar to her, just by, by the sort of quirks of geography, that the Gulf South felt a little bit, felt more reminiscent of South India LOC than any other place she had lived in the States GPE. But she also, I have never felt like I could control the movement andthe geography of my character's lives. I always, I felt with her, and I feel with my current book now, that they drive that in a way that I can't quite understand, that they are, I cannot put them wherever I want to put them. They kind of let me know what is illogical places for them. I could not have predicted where, when I started writing this book, where she would end up finding her final habitation.And maybe if I could have predicted it, it would have been very, very different for where she does end up. But I just, the New York GPE part made perfect sense to me. I just felt that the Vega PERSON that I was coming to know was going to end up at Columbia. That was so logical to me. I just felt that the Vega that I was coming to know was going to end up at Columbia. That was so logical to me. And New Jersey GPE, of course, once she arrived there, I just felt in those chapters like I was sinking into a world that felt in so many ways,so familiar to me. I don't know that I could have forced her there. That was where that was, that seemed, it seemed to make sense that that was where she would go. But once she did, I could just write that those, that world that she settled in so, so intimately andwith such so much familiarity. And then I felt a little bit of alienation and distance when she ends up in Baton Rouge GPE. But I think one of the beautiful functions of that, of that unfamiliarity was that she too is lost. And so I had spent a lot of time trying to actually map out where she would be, where she would live, where she would go. And I, but she was doing the same thing.And so I think the Baton Rouge GPE section of the novel is one where she is really looking for kinship and really looking for orientation. And so my sort of tentativeness in those chapters, I think, came through what it, for, it, it came through and she reflected what she was feeling as well.

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Yeah, I love that you brought the topic of kinship. And, you know, like in the in in in the chapters where she is in baton Rouge, um, like you can really sense that she is lonely and because like she's kind of moved away from her support network she kind of has a start over again and um i feel like you captured uh i guess like the adult problem of trying to keep up with friendships and knowing when to let go of friends and also uh just understanding that that maybe you've judged too quickly and maybe those people deserve another chance from you and maybe they need a chance to like prove themselvesto you. Yeah, like can you tell us a little bit about like how you went about developing those long lasting friendships and also the I guess like temporary friendships that kind of fade with time. All of those people felt so real to me.

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I they made so much sense. I believed in their existence and because of that it was natural to me that they would that she would hold on to them in the, in the way that she did. Not always aware in the beginning how much they meant. Shoba PERSON was of all the characters. She's, she's somebody I just loved so dearly. And I loved so much watching her change in some ways, but it meant, but she reflects, I think, more of Vega PERSON's evolution. She doeschange. I mean, Shoba's not a static character, but Shobah PERSON's evolution is reflected in the changing nature of their relationship. And there is an insecurity in our early years where we really believe that we have, that people have, people's intellectual interests or their cultural interests have to manifest themselves in the exact same way that ours do in order for our friendships to be meaningful. And here are two people who have nothing in common. They would never have been friends in India GPE.And, and I think that is one of the beautiful things that becomes of migration, whether it's, you know, of just moving, is that we depend on people. And I have found in my own life that the friendships that have been dearest to me were not necessarily ones that I could have predicted. They were ones that came after cracking through the surface of cracking through the exterior of acquaintanceship and coming upon a connection that's real and substantive. And in Vegas GPE case, she, I think, is very surprised by how muchshe comes to love people that she really thought she could keep at arm's length. And I love, I love exploring love in fiction. It's just we don't, I don't think we write enough about it. I don't think we read enough about it. I don't think we talk enough about it. But it is, it is so much of the driver for her in finding out where she wants to be. What she's missing when she gets to Baton Rouge GPE is love that she did not give any real value to when it first slowly started entering her life. These connections that when they were first established were not to her particularlymeaningful. Yeah.

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And I feel like she's humbled by like being a mother, being a single mother later on. It's like, oh, yeah, I really does take a village. And there are some things that I took for granted from the people around me and the way that they showed love to me. I took that for granted. Can you talk to us a little bit about how motherhood changes Vega PERSON and her journey in, I guess, like, binding herself?

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I think Vega, without much complication, the moment that Asha PERSON is born is just profoundly shaped by her and deeply, deeply in love with that baby. And I felt that if I had wanted to push her in another direction, I think it would have read as disingenuous. The reader would have picked up on the falseness of that because I believed on such a deep level in the depth of Vega PERSON's love. And I knew, too, that Vega was ready to care for Asha PERSON, when Asha came around.And she was ready to consider her as she mapped out her own life. She wasn't fully ready for, she wasn't done racing herself by any means. But she loved her in a way that she did not question her second guess. And I felt that I felt that so intensely from the moment of the moment she gives birth in the book and she's holding her. It just, I feel a shift in Vega PERSON that is not, which is not to suggest that motherhood changes every single person. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it does it. I mean, I think that's, that's an individual question.But in Vega's case, she was ready to be a mother. And so I think she just delights in the person Asha PERSON is, but is also overwhelmed by this, this hard truth of motherhood that you know she says she makes a comment in early on in the book that she wishes that she could return aasha PERSON to the womb at least until she's she has a car and so and and and she can't there's no point at which she can just pause ayesha's development and say just hold up let me raise myself a little bit longer asha keeps growing and so Vega PERSON's Vega has to keep pace.And so there's the stretches of the book before Asha PERSON's arrival and into Asha's infancy, where Vega PERSON is actively trying to figure out what she wants and how to balance her desires and her fundamental needs and how to shape herself into the adult that she wants to be. And then as Asha PERSON gets older, there is the realization that she is now someone who is, like, her happiness is tied to this kid's happiness. And she has to get to a place where the two of them just feel really, really good.

Speaker 42261.26s - 2300.3s

Yeah, totally. I wanted to go back to our discussion on the friendships that we make throughout our lives. You know, as someone who has gone to school in different states, lived in several different cities, I could definitely relate to Vegas GPE experience of having to essentially restart her social life every time she moves to a new place or starts a new job. And throughout your novel, she meets a lot of different people. And I'm always curious when reading a book with so many characters, like, how did you keep things organized,like craftwise? And what was it like writing the story of so many, you know, side characters that, like you mentioned, also grow alongside Vega PERSON? When I knew that a character was real,

Speaker 12300.4s - 2479.5s

but I fully believed in them, then they, I can't say they wrote themselves, but I, I knew what it was like to be in a room with them. And I knew not just how they would interact on the surface, but I knew substantively how Vega PERSON felt in their presence. And so much of those, of those moments was exchanges with Halima and Zamadi, with Shoba and with Gaihtra PERSON, those felt very, very real to me. And I never, I'm not an outlier. But I, so I, they had to stay in my head. But I never lost track of them because I was so aware of how much they shaped Vega PERSON thatto not get back to them had the same feeling to me that I have when I'm, I've fallen out of touch with a friend. And that was when I brought them in, you know, when she reconnected with Halima PERSON. And it made perfect sense to be where a Halima PERSON was at the time. But I just felt like, man, those two need to get back together. Halima PERSON has been gone from her life for so long.And then even Winston, I don't think I would have felt okay letting that go. But I also, that to me, it's partly because I don't outline, they have to feel so vivid to me. Otherwise, I will not, that my organization is, is less about structured planning that it is about really, really believing in the characters and where they're going to end up so that I know I'm not going to lose track of them. But I also am somebody in my own life that justI don't quite let go of people. I really love knowing where people are. You know, every acquaintance, every friendship, every ex, like these are people that I've cared about. And I, and I love just check-ins of people. I just need to know that they're okay. I love, I love finding out that somebody I haven't spoken to in a while is like just anything about their lives. That's very meaningful to me. And I've long been aware too that we're, it's like this, the magic and happenstance that that brings us to cross pads of people is something that really like you should hold on to.So I'm always, I'm always eager to just to, I'm always eager for myself to reconnect with people. And, and so when Vega PERSON moves through people's lives, it would have felt, again, disingenuous, would have felt somewhat false for me to let her let those relationships go. And there's not, there isn't too much of me in Vega, but in this one sense, I really understood why she was comforted by those moments of reconnection. She doesn't initiate them. She's not great at that. And that's, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,, I, she was, she's a little bit, she's a little bit more hesitant.But, um, but yeah, she's, she just, she comes to realize why those matter.And, and to me, I just, I like those people so much that I, I never, I didn't quite forget about them.Yeah.

Speaker 42479.64s - 2515.9s

Something interesting that I didn't clock until like way too late in the story. It was just maybe my reincarperation being slow is that your story takes place in the late 90s early aughts before social media. And that last extra layer to like this, you know, the way that we used to connect to people was through physical contact and not through the internet. And for some reason, I didn't catch until later on when you're mentioning current events happening in real time. Was that, was the setting something that you always wanted to set the story in?Or was that there as a way to kind of facilitate that, you know, the friendship relationships?

Speaker 12516.26s - 2654.52s

It just made sense to me that she would arrive in the 90s. But as I wrote, I very intentionally did not move that that arrival date. And at the time, that was logical. I felt it. She felt like a kid of the 90s, but or the, yeah, she felt like she felt like a kid of the, of the late 80s, early 90s to me.But I could have moved that date certainly made it more contemporary, but it did not feel right to. It actually felt so sense, it felt so true to her circumstances that she could get in touch with people, email existed, phone existed, but not with the intensity that it does today, not with the intensity that like that the sort of, that drumbeat of contact, of superficial contact that is in our lives today.That was, I knew that wasn't going to be part of her life. And I'd be curious to know how she would navigate this moment. I think she probably would do just fine. But in her most formative years, when she was still trying to understand herself what it meant to care for people, be cared for by people, she did not have that kind of, that distant access, that ability to just look from the outside in on people's world. So she couldn't have just found out what Naomi PERSON was doing without revealing her true intention, which was to find outhow Naomi PERSON's doing. The funny thing about the moment we live in now is that we can check in on people without ever having to expose any vulnerability in our part, without ever having to admit this painful truth that we want to actually know how they're doing. But for her, any time she wants to reach out to somebody, it is a betrayal of emotion. It's a betrayal of need. And so I liked that she had to do that when she did that. And there's also her life is private in a way that our lives have stopped being so private. We can if we choose to keep secrets, of course, but the fact of her loss is something that she can choose not to share. The distance between different social groups is maybe that she's able to maintain. And so in that there's a privacy that she is allowed to have that may, that ultimately it serves her in some moments and does it and others, but, but she's, she's able to, able to hold on to it because of the moment that she's, that she's living in.

Speaker 42655.76s - 2701.02s

Yeah. I mean, you mentioned that Vega PERSON is a very frustrating character, um, to write and surely to read as well, she makes a lot of just frustrating decisions, but you know, you can't help, as a read, you can't help but root for her because you know of her circumstance, you know that, you use, like I guess maybe also some projection as like, you know, a child of immigrants myself. You want her to succeed because she's already up against so much and she does deserve love. And a lot of her decisions seems like they're made in search of like love and connection, even if they're not the best decisions. And she does deserve love. And a lot of her decisions seems like they're made in searchof love and connection, even if they're not the best decisions. And they're all rooted from this very early loss of her younger sister before the start of the book. You mentioned she's someone that's so outside of your experience. How was it to write someone who's so driven by like these,

Speaker 12701.1s - 2865.86s

these desires and needs and wants? Desire is such a big part of her life. And it's funny, I was speaking with a graduate student at the University of Mississippi ORG a couple of weeks ago. And she was saying that when Vega and Winston get together, she was shouting into the book, like, well, what are you doing? And I thought to myself, like, I was surprised by that because I thought really, like, I knew exactly what she was doing.And that felt, especially with Winston and Naomi PERSON as well, with so many of the characters that she, so many of the experiences that she pursues, particularly romantic and sexual experiences, those felt to me like the most natural extension of her character that I could imagine. I mean, I could not imagine the book had she and Winston had a relationship of any differentnature. So her desires felt so, so believable to me. So believable that had I diminished them in any way, that would have felt unbelievable to me. I would have felt as though I was not crafting Vega PERSON with all the solace with which she existed in my mind. So I do, she makes some questionable decisions. But I should say that I was more aware of her questionable decisions after writing the book and talking to people about it.In writing it, I had no intention really, I'm interested in flawed characters, of course. I mean, we're all flawed, but I had no intention of writing a flawed character. I intended to write a woman with a lot of desire, intellectual desire, sexual desire, maternal desire,familial desire, and somebody who in her, who acts upon those, most of those desires and does so even when ultimately they will, they will have some consequence. Not, I don't think she does things with disastrous consequences for other people intentionally. I don't think she's a malicious person. I don't think the thing that she's a person who's indifferent to other people's needs. And I think she's quite sensitive to, she's quite aware that she is one personin a world of many. But she is, she, she, she's not going to have an opportunity to, to act upon a desire and not do it. And she's not going to lie to herself about what's going to feel comforting or good or satisfying. And so that is, I felt at the end of it when I talk to people, oh yeah, I did write somebodywho doesn't make the greatest choices. But in the moment, I felt like she was making the only choice that I could possibly

Speaker 02865.86s - 2893.66s

have believed she would have made. Yeah, as like when I was reading her relationship, her various relationships, I'm like, oh my goodness, there are so many red flags. And also it seems like she's chasing partners who she knows that they're pretty much unavailable at the very end. It's almost like she's like, you know, cutting that relationship short. She's just like, well, it's not going to work out anyway. And that's what makes the relationship so appealing.

Speaker 42894.62s - 2900.88s

But I also understand, though, the want to have a partner where you can talk about things with in an intellectual way, right?

Speaker 02901.12s - 2986.22s

Yeah. I totally get that as well. So we are winding down to the end of our chat. And I like really wanted to ask this because as someone who, you know, is not part of academia, like, it's kind of like a very, like, it's just like an interesting realm shrouded in mystery. But for bipox in academia, they're in like this very strange place wherea lot of universities, they have like institutionalized racism, they're built on like colonialism. And it's like, how do you like inhabit that like space that is so hostile to you as like a person of color? And but at the same time, to you as like a person of color. And but at the same time, like, it gives you a perspective that you may have not had if you had stayed in the motherland. For example, when Vega returns home after graduation in the States GPE, she can't help but reflect on her own privilege as a Brahmin in India GPE.And that's not something that she would have probably picked up on, or at least you wouldn't have picked up on it like that early on in her life had she not moved out of her hometown. Can you tell us a little bit about how she begins to understand the space that she inhabits in academia?

Speaker 12986.92s - 3026.92s

I think she would have picked up on the way Cast influenced her life in India GPE. But what she would never have had access to is in any sense of how cast continues to impact her life, continues to follow her, even in the U.S. GPE, that she benefits from access to elite institutions. So the proximity to whiteness that she has granted in the U.S. that she benefits from access to elite institutions. So the proximity to whiteness that she has granted in the U.S. GPE is very much a function of caste. And that is something that she wouldn't have been positioned to even see. So, and she's also coming to the U.S. GPE at a time when the sortof paternalism and charity of being a do-gooder is falling out of fashion.

Speaker 03027.22s - 3031.9s

And it is something that is being replaced by a call for much more systemic change.

Speaker 13032.56s - 3161.24s

And so she's just at an interesting moment when what does it mean to be a thoughtful, decent person in the world, aware of your privilege? And also sometimes wanting to recognize that there are limits to that privilege too as somebody from the global south and as somebody who has brown skin living in having proximity to whiteness but also ultimately living in a very white world. I think my own personal experience in academia has been pretty rosy. I work in a really wonderful institution which when you say that, you know, University of Mississippi ORG is this like, I wouldn't see it's necessarily university-wide, always a bastard of progressive thought. But it is, but I have a department that is wonderful and smart and committed and and rambunctious and interesting. And I just, I'm, I have a really, reallyfortunate position within a landscape that I think for a lot of people of all backgrounds, but certainly people of color, certainly queer folks, certainly immigrants is, is a complicated place. And so I as, you know, in my own, in my own narrow experience, I can say that I love teaching. I love the department that I'm part of. I love the university that I'm part of. I love my students dearly.And I began my own career as a professor when the book was finished. So I could have made some changes, but really like the texture of Vega PERSON's life as an academic was written into the novel before I became an academic myself. But I think in a lot of ways what she loves about teaching and she loves by being part of any university does reflect the things that I too love about it, that there's just a beauty to teaching students.There's a beauty to having them walk in the room and be part of the conversation that you're facilitating. It's a real privilege to, I think she's aware that it's a real privilege to do that. And I have felt the same way in my own experience. Yeah.

Speaker 43161.74s - 3168.88s

Well, your book just came out earlier this month. How has it been seeing it out in the world?

Speaker 13168.88s - 3213.16s

It's so wild. I mean, I walked, so I'm in Boston right now and giving a reading this evening at Brookline Booksmith ORG. And I walked in it. It was just there. It was just a book among books. And like, that's wild. It's such, it's such a joy to see it up there. And it is something, like, it is such a gift to write something that people consume for pleasure and thought and connection, human connection, connection to themselves, connection to others. And I cannot believe that I've had the opportunity to do that. I'm like, I'm still over the moon.If you ask me in 10 years, I might still be riding this high. So I don't know if it's just the moment or like the feeling of publishing. But yeah.

Speaker 43213.34s - 3219.34s

Well, congratulations for reaching your dream. Are you up for doing it again? Or are you going to take a little break for now?

Speaker 13219.34s - 3240.7s

No, I'm into book two. And it is, I'm loving it so far. I can say that it is, unless something significant changes, I guess what I think of what I can commit to saying about it is that it's a story of a diplomatic family in the early aughts and spanning about 15 years.

Speaker 43241.16s - 3252.36s

Well, Sheila, thank you so much for joining us on Books in Bulba, and congrats on your book launch. Thank you, Marvin Urira so much. And that was our author chat with Sheila Sunder PERSON.

Speaker 13252.66s - 3257.32s

Her debut novel Habitations is available now at Booksellers ORG everywhere, including, as always,

Speaker 43257.4s - 3279.16s

the Books and Blubo Bookshop ORG, where you can find all the books that have been covered on our podcast through a book club or author chats. And don't forget that any purchases made on the Books and Bova ORG bookstore support not only our podcast, but also your local bookstore. So definitely check it out on the bookstore link on Booksandbova.com ORG. All right. Before we call it an episode, though, Rira PERSON, can you please remind us what we are reading forBook Club for the month of April?

Speaker 03279.5s - 3315.18s

Yeah, so this month was a patron's choice. And among the list of suggestions, we picked Yellowface by R.F. Huang PERSON. This is our first time reading a second book from the same author. And I just like, we picked Yellowface WORK_OF_ART because it's been on our TBR pile for a very long time. And as a book club and podcast that focuses on Asian Americans NORP in publishing, it just seemed like it was just a matter of time that we would have to talk about this book.

Speaker 33315.18s - 3323.46s

So for those of you who are unfamiliar with Yellowface WORK_OF_ART, it's pretty much about a white woman

Speaker 13323.46s - 3330.12s

who steals the manuscript of her deceased Asian-American NORP writer friend

Speaker 03330.12s - 3346.36s

who was way more successful than her as a writer. So it's a satire, obviously, because we're talking about dead people here. But I'm sure we'll have a lot of things to discuss.

Speaker 43346.64s - 3379.4s

Yeah, definitely looking forward to discussing this book with you at the end of the month. And as always, if you've already finished the book and have thoughts to share, please let us know on Goodreads ORG or Discord. And finally, if you are a Patreon ORG supporter, please join me tonight on Discord, where I'll be discussing the first eight chapters of Yellowface WORK_OF_ART.This is something new I'm trying out for our Discord. So if you are one of our Patreon ORG supporters, please join and I'm loved to hear your thoughts about the book so far. But with that, that will do it for this episode of Books and Boba ORG. Thank you once again to Sheila Sunder PERSON for joining us, and we'll see you all next time. Bye, everybody.

Speaker 23379.58s - 3386.22s

Bye. Thanks for listening to Books and Boba ORG.

Speaker 43386.4s - 3430.76s

This podcast was hosted by Marvin Yew PERSON and edited and produced by Marvin Yew. Follow the book club on Twitter and Instagram by going to at Books and Boba and engage with us on Goodreads ORG on our Goodreads group. You can also check out past episodes of the podcast by going to Booksendboba.com and by subscribing to us on your favorite podcast app. Don't forget you can support Books and Bo Books and Asian American NORP authors by purchasing books at ourbookshop.org account. Check out the link in our show notes and also at booksend boba.com. Books and Bova is a proud member of the Potluck Podcast Collective ORG, a collective of Asian-American hosted podcasts featuring unique voices and stories from the Asian NORP diaspora. Learn more about the collective and check out our fellow potluck shows by visiting the website podcastpotluck.com ORG. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 23444.66s - 3452.6s

Hello, I'm Phil You, and I'm the host of All the Asians on Star Trek PRODUCT, the podcast in which I interview All the Asians on Star Trek.

Speaker 33453.2s - 3470.28s

I'm talking to actors, writers, directors, stunt people, background extras. You know, All the Asians on Star Trek PRODUCT. Find out more at All the Asians on Star Trek.com ORG. Part of the Potluck ORG podcast collective. Live long and prosper.