Book Nation Book Club

We had a lovely visit with Nanda Reddy this week discussing her debut novel, A Girl Within A Girl Within A Girl. Below is the recording as well as written Q & A.

Q&A

Q:  You set your book partly in Guyana, a place most people do not know too much about.  What would you want everyone to know about Guyana and the Guyanese people?

• Guyana is located next to Venezuela, and it’s the only English-speaking country in South America. That’s because it was once a British Colony. It’s mainly populated by former African slaves, former Indian indentured servants, and indigenous peoples. There’s also a small population of Anglo, Chinese, and Portuguese descendants. Because of shared colonial history and proximity, Guyana has deep ties with the Caribbean, reflected by its food, music, and traditions. 

Q:  You came to the United States with your parents when you were young.  What was it like to move from your home to another country, have you gone back to visit and do you still have relatives there?

• I was nine when my family emigrated. We were sponsored by an uncle, and we were welcomed in Miami by a large extended family who’d immigrated earlier. I shared a single bedroom with my parents and sisters at an aunt’s house for about a year, and I felt lucky at having the small walk-in closet to myself. I’ve returned to Guyana four times, most recently last spring at the height of fruit season. It was amazing to taste fruits I hadn’t had in decades and to see some of the few family members who remain there, mainly on my mother’s side. The country has, of course, changed, particularly as revenue from recently discovered oil is spurring development. It’s an exciting forward-looking time for Guyana.

Q:  When did you first think you might become a writer?  Were you a big reader?

• I’ve been a big reader since discovering libraries in the US. I try to read about a hundred books a year these days, mostly accomplished because of audio books, and I still get a lot of these from libraries. In high school, I wrote poetry and edited our literary magazine, and I began entertaining the idea of writing. But coming from a working-class family, I had no idea what such a life would look like. In college, the urge to write became impossible to resist, and I wrote more earnestly, always secretly. I only took a few creative writing classes, not wanting to waste my college scholarship on “frivolous” studies that did not guarantee employment. It was only after I became a teacher that I started really studying the craft.

Q:  What made you decide to become a teacher and what did you teach?

• If I’m being honest, the decision was partly spurred by the lure of summers off, summers I thought I’d use to write entire novels. I also knew I had a knack for teaching, having tutored often in high school and helping both of my sisters with schoolwork. I taught fourth grade in Florida and ended up loving it, even earning the rookie teacher of the year award my third year. Around then, I worked with a colleague to develop an elementary writing curriculum. We turned it into a book, 180 Days to Successful Writers, that we co-published in 2005. 

Q:  What inspired you to come up with this story about identity?

• This story came to me in an aha moment; I was mistaken for a native South Asian during a tour on vacation, and I allowed the misidentification. But a rough sketch of Maya popped into my head then—a woman who erases her Guyanese identity by assimilation and then hides behind other people’s assumptions. At that point, I had three works in progress and had yet to write a novel with characters who resembled me. By the time I started it in 2020, I knew I wanted to explore the complexities of identity and the process of erasure by assimilation, specifically with a Guyanese American woman.

Q:  Is there any part of Sunny/Maya that you relate to and what is purely fiction?

• In writing Sunny’s assimilation process, from language to dress to growing comfortable around other Americans, I mined from my own life, so I relate closely there. But the plot is purely fictional.

Q:  When you developed your main character, did she come to you as adult Maya or young Sunny?

• I initially thought this was a story about Maya since she came to me first. I began writing her story as a cat-and-mouse game with Dwayne. But her backstory took over, and the Maya chapters had to be overhauled to work with the structure that emerged. Not much of the original Maya scenes remain. The final Maya chapters were written last; I intentionally structured them to cover one single momentous day in Maya’s life to contrast with Sunny’s more expansive tale.

Q:  Did you plan to have deaf characters?  

• I didn’t start writing deaf characters with intention; they just showed up on the page, if you will. That’s probably because I have a deaf sister and am familiar with the deaf community. When deafness became an inextricable theme, I worked to purposely show a sort of deaf utopia in Maya and Dwayne’s world, rich with sign language and inclusion, something that is often absent in deaf families and wasn’t available to my deaf sister, unfortunately. To research what I didn’t know, I read works by deaf authors.

Q:  Your characters were complex, and Lila is a perfect example.  How did you develop her character, and did you model her after anyone?

• It was important for me to create honest characters, none one-hundred-percent perfect or evil. Lila isn’t modeled after anyone, but she echoes many of the Guyanese American women I’ve known. Often overworked and underpaid outside the home, these women also take care of everything home and family related. So, they’re tense. And that’s when everything is going right. Throw in the fact that Lila was a teen mom who left her daughter to be raised by her mother who she didn’t get along with, that Lila is in an abusive relationship, that Lila bought into the myth of America which feels out of reach, and we see, she is trapped on a hamster wheel. Her days are filled with hard menial work; nights, she’s stuck with Prem. When her daughter dies, she barely has room to grieve. So, she lacks the bandwidth to care for Sunny when she arrives. Lila can barely care for herself.

Q:  I enjoyed Neena’s friendship with Yvonne and her relationship with Janna, although neither were perfect.  How much do you develop the additional characters before they get written and interact with your main character?  

• Characters kind of walk onto the page and develop as they interact. For me, that part happens organically. I wasn’t sure what roles Yvonne and Janna would play when they appeared. I am a pantser in that way. But the characters appear with full histories of their own and move with my main character toward a sort of hazy plot point. I brainstorm rough backstories and continue to watch how the characters interact as they approach plot points. In this way, the whole story develops and the character’s backstories solidify. In editing, I tighten until it feels true.

Q:  A Girl Within A Girl Within A Girl is a coming-of-age story; what do you think are the biggest turning points in Sunny/Maya’s life where she has the most growth?

• Sunny starts out as a naïve twelve-year-old, fantasizing America in the clouds with little in her control. When she arrives in Miami, she’s forced to grow up fast, assimilating while dealing with abusive caregivers. It’s not until she learns to dream, through Yvonne, and decides to control what she can (barricading her door, pursuing friendships, choosing her clothes) that things begin to change for her. Still, she must deal with the expectations placed on her by her family in Guyana and the culture of obedience that built her. When she writes the letter to her father, she truly breaks free. It’s necessarily a messy time for her, as periods of transition always are. It’s from this space that she first comes of age, determining who she wants to be and eventually making a life on her own. But it’s a false coming of age. As adult Maya, she must come of age again, first by unburdening herself of the lies she’s carried all these years, and then by learning to embrace all the versions of herself.

Q:  Who was your favorite character to write?

• I loved writing Yvonne. She was a fun and supportive friend who taught Sunny to dream. We all need someone like that in our lives. I also loved writing Sunny’s brother Raj (via letters), Janna, Charlotte, and even Lenny. Any character who brought lightness to the page, even if briefly, lightened the process for me.

Q:  Barbie made an appearance in your book – were you a doll collector?

• Personally, I only ever owned one, propped on a stand and hardly played with because I received it after I’d outgrown dolls. But I envied a cousin who had maybe a hundred, a few not well cared for. That memory of Barbie dolls kind of tossed about her room guided the Barbie scene in Nicole’s room. 
• There’s something so fascinating about Barbie—the way she represents an impossible American ideal, the way she’s a grown woman in toy form promoting the patriarchy in subtle ways, simultaneously infuriating and irresistible. I wrote and sold this book before the Barbie movie came out, and the movie only confirmed Barbie’s universal appeal. She’s such an icon of the 80s, she had to make it into this book.

Q:  Where can we keep up with you to see what you are up to?

• You can find me at my website, nandareddy.com, which is updated often, and on Instagram @nandareddyauthor.