Interview with Payal Doshi

Payal Doshi is the author of middle-grade fantasy novel Rea and the Blood of the Nectar and a YA short story forthcoming in the anthology My Big, Fat, Desi Wedding. Our conversation covers visual inspiration, breaking stereotypes, the beauty of writing for middle-grade readers, and many other topics.

Natalie Martell: What is the most important thing you learned about yourself as a writer while you were writing your first book?

Payal Doshi: Well, it was a pretty huge one for me. I grew up in India, lived in Mumbai my whole life. I came upon writing in a very convoluted way. I never dreamed of being a writer. I loved reading, but never was like, I want to write, I want to be a writer. It didn’t occur to me. Somehow, I ended up getting into magazine publishing instead of entering the writing space. Again, from this really long-winded approach. When I had the moment that I wanted to write a book, I wanted to write this fun story, and that became a book. 

I wrote the first 70,000 words of it, my first draft. And all my characters were white characters. Rea was called Rose, her brother Rohan who was missing was called Bryant. They lived in the English countryside, had scones for breakfast. I had never had scones for breakfast my whole life. I was 23 at the time. They were the Bennetts—I mean, you can only imagine where all the inspiration had trickled down from. And I wrote this entire 70,000 words.

I studied management, so I had no formal education in literature or writing. I enrolled in a writing workshop back in Bombay, and I went and read my first chapter. I was very proud of it and very eager for the teacher to say I did a good job. She just looks at me, so defeated and so tired, because clearly this had happened before in her class. She just looks at me deadpan and she says, “Why are you not writing about your own experiences? Why are you writing about these characters that’s clearly not your lived experience?” At the time I was quite pissed. I was like, seriously? You couldn’t say my prose was good? That’s what you’re saying? Who cares? 

I was coming back in the cab, and I thought, but why didn’t I write about my own experience? It didn’t even occur to me. Had I made the conscious choice that I didn’t want to write about my life or any inspiration from there—I just wanted to write about these particular characters for whatever reason, and they were white—that would still be something. But the fact is that I spent seven to eight months writing this book, and at no point in time did I pause to go, maybe I should set this in India. Maybe my characters should be Indian. 

When it hit me, it hit me so hard that I thought, I’m never going to write anything other than my lived experience and my country and my culture. Not because of any hubris there, but clearly there’s such a dearth of literature out there, especially in the children’s space, that when I was writing this book as a 23-year-old adult who had read extensively and read a lot of literature from Indian authors (they were all adult), I went back into all the books I loved as a kid. I was channeling Narnia, His Dark Materials, I was channeling Harry Potter, and all of that was white. So for seven straight months my brain was like, that’s what you’re drawing from, that’s what needs to be on paper. And that I negated my experience, my lived experience, to not have any of that translate in the story I was telling, was such a shock. It almost upset me because I know it’s not just me. It’s literally a tale as old as time when it comes to underrepresented cultures.

To me, that was my biggest learning experience. I discovered who I was and what I stood for in terms of the books I wanted to write. It became clear to me that I wanted to write joyful stories, because again, underrepresented cultures like South Asian cultures, most of the stories you see in literature are stories of pain and struggle and grief and immigration and war stories and poverty. All very important, but there’s no balance.

I grew up in India, a very different experience compared to an immigrant experience, which is not something I relate to. I would read that experience, even though it’s another South Asian kid, just as remotely as a white American would read that experience. I never saw my experiences on the page. And I wanted to be fun and empowering, because I think it’s so important that kids of all races and nationalities see an equal representation, so they don’t stereotype a certain culture as having so much baggage that when you think of an Indian kid, it’s always going to be a sad story. No, it’s important for the kids outside of the culture to see that they can also be heroes, and obviously it’s a cherry on the cake for kids from Indian cultures to see themselves represented as heroes and saving realms and doing all of these fun things, as well as dealing with the tougher stories. 

So that’s what I discovered about myself. To write and champion stories that are fun, empowering, and that showcase my culture. Also, to not write as an educational thing, that people don’t read my books to learn about Indian culture. I almost want you to forget my characters are Indian because that’s how I read books. When I read Anne of Green Gables, I wasn’t like, “she’s Canadian.” No, and I loved Anne. I felt like I was Anne. And that’s what I want readers to feel when they’re reading my books, where they forget that Rea is from India, from this small town, has lived such a different experience, but I want them to connect with who she is on the inside and connect with her insecurities and her strengths and who she is. To dissolve those boundaries and those boxes we create. Especially for cultures that are underrepresented and the stories that come out of them.

NM: Thank you for sharing that. It sounds like that workshop you took was a big turning point. Did you start right away with rewriting the story, and when you started that process did you know immediately that it was right for the story?

PD: Yes. The second I had that epiphany, I was like, things are changing. I started working on completely changing the setting, the dynamics of the family, so many different things changed. After I did that, I applied to a bunch of schools and I got accepted into The New School. By then, I had also applied for a competition that was hosted by Disney India for upcoming writers for children’s books. I made it to the semi-finals, so that gave me a little boost. But it was with Rea and it was all Indian. I realized I needed a little direction because I was just writing off of books I’d read. I didn’t know what an inciting incident was, no idea. So for me, the MFA was so helpful. I know a lot of writers and authors are like, “I don’t know about an MFA.” And I agree with them, but for me, because I was such a novice, the MFA and learning all the most basic writing tools and craft was so useful.

NM: You mentioned the family dynamics and relationships changing with the draft. I was wondering if you could talk more about that.

PD: So with the first draft, they were this full family—mother, father, brother, sister. And it was about the girl, at the time Rose, who goes off into these mysterious woods close to her house, and this mysterious thing happens. It’s called the Forbidden Woods, and she’s scared and also intrigued. At the time, I was basing this family off the books I’d read, off what I’d imagined a British family would look like. I didn’t say they were British, but it was pretty obvious that’s what I was channeling. In India, because of colonization, we end up reading a lot more British literature than American literature. I haven’t read much of the children’s literature canon in the US. But I’ve read so many books that British folks would’ve read as they were growing up. 

So it’s a very conventional family, and I didn’t put too much emphasis on that. When I decided to make it more about my lived experience and India, I changed it. She now doesn’t have a dad in Rea. That was to add some tension and show more strained family dynamics for two reasons. One, for the plot, but I also wanted to break certain stereotypes. When someone thinks of India, it’s almost similar to My Big Fat Greek Wedding, like we have these big families, which we do. A lot of Indians live in what we call joint families, where essentially the son—once he gets married—his wife moves into his house with his parents. I’ve grown up with my dad’s parents. We all lived in the same house. It’s a very conventional way of growing up. You grow up with your grandparents. If your father has a brother, there’s a good chance he lives in the house as well, and so does his family. There’s so many Indians who grow up with their cousins in the same house. And that makes for a very interesting family dynamic. But what’s changing now are nuclear familiars are becoming more popular because it can be a bit strained, you know, especially for the daughter-in-laws. Also divorce and broken families are just not mentioned. I grew up with my four best friends, and it was only well into our adulthood that we realized, wow, each one had such different family dynamics going on and nobody spoke about it. The family doesn’t talk about it, so the children are shielded from it, and then when something goes down, nobody’s sharing it. 

I kind of wanted Rea to come from a broken family. And then her friend Leela comes from this big joint family. And similarly with Rea, I did not want her to be your typical smart Indian kid. That’s such a stereotype that we’re all very good at math and science, we always study, we get really good grades, and she’s not like that at all. She’s more street smart; she’s very curious. I wanted to break that stereotype of what defines smartness. Is it your grades? Is it how you handle other situations? Her brother, on the other hand, is a little more conventional that way. He does get good grades and he’s a little more extroverted. 

The minute I decided to channel my Indian culture, automatically I’m thinking, what kind of girl is Rea? What do I want to make her represent? Do I want to break any stereotypes, and if so, which? This is something I did not think about at all when I wrote that first draft. She was just a regular kid. It was only about the Forbidden Woods and what she was headed off to. There was no character growth or development happening at all. The second I changed it, I was like, I know these different situations because I’ve lived them. I’ve seen them around me. In India, grades are so important. I mean, your whole childhood, your whole schooling revolves around getting good grades. It’s okay if you don’t do any sports, if you don’t do any art. Who cares, as long as you get the best grades, then you’re set for life. That’s the mentality. If you go into any of the sciences, you’re a smart kid. If you do anything other than that, you’re not very smart. That’s how I was raised. If a young person is into the arts, it’s just assumed they aren’t very good generally, and that’s the only thing they could do. Which is so obnoxious because that’s where I ended up, and obviously has nothing to do with whether you have good grades or bad grades. So it’s just subtly trying to break those stereotypes. I don’t think readers are necessarily going to pick up on that, but that’s the reasoning that went into creating and crafting her character and the family dynamic.

NM: Why do you think that nuanced representation is especially important for a middle grade audience?

PD: I love middle grade. People ask me why I write middle grade, and it was such an intuitive thing that happened. I never decided to write middle grade. I don’t even think at the time I knew the term middle grade because we don’t use it in school. Our schools are primary, secondary… we never had that terminology. But it was so intuitive for me—when I wrote it, she was eight. I later realized that when I think back to my childhood, I remember my middle school years the most. I think it’s because that’s when I discovered my love for reading. That’s when I made friends. You start discovering yourself, who you like, what you look like, what’s going on at home, what’s happening in your friends’ lives, who do you want to be friends with? If you’re getting bullied, what’s happening there? There are so many things, and you’re setting the foundation for who you’re eventually going to become. And you’re at that cusp where you’re no longer a kid. You’re certainly not an adult, but you have these big, huge emotions, and your eyes are opening up to the world around you. You’re seeing things that you just didn’t see before. Like I said, around your family, with your friends, with your own self.

This is the age group where you can tackle the big topics, deep topics—that’s why you have so many stories about grief and struggle in middle grade literature. Kids are becoming more aware of all of these different things going on around their life and their world. I think including these subjects in middle grade literature is so helpful because even if you’re not necessarily going through a broken family situation, or you’re not necessarily introverted and find it very difficult to make friends, or you’re not having a bad relationship or strained relationship with your parents, you’re still going through so much as just a general growing up process. You can relate and empathize at that time with the struggles your characters are going through because you’re going through some form of it or the other. And I think it helps you get informed. It creates so much empathy.

This is such a great age for kids because they still have that childlike innocence. If you say, suddenly the tree turned into a serpent, they’re gonna be like, yep, that’s what happened. They’re going to go with you. And they’re not boxed in yet, all of their opinions aren’t solidified yet. They’re fluid, they’re figuring things out. There’s such beauty in exploring all of the deeper emotional aspects that you can with middle grade literature. I especially love that with fantasy, I get to write these fun, amazing adventures where kids are doing awesome things. But the root of the story is about friendship. It’s about discovering yourself. It’s about overcoming obstacles. In Rea’s case, there are trust issues, insecurities, figuring out her dynamics with her mother, and all of these different things. You can delve deeper, but you also can keep it light and fun and exciting. I think that’s almost a metaphor for life as a middle grader. There is so much magic going on because everything is so big and new and you’re suddenly this big kid in this big world, and at the same time you have this childlike innocence where you’re sort of navigating all of that. So I think middle grade makes a great starting point for deeper subjects and issues.

NM: Yeah. It seems like that lightness and playfulness is really essential to get readers engaged, but also you can get into some complex emotional material as well.

PD: Absolutely. And I love that in middle grade, you don’t have to talk down to your reader. You get the opportunity to write and talk to your reader as a colleague, as a peer almost, and it’s amazing how they get it, an eight or nine year old gets it. And it’s really cool because you don’t typically think of them as that mature at that age. But when it’s there in written format and in stories, you can get away with it and they will absorb it, which is really cool.

NM: Your book—it’s a really beautiful book, by the way. I love the maps at the beginning. The book is so vivid and inventive. I was wondering what role images and visuals played in your writing process or your planning process.

PD: Huge. I have a dozen mood boards on my laptop that I created for Astranthia and Darjeeling and even for my characters. I am a very visual person, so that really helped. Most people, when I say India, I don’t know what they think of in their heads. I know with the movie Slumdog Millionaire, which came out maybe a decade ago now, they showed India with the slums, and I’m not saying those parts don’t exist. It’s also a really beautiful country. It was important for me to set the story in a place that was truly beautiful. I wanted to highlight a different part of the country that very few people knew about and dispel this very old, very backward, “oh, you have cows on the road” or some crap like that, which people often imagine. Or they think, third world country, and it’s super backward, and it’s not the case. There are places like that, for sure, but there’s a lot more than that. 

I wanted Darjeeling to feel beautiful and lush. It’s nestled in the Himalayas and there are these gorgeous plantations. The visual references there were very helpful because I also had never visited Darjeeling. It was only right before I was submitting the book to my publishers, or sending it out for querying actually, that I was like, “Mom, should we just make a trip?” Just so that everything I’ve written is actually accurate. I scoured Google Maps, I read books, I tried to understand the topography to make sure certain scenes that I’ve created in the book fit. Only on going there did I learn that many of the things would not work because it is so hilly. I had a cricket match, and that requires a flat field. I was like, there’s no conceivable way that can happen on these hilly regions. Anyway, I wanted Darjeeling to have that lushness. And Astranthia was my utopia and I wanted that to be fantastical. India is beautiful, but I come from Bombay, which is a concrete jungle like New York, so for me, any place that is super leafy and lush and full of nature is almost like I’ve been transported someplace else. Anstranthia became a very visual place to describe and make seem fantastical. So I did do a lot of visual research to try to create both areas.

NM: I love that. I just have one more question. You have a young adult story coming out in an anthology. I was curious what challenges and opportunities you saw writing in YA in a short story format versus a longer form.

PD: I never in my life imagined I would write YA. The opportunity to be part of this anthology wonderfully fell in my lap. I was this close to saying no, because I don’t write YA or short stories. I’m such an over-writer that the idea of the short story is so frightening to me. I need like 90,000 words to tell the story. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to tell a whole story in 8,000 words—that’s like two chapters. And I don’t write romance or contemporary. Everything in my brain just thinks in fantasy. 

But I was like, you know what? This is such a great opportunity. So I said, okay. And I think just the act of saying yes, and then you sign the contract, and you’ve got to submit this by the end of June, and having that at the back of your head, it made me stop focusing on what I couldn’t do. I started thinking about what story I could tell. There were a few parameters given to us. It was supposed to be set within a marriage, within a wedding. Not necessarily the characters’ wedding, it could just be the backdrop. And there was an auntie, a meddling auntie, that had to be part of the story. 

It was fun because the beauty about this anthology is it showcases how diverse and vast all of South Asian cultures are. It’s certainly not just India, even though India forms the largest of South Asian countries. There are so many cultures and other countries that are part of the South Asian diaspora. So I was like, I want to highlight a culture that isn’t often highlighted. And it just so happens that I am married to a Parsi Zoroastrian. They’re originally from Persia and had come into India centuries ago, so they have their own culture and dress and food and customs. I was like, that’s great. Anyway I’m in a time crunch, so I’m going to use my own wedding as the backdrop. We did a really cool Iranian ceremony—Persia then became Iran—so they have all of those influences in their customs. And that got me thinking, if that’s my backdrop, what’s going to happen? Who are these characters? 

What was nice about writing the short story, for me, was that I didn’t have to think about a whole narrative, a whole novel. I just picked a slice of life situation and then expanded around it. It was like using a different part of my brain almost, to look small and stay small and keep it in that moment where we’re not traversing time and realms and all of these things, which is how I typically end up looking at my plots.

For me, I wanted to keep the entire story within the wedding, one day of the wedding. And yet, as the time and space of the story got smaller, what expanded were the emotions of the characters, the backstory of the characters, and what happens to these two characters in this tiny space and time. In this one little moment, we’re suddenly getting so much of these characters. In my novel, so much is happening. If you isolate the characters, there’s very little growth happening because there are so many things happening around them. The whole growth accumulates across the entire length of the novel. In this case, it was fun to create a story in which the characters have so much growth while the time and space of the story is finite.

NM: I’ve always found short stories challenging, so it’s interesting to hear that it can also be a relief, that you can zoom in on these really specific details and moments.

PD: Exactly. That’s all you have to focus on, and all you go is deeper. I still submitted 10 to 12,000 words, even though 8,000 was the limit, but they accepted it. After they did that, I was like, then what’s going to happen? Maybe I have a YA novel in me. It ends nicely, but there’s still room for growth.

Learn more about Payal Doshi and her books by visiting her website: https://www.payaldoshiauthor.com/