Bestselling Indian American romance novelist Sonali Dev about her just released, The Vibrant Years. This will be the first book released by actress Mindy Kaling’s new Amazon Little A imprint, Mindy’s Book Studio. Taking readers into the everyday world of Indian American women, Dev taps her trademark wit and storytelling magic while exploring deeper questions about women’s self-reliance and the fight for empowerment by underrepresented, often unheard voices.
Centered on three generations of unconventional and ambitious women, the novel sets them on an intertwined journey of self-discovery, as they hilariously embrace their missteps, impulsive decisions, and cringeworthy dates and learn to live life on their own terms.
At sixty-five, Bindu Desai has inherited a million dollars from a man from her past. Fearing the source of the legacy will expose a shameful mistake from her youth, she is determined to keep it secret even from the two most important people in her life—her daughter-in-law Aly and tech-whiz granddaughter Cullie. Making the best of the windfall, Bindu purchases a luxury condo in a posh Florida retirement community, where the judgmental “coven” that runs the HOA is promptly threatened by her natural allure and vivacious approach to life. Meanwhile Aly, recently divorced from Bindu’s son, struggles for recognition at the local news station where she repeatedly has pushed against the limited opportunity afforded an Indian-American woman. Aly’s daughter Cullie, the young genius creator of Shloka, a hugely popular app for coping with anxiety, has her own battles, betrayed by her former boyfriend over the app’s future.
When Bindu finds herself in another awkward situation involving death and inheritance, Aly and Cullie rush to her side to comfort and protect her. The trio becomes an unlikely informal development team as Cullie sets out to create a new dating app that will allow her to regain control of her cherished Shloka. With Bindu’s wise pronouncement that dating should be a journey of self-discovery as a starting point, the three venture on a series of dates, both hellish and hopeful. As men from both the past and, potentially, the future infiltrate their lives, Bindu, Aly, and Cullie will discover as much about themselves as about true romance.
Percolating with universal themes of love, womanhood, family, and self-reliance, THE VIBRANT YEARS also takes readers into the particular experiences of Indian-American women, walking the often-precarious line between traditional expectations and twenty-first century aspirations. Dev’s portrait of three generations of women speaks to readers across ages and cultures. And her mastery of the secrets, surprises—and laughs—keep the pages turning.
You can learn more in this interview.
THE VIBRANT YEARS is everything I’ve always wanted to say about being a woman. I wanted to write a story that celebrated women coming into their power, sexually, intellectually, and socially. The modern dating scene is such an ironic allegory for how far women have come in terms of the choices they now have, and I wanted to use that as the stage on which these three generations of badass women find how to live on their own terms.
Why is it important to have books that reflect Indian American experiences?
It is important to have books that reflect every historically neglected and silenced experience. Growing up, my children, who are in their twenties now, never had a single book or mainstream film or show in which they saw a protagonist who looked like them. That’s a foundational loss that’s theirs forever. But at least as young people, that’s changed. At a less personal more universal level, books are the safest way to experience life in the skin of others, and the Indian American experience is as absurdly funny and angst ridden as any. It makes for really rich entertainment (I get that I might be slightly biased here). But Indian culture is not a monolith. It is widely diverse within itself. Based on your home state, your religion, your cast and your family, your perception of the Indian American experience an change drastically. This just means we need many more books that reflect this reality so the entire Indian American experience isn’t pigeon-holed into one thing.
What makes this book a good read for any woman?
For the same reason that it was a good read for me. For years, women have been written as stereotypes:
The older woman who is either bawdy and sassy or then a font of affectionate wisdom. The middle aged woman who is bemoaning the loss of her youth or fighting to count the sacrifices she made to have it all. The young woman is a delightful mess waiting to be loved. But those are tropes, they are part of who we are not all of who we are. I simply wanted to write the older woman I think my friends and I will be, still alive, still growing, still desirous of things; the middle aged woman I think I am, still a delightful mess who already loves herself; and the young woman who knows exactly who she is and is perfectly comfortable if the world needs time to catch up to that.
How can fiction books help us be more aware of people whose backgrounds are different from our own?
Isn’t that one of the jobs of fiction? That we get to have a multitude of experiences through it? I’m waiting for there to be so much diversity in books, on television, in movies that it ceases to be a topic of conversation. I know we are years away from that but the world is much smaller than it’s ever been in human history. Chances are there are people from every race and ethnicity in your neighborhood, in your children’s schools. And the only way for this new non-homogenous world to work is through understanding those seemingly different from us. Stories go a long way in achieving that understanding. Nonfiction gives you the facts, but fiction puts you in other people’s shoes, it serves to internalize facts, to remove spaces between people through felt experience. It shows you that hearts break in the same way no matter who you identify as.
At the end of this Today show interview, Mindy Kaling is talking more about the launch of the Mindy’s Book studio publishing imprint.
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