The same qualities that draw her in - his tattoos, his charisma, his passion for art - make him her mother’s worst nightmare. Rani Kelkar has never lied to her parents, until she meets Oliver.

IndieBoundįans of Sandhya Menon, Erika Sanchez, and Jandy Nelson will identify with this award-winning novel of a young artist’s forbidden, interracial first love, her close-knit Indian family, and her boyfriend’s desperate attempts to fit into it - even if it means betrayal.

Publication Date March 9th 2021 by Knopf Books for Young Readersįind It On Underlined Writing this book helped me understand how we may uphold our cultural identities despite the stereotypes and emotional violence that come with routinely being seen as “other” - even by the ones we love.Īmerican Betiya is the raw, evocative, swoony, soulful, empowering book of my heart, and I can’t wait to share it with you!Ĭover design by Angela Carlino, Cover art by Saqiba Suleman, Edited by Katherine Harrison In creating Rani and Oliver’s world, I learned what happens when cultures collide in one feverish first love, why we sometimes feel the need to distance ourselves from our cultures, and how the longing to be loved and seen might overshadow instincts. Further complexities arise within Rani’s new relationship and her old-world traditional Indian family as the two become inextricably linked…Īmerican Betiya is a work of fiction that draws upon my own personal experiences, research and observations. What follows are heady highs, cultural misunderstandings, betrayal, the triggering of generational trauma, and the powerful emergence of identity.

A contemporary story about an 18-year-old named Rani and her artistic, passionate boyfriend, Oliver, American Betiya conveys the desperate desire to escape into your beloved’s world and culture, no matter the cost. “Beginnings” would be the story that, thanks in part to the encouragement of my writing group, was a true beginning: I’d flesh it out over the span of many years into what is now my debut, American Betiya (pronounced BAY-tee-uh, meaning “daughter” or “darling” in Hindi). After some tinkering, self-doubt, and false starts, I wrote a short story whose title was simply “Beginnings.”

Years ago, I set out to write the kind of story I’d wished for as a teen: one that explores forbidden interracial love in all its beauty and honest complications, one that features an ambitious Indian American teenager and her first-generation immigrant family…one that would feel fierce and unvarnished.

American betiya book