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2024 / Press Related to How to Make Your Mother Cry: Fictions

Reviews of This Is One Way to Dance: Essays

  • World Literature Today | Review by Amit R. Baishya
  • Literary Hub | Book Marks: Compiled Reviews of This Is One Way to Dance
  • The Coachella Review:  Voice to Books, Review by David Martinez
  • Texas Public Radio | This Is One Way to Dance reviewed by Yvette Benavides (recording and print review)
    In describing her singular experiences she is writing to herself, as she says, but also to others like her—each with unique sorrows, listening for varieties of language that mean “home,” and music that invites everyone to join in the dance.
  • Wellesley Alumni Magazine | “Now You See Me,” Review by Sidikha Ashraf
    “[Shah’s] words make the daunting future seem softer. Her stories also illuminate the past I have been yearning to know. “
  • Singapore Unbound | “Dancing Between Saris and Sorrows”: This Is One Way to Dance reviewed by Prasanthi Ram, 11/9/2020
    “Our identity is in part about how we permit others to view and position us as well.”
  • Brevity | Review by Sonya Huber, 8/6/2020
    “The loose ends of the essays all curve and dovetail toward a larger design…”
  • VIDA: Issue 3 | Review by Aditya Desai, 7/14/20
    “The essay… becomes a place for the writer to dig down into a sense of self, to whittle through layers of identity.”
  • Harvard Review Online | Review by Rajpreet Heir, 7/14/20
    “[Shah] shows what’s possible when we don’t subscribe to personal or creative restrictions.”
  • Los Angeles Review | Review by Donna Miscolta, 6/12/2020
    “Themes crisscross each other and percolate through the layers of these chronologically arranged essays.”
  • NPR | “This Is One Way to Dance Explores a Life Straddling Congruent Realities” by Martha Anne Toll, 6/4/2020
    “Shah’s essays explore congruent realities.”
  • Publishers Weekly | Advance Review, 3/26/2020
    “In this sterling collection, Shah has created a striking self-portrait.“

Lists for This Is One Way to Dance: Essays

  1. Electric Lit reading list, “7 Books from University Presses You Should Be Reading”
  2. New York Times Sunday | “What We’re Reading,” recommended by Sopan Deb
  3. NPR | NPR’s Best Books of 2020
  4. Chicago Review of Books | 9 Works of Criticism You May Have Missed This Year
    The form of these essays—lyrical, discerning, intimate, full—allows Shah to ask not just how bodies move but, rather, how they dance, without limit,  among the traditions, realities and dreams they inhabit. 
  5. Self.com | 14 Short Books for Busy People Who Want to Read More, curated by Wendy J. Fox
  6. LA Times | A Reading Guide on the Asian American Experience
  7. Literary Hub | The Best Reviewed Essay Collections of 2020
  8. Book Riot | 20 Must-Read Books from University Presses, curated by Laura Sackton
  9. PEN America | Across the Asian Americas: An APA Heritage Month Reading List, curated by Rajiv Mohabir
  10. Ms. Magazine | June 2020 Reads for the Rest of Us List
  11. Seema | 5 of the Best Books by South Asian Women
  12. The Rumpus | What to Read When You Want to Celebrate APIA Heritage Month
  13. Asian American Writers’ Workshop | Bookmarks: Best of 2020
  14. Book Riot | “7 of the Best Books Set in New York State”
  15. Reading Indie | “Thinking on the Page”: Rebecca Hussey’s Top Essay Collections of 2020
  16. Asian American Journalists Association | AAJA’s End of Year Top 10 New Books
  17. The Millions | A Year in Reading: Natalie Bakopoulos
  18. The Margins | “Nine Picks from the Editors of the South Asian Avant-Garde”
  19. Book Riot | “Indie Press Round-Up: 10 Great New Releases for Summer,” curated by Rebecca Hussey
  20. Kundiman | 10 Books to Read this Asian Pacific Heritage Month
  21. Poets and Writers | “Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin”
  22. Goodreads | “E. J. Koh’s Picks to Celebrate Asian American Writers”
  23. Electric Literature | 20 New Asian American Books to Read Right Now by Ruth Minah Buchwald
  24. American Writers Museum | “Asian American Writers, Their Books & The Books They Love,” curated by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
  25. The Rumpus | What to Read When You Want to Celebrate Women’s History
  26. She Reads.com | 11 Memoirs by Unbreakable Women
  27. The Stylist (UK) | Top Ten Super-Short and Powerful Reads by Women
  28. She the People | Books by Women Authors to Look Out for in 2020
  29. The Millions | Most Anticipated: The Great First-Half 2020 Book Preview
  30. Bitch Media | Bitch Reads: 9 Essay Collections Feminists Should Read in 2020, chosen by Evette Dionne
  31. Big Other | Most Anticipated Small Press Books of 2020, curated by John Madera
  32. Electric Literature |56 Books by Women / Nonbinary Writers of Color Being Published in 2020, chosen by R.O. Kwon
  33. The Rumpus | Most Anticipated Books for 2020
  34. Shereads.com | Most Anticipated Memoirs of 2020 list

Print Interviews for This Is One Way to Dance: Essays

  • Hyphen | “I’m Never Not Thinking about Home and Kinship”: Interview by Ansley Moon, 12/24/2020
  • Jaggery | Drunk on Ink Q& A by Soniah Kamal
  • Guernica | “All my life, I have been biking with breaks on”: Interview by Kelly Sundberg, 11/9/2020
  • The Woman Inc | “Simplicity is Radical and Empowering”: A conversation with Gayatri Sethi, Sejal Shah, and Namrata Poddar, 10/12/20
  • Assay | Interview by Sayantani Dasgupta, 10/1/2020
  • BOMB Magazine | “A Voice That Will Carry a Feeling: Sejal Shah Interviewed by Rudri Bhatt Patel,” 9/10/2020
    “I don’t believe that everything must be translated.”
  • Hippocampus | Interview by Lara Lillibridge, 6/3/2020
    “It’s a different sort of honesty—to evolve on the page.”
  • Literary Hub | “Sejal Shah on the Tricky Work of Giving Shape to an Essay Collection” by Anjali Enjeti, 6/1/2020
    “I wanted to be aware of overlaps and gaps in the memoir arc…”
  • Work in Progress | Interview by Leslie Pietrzyk for TBR (To-Be-Read), 5/26/2020
    “The title and through line of dance worked on more than one level as metaphor, inspiration, and analogy.”
  • The Rumpus | Interview: “Circuitous Journeys: Talking with Sejal Shah” by Madhushree Ghosh, 5/20/2020
    “Publishing a range of stories matters.“
  • Kenyon Review | Interview: “An Interview with Sejal Shah” by Amy Wright, 5/14/2020
    “The lyric essay is where I found a home, a voice, a structure/architecture/philosophy that articulates what I had been doing all along. “
  • Publishers Weekly | Interview: “Learning to Dance: PW Talks with Sejal Shah,” 4/17/2020
    “There’s the danger of a single story or storyteller, even now. When one writer and one kind of storytelling is asked to represent an entire culture, it’s reductive. “

Podcast Interviews for This Is One Way to Dance: Essays

Recorded Panels & Interviews for This Is One Way to Dance: Essays

Audio Clips

  • Poets and Writers | Audio Clip of “Things People Said: An Essay in Seven Steps” from “Page One”
  • Kenyon Review | Audio Clip of “Deluxe”
  • Kenyon Review | Audio Clip of “Even If You Can’t See It: Invisible Disability and Neurodiversity”

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