Here I Read

💛 Follow me on Bookstagram 💛

Brown Girl Like Me is an essential guidebook for South Asian women and girls on how to deal with growing up brown, female, marginalized and opinionated. #BrownGirlLikeMe #JaspreetKaur #BehindTheNetra #11QuestionsWithCreatives 💛 Follow me on Bookstagram 💛

Happy Friday y’all ✨ Book mail this morning got me so excited. I blocked time on my calendar, made a cup of tea, and now I’m sitting in my backyard with this Brown Girl’s memoir. 🗣 @ThakurKhyati, we gotta bring this to BrownGirlsReadPod 🤎 Thank you @portfolio_books for the gifted copy. 🏷 #HereIRead #BrownGirlsRead #IndraNooyi #MyLifeInFull #SouthAsianBooks #SouthAsianAuthors #SouthAsianWomen 💛 Follow me on Bookstagram 💛

I spoke to Eve Rodsky on 11 Questions with Creatives, and she shared an amazing quiz for her new book Find Your Unicorn Space, and can you guess what my unicorn space is? Writing, community, and accountability! 😃 Take the quiz for yourself and find your unicorn space— you can find it in the book or in our conversation on @11questionspod (link in bio). But before you take the quiz, can you guess what your unicorn space is? 💛 Follow me on Bookstagram 💛

📚 T G I F 📚 What are your reading plans this weekend? 💛 Follow me on Bookstagram 💛

Happy pub day, Kamila 🌟 Jane Austen's Emma goes Bollywoood in this delightful retelling from the highly acclaimed author of #AccidentallyEngaged! Get your copies now 📚 Farah Heron is a critically acclaimed author of romantic comedies for adults and young adults filled with huge South Asian families, delectable food, and most importantly, brown people falling stupidly in love. She lives in Toronto with her husband, two children, and a rabbit named Strawberry. Find more about @farahheronauthor on @11questionspod 🌟 #HereIRead #KamilaKnowsBest #FarahHeron @readforeverpub #BrownGirlsRead #11QuestionsWithCreatives 💛 Follow me on Bookstagram 💛

What is unicorn space? It’s what you would do with uninterrupted time that does not include more work, a side hustle, or housework. It is the active pursuit of something you love, something that brings you joy and makes you who you are. Find our conversation, 11 Questions with #EveRodsky, on YouTube and Podcasts. (link in bio) 🏷 #FindYourUnicornSpace #FairPlay #UnicornSpace 💛 Follow me on Bookstagram 💛

A deeply personal call to action for women of color to find power from within and to join together in community, advocating for a new corporate environment where we all belong—and are accepted—on our own terms. Thank you partner @bibliolifestyle @harpercollins for gifted copy! Pub date: March 1, 2022. Women of color comprise one of the fastest-growing segments in the corporate workforce, yet often we are underrepresented—among the first, few, or only ones in a department or company. For too long, corporate structures, social zeitgeist, and cultural conditioning have left us feeling exhausted and downtrodden, believing that in order to “fit in” and be successful, we must hide or change who we are. As a former senior partner at a large global services firm, Deepa Purushothaman experienced these feelings of isolation and burnout. She met with hundreds of other women of color across industries and cultural backgrounds, eager to hear about their unique and shared experiences. In doing so, she has come to understand our collective setbacks—and the path forward in achieving our goals. Business must evolve—and women of color have the potential to lead that transformation. We must begin by pushing back against toxic messaging—including the things we tell ourselves—while embracing the valuable cultural viewpoints and experiences that give us unique perspectives at work. By fully realizing our own strengths, we can build collective power and use it to confront microaggressions, outdated norms, and workplace misconceptions; create cultures where belonging is never conditional; and rework corporations to be genuinely inclusive to all. The First, the Few, the Only is a road map for us to make a profound impact within and outside our organizations while ensuring that our words are heard, our lived experiences are respected, and our contributions are finally valued. 💛 Follow me on Bookstagram 💛

Now I can’t unsee #Rekha in this book cover, thanks to @nishitasant. I wonder if she truly was the inspiration 🤔 #HereIRead Dava Shastri’s Last Day, by Kirthana Ramisetti. In this thought-provoking and entertaining debut novel about of a multicultural family, a dying billionaire matriarch leaks news of her death early so she can examine her legacy— a decision that horrifies her children and inadvertently exposes secrets she has spent a lifetime keeping. Thank you @grandcentralpub for the ARC! 💛 Follow me on Bookstagram 💛

Do you have a favorite YA novel? It’s been a while that I read one, and can’t wait to get into this book by @sabaatahir. Thank you @mystery.book.club for making me a part of this group and for the gifted copy! #HereIRead All The Rage by Sabaa Tahir is a contemporary YA novel about family and forgiveness, love and loss, in a sweeping story that crosses generations and continents. Lahore, Pakistan. Then. Misbah is a dreamer and storyteller, newly married to Toufiq in an arranged match. After their young life is shaken by tragedy, they come to the United States and open the Cloud’s Rest Inn Motel, hoping for a new start. Juniper, California. Now. Salahudin and Noor are more than best friends; they are family. Growing up as outcasts in the small desert town of Juniper, California, they understand each other the way no one else does. Until The Fight, which destroys their bond with the swift fury of a star exploding. Now, Sal scrambles to run the family motel as his mother Misbah’s health fails and his grieving father loses himself to alcoholism. Noor, meanwhile, walks a harrowing tightrope: working at her wrathful uncle’s liquor store while hiding the fact that she’s applying to college so she can escape him—and Juniper—forever. When Sal’s attempts to save the motel spiral out of control, he and Noor must ask themselves what friendship is worth—and what it takes to defeat the monsters in their pasts and the ones in their midst. 💛 Follow me on Bookstagram 💛

There are days when this book title could be for my life. Thank you partner @bibliolifestyle @harperonebooks for the gifted copy. #HereIRead My Mess Is a Bit of a Life by Georgia Pritchett. Delightfully offbeat, painfully honest, full of surprising wonders, and delivering plenty of hilarious, laugh-out-loud moments, this memoir reveals a talented, vulnerable, and strong woman in all her wisecracking weirdness. When Georgia Pritchett found herself lost for words—a bit of a predicament for a comedy writer—she turned to a therapist, who suggested she try writing down some of the things that worried her. But instead of a grocery list of concerns, Georgia wrote this book. Soul-baring yet lighthearted, poignant yet written with a healthy dose of self-deprecation, My Mess Is a Bit of a Life is a tour through the carnival funhouse of Georgia’s life, from her anxiety-ridden early childhood where disaster loomed around every corner, through the challenges of breaking into an industry dominated by male writers, to the exquisite terror of raising children. Pub date: February 8, 2022 💛 Follow me on Bookstagram 💛

A nonfiction book that read like poetry: the sweet spot of reading and learning!⁠ ⁠ #HereIRead Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. ⁠ What I loved: listening to beautiful insightful book on my walks, poetic philosophical writing about nature and life, conversations it started about human relationship with nature, and the teachings of plants and native wisdom.⁠ As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.⁠ ⁠ 💛 Follow me on Bookstagram 💛

Here are my 4 reads of January - what were yours?