Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up
Penguin Young Readers Group · Print & ebook · September 10, 2024
A Fiction pick for readers exploring Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up.
We earn from qualifying purchases.
- Who it’s for
- A layered YA novel about respectability, buried memories, and the cost of keeping quiet.
- Themes
- Confronting a painful past, Family and cultural expectations, Finding the courage to speak out
- Genres
- Asian American YA, Surviving Sexual Abuse, Mental Illness for Teens
Nearest books
Matched by what the books are about, then ordered by what their readers also loved.
The Ping-pong Queen of ChinatownAndrew Yang57% matchShares Asian American YA
RedAnnie Cardi59% matchShares Surviving Sexual Abuse
The Sticky Note Manifesto of Aisha AgarwalAmbika Vohra69% match
Fitting IndianJyoti Chand67% matchShares Mental Illness for Teens
The TournamentRebecca Barrow57% match
With Love, Miss AmericanahJane Igharo58% match
You Belong HereSara Phoebe Miller, Morgan Beem59% match
Ever SinceAlena Bruzas65% matchShares Surviving Sexual Abuse
For older readers: Sorry for the Inconvenience, Match Me If You Can, A Woman Is No Man
Start with three books, and this one can be the first.
Members get a new edition every morning: a route out from their books to essays, research and talks, with the reason for each.
Start with this bookAbout this book
From Morris Award finalist Sonia Patel comes a sharply written YA about a girl grappling with a dark, painful secret from her past, perfect for fans of All My Rage and The Way I Used to Be. It’s eighteen-year-old Gita Desai’s first year at Stanford, and the fact that she’s here and not already married off by her traditional Gujarati parents is a miracle.
Continue reading
She’s determined to death-grip her good-girl, model student rep all the way to med school, which means no social life or standing out in any way. Should be easy: If there’s one thing she’s learned from her family, it’s how to chup-re—to “shut up,” fade into the background. But when childhood memories of her aunt’s desertion and her then-uncle’s best friend resurface, Gita ends up ditching the books night after night in favor of partying and hooking up with strangers. Still, nothing can stop the little voice growing louder and louder inside her that says something is wrong. . . . And the only way she can burst forward is to stop shutting up about the past. “Funny, messy, gut-wrenching.”—Kirkus Reviews
Silence, Then Truth
A layered YA novel about respectability, buried memories, and the cost of keeping quiet.
Come here for
- A sharp look at family expectations and the pressure to be a model student
- A young woman’s uneasy shift from keeping quiet to speaking about the past
Expect
- Edgy, messy emotional territory
- A story grounded in Gita’s Gujarati family and first year at Stanford
Where it sits
| Mental Illness for Teens | 59% |
|---|---|
| Asian American YA | 47% |
| Surviving Sexual Abuse | 41% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Dating & Sex for Teens
- Addiction & Substance Use for Teens
- Surviving Sexual Abuse
- Authors
- Sonia Patel
- Publisher
- Penguin Young Readers Group
- Published
- September 10, 2024
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Confronting a painful past · Family and cultural expectations · Finding the courage to speak out
- Reading lane
- Dating & Sex for Teens