Today we’d like to introduce you to Mansi Shah.
Hi Mansi, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
When I was a young girl, there were only two things I wanted to be when I grew up: a writer and a lawyer. As an immigrant who was born in Toronto, Canada to parents from Gujarat, India, and raised in various states throughout the American Midwest, financial security became the bedrock of my life plan. While I’d always been a voracious reader and dabbled in writing, pursuing a legal career was the obvious choice for a young girl seeking stability both for herself and her family. But as I worked in corporate America, building a successful career as an entertainment attorney in Hollywood, I was surrounded by stories—but none I could truly relate to. With each passing year, the desire to share my culture’s complexity and nuance began to boil beneath the surface.
In 2009, I began writing the book that was burning inside of me. It was during this time that I wrote the first drafts of what would eventually become my debut The Taste of Ginger. But all the youthful optimism of my twenties couldn’t get me the book deal that would launch my career, so I continued to work as an attorney and pursued my writing discreetly by attending classes at UCLA and working on my novel on the weekends. I didn’t share with anyone in my professional life that I had this other passion because the legal field can be so competitive that I never wanted anyone to think that I wasn’t committed to my work.
Little by little, the story that I wished had existed when I was a young girl took shape and sentences melded into paragraphs, which flowed into chapters, until I had the book I’d always wished had been on the shelves. In 2020, over a decade after my first drafts, I landed my first book deal and THE TASTE OF GINGER was published on January 1, 2022. Sharing my voice and culture with the world, and having had so many messages from immigrants like me who found themselves in those pages was invigorating. I realized the pen was mightier than the gavel, and left my stable, secure lawyer job for an unpredictable and emotionally rewarding life of helping people who have been underrepresented in media feel seen. I could finally tell my nine-year-old self that I had achieved the dream we had set out on decades earlier.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Rejection is always difficult. But the type I was getting in the form of agents telling me they’d “just signed an Indian author” or editors saying they’d recently had “a book like this” on their list was one of the hardest parts of the journey for me. This type of rejection was completely out of my control. I wasn’t being told that there was a problem with my writing, or voice, or story. If I had been told any of those things, I could have worked harder, spent more time revising, or come up with another story. But that there wasn’t room on the shelves for the authentic Gujarati American immigrant story I had written was both demoralizing and motivating.
I had to battle many thoughts, including that no one would ever say these things to a white author because there’s room for multiple stories from that point of view. I’d not yet read a single book that reflected my Gujarati immigrant experience. There were very few books by Indian authors at all, and those that had been published featured characters from other parts of India. But the message from the publishing industry seemed to be that the 1.4 billion people of Indian descent with their varying cuisines, languages, dress, and customs were interchangeable, and the handful of books that existed were enough to satisfy that readership.
My most memorable rejection was in 2011, when an agency meant to send an internal email but instead replied to me (that dreaded act that we all fear), so I saw their true unfiltered thoughts: “Solid voice. Great title. Though I’m worried because you said the India wave has passed…”
I spent a long time thinking about my culture as a passing “wave.” What kept me motivated from that response and others like it was that none questioned my writing abilities. I knew my culture’s stories were worth telling, so it was the fuel to keep going until I found the right agent and editor who wanted to join me in my efforts to disrupt the publishing industry.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m the author of book club fiction novels including THE TASTE OF GINGER and THE DIRECTION OF THE WIND, which center around Gujarati Indian families as they move throughout the world. As an avid traveler who has stamped her passport in more than seventy countries thus far, I have set each of my novels in a different country with the first being primarily India, the second in France, and am currently working on my third, which takes place in Italy. I care deeply about lining the shelves with books that highlight underrepresented stories and am grateful to now have the platform and support to do that.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
Luck is a part of life, and a big part of publishing. The only thing I can control is writing the best stories I can. From there, everything is out of my hands, and I have to leave it up to the Universe to decide if my books will reach readers or not. Everything from the publication date, to marketing, to publicity is determined by my publisher. I have no idea what other books will be released at the same time as mine, or if something going on in the world will make my subject more or less relatable to readers. Given all of the uncontrolled variables and unpredictability that comes with a career concentrated on creative pursuits, I focus on my connection with my readers and improving my craft, and try not to worry about the rest.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mansikshah.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mansishahwrites/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mansishahwrites/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/mansiwrites
