Sonia Patel
Sonia Patel is a first-generation Indian American born in New York and raised in Hawai’i. Her break-out novel, RANI PATEL IN FULL EFFECT, was a finalist for the William C. Morris Debut Award, a YALSA and Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Book, and received four-starred reviews. Her subsequent YA novels JAYA AND RASA: A LOVE STORY and BLOODY SEOUL both received the In the Margins Book Award. She contributed a short story—NOTHING FEELS NO PAIN—to the YA anthology AB(SOLUTELY) NORMAL: SHORT STORIES THAT SMASH MENTAL HEALTH STEREOTYPES. Her fourth YA novel, GITA DESAI IS NOT HERE TO SHUT UP, will be published Summer 2024. As a child and adolescent psychiatrist trained at Stanford University and the University of Hawaii, Patel has spent over twenty years providing psychotherapy to youth and their families. She lives in Honolulu with her husband and teenage son, and misses her daughter who’s away at college.
Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up
Sonia Patel
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. 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 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.
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