Song 1: “Love Buzz” by Nirvana: Everything about this Nirvana cover—the guitar, bass, drums, and Kurt Cobain’s voice—feels to Gita like her body’s secret language to cut through her shame and allow connection with her inner strength, resilience, and motivation to push past mere survival. She listens to this song in chapter 6, and it helps her begin to work through and conceptualize moving past a bad experience with a guy.
Song 2: “Would?” by Alice in Chains: Because of her particular childhood adversity, Gita lacks the language to conceptualize or describe all of her feelings and thoughts, especially when in certain situations with guys, and the music and lyrics in this haunting song feel to her like “wicked sex,” like the obedience she needs to have with men when they want something from her. In chapter 12, a guy invites her to his room at a frat party and plays this song on his boombox, and Gita feels compelled to do what he wants without consciously realizing it.
Song 3: “Kinda I Want To” by Nine Inch Nails: The music and lyrics represent the back and forth Gita goes through between two parts of her brain: the part hardwired to feel and act as if she deserves to be an object for men to use vs her true, powerful, independent self that has the potential to think for herself and understand that she deserves to make safe, healthy choices. In chapter 21, this song allows her to begin to process what happened with a guy in the club—she didn’t stop what happened, maybe she deserved it, and she wanted it and didn’t want it. Gita would have to acknowledge and work through those conflicted thoughts and feelings before she could get to any sort of understanding that she didn’t deserve it.
Song 4: “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by The Police: This song feels like magic in Gita’s heart, like the pure, innocent love a guy might someday feel for her, a guy who doesn’t want to just use her for sex. In chapter 24, Gita thinks of this song when imagining how things might go with the guy she likes: “something beautiful,” a “Bollywood-Hollywood romance with him singing” this song.
Song 5: “Hat 2 Da Back” by TLC: This song represents Gita’s psychological growth by the end of the novel. She has gained some insight and has some language to describe what she wants and doesn’t want. She understands that she doesn’t have to conform to what others want from her, especially if they want to hurt her. In chapter 44, Gita flips her hat to the back and listens to this song because she is closer than ever to being her strong, authentic self.
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 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.
Young Adult [Dial Books, On Sale: September 10, 2024, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9780593463185 / eISBN: 9780593463192]
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 Fall 2024 (Penguin/Dial). 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.
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