Happy 2023, everyone! I want to thank all my readers who have supported my Author Spotlights. This series could not have been possible without the readership and encouragement I have received from the audience, authors, publicists, and editors I have worked with and continue to work with.
That being said…this interview post features debut YA contemporary romance writer Priyanka Taslim on her novel The Love Match which is set to release Jan 3. Priyanka Taslim is a Bangladeshi American writer, teacher, and lifelong New Jersey resident. Having grown up in a bustling Bangladeshi diaspora community, surrounded by her mother’s entire clan and many aunties of no relation, her writing often features families, communities, and all the drama therein. Currently, Priyanka teaches English by day and tells all kinds of stories about Bangladeshi characters by night. Her writing usually stars spunky Bangladeshi heroines finding their place in the world—and a little swoony romance, too.
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before meets Pride and Prejudice in this delightful and heartfelt rom-com about a Bangladeshi American teen whose meddling mother arranges a match to secure their family’s financial security—just as she’s falling in love with someone else.
Jane Austen and rom coms aren’t exactly for everyone. However, your book tackles Bangladeshi culture and community so what would you say to those who are hesitant to pick up The Love Match?
While I wrote The Love Match in the spirit of Austen’s comedies of manners, and her incisive ability to discuss the social politics of her time while developing an engaging romantic plot, The Love Match is NOT a retelling of Pride and Prejudice or any other Austen novel. Readers who are hesitant to pick it up, whether because they aren’t a fan of Austen or because they’ve been inundated in Austen retellings, don’t have to worry about that, because The Love Match has plenty of fresh beats and plot twists, and is one of the first young adult novels focusing on what it’s like to grow up in a vibrant Bangladeshi diaspora community. I would say it’s perfect for any romance reader who likes tropey romcoms, especially fans of Jenny Han and Sandhya Menon.
How do you find that chai impacts South Asian Muslim culture, and thinking about what it means regarding identity especially for Zahra?
Chai is something I’ve grown up drinking since I was a child. When I was very young, my mom and dad would let me dip my biscuits into their chai, and it quickly became an after-school drink to perk me up around the time I entered middle school, or something warm during chilly winters.
Chai has a complicated history in Bangladesh. It was introduced on the land by British colonizers to compete with tea production in China and has had a complicated impact on the land and laborers of Bangladesh, but is one of Bangladesh’s biggest exports, rooted in the culture of its people now.
That rich and complex history, even if it’s not quite touched on, is why I wanted to write about Zahra working in Chai Ho. Chai represents her life as it is in the beginning of the story, something that offers comfort but sometimes scalds. While she might love it, she needs to find a way to move beyond the boundaries of her life at present.
The Auntie Network is very reminiscent of the movie Crazy Rich Asians, which you’ve alludes to in your novel. Growing up, how was your Auntie Network like? Any crazy stories to tell?
For the most part, I was very concerned with being a Good Bangladeshi Girl™ and never really did anything that could get back to my parents through the auntie grapevine, but that was partly because I was surrounded by community. My parents are both social butterflies, unlike me, so they seem like they know everyone Bengali in Paterson. They’d also tell us that their reputations were so important because of that, so I was always afraid to tarnish their image in any way. Don’t get me wrong, they were very loving, but I think a lot of Asian parents have to be better at prioritizing their kids over the concept of, “What will people say?”
Throughout The Love Match, Zahra is struggling to write her novel. As a debut author, how was your writing experience paralleled to and/or differed from Zahra’s?
I have absolutely navigated writers’ block like Zahra. For her, it’s very much an emotional block, and I think that’s often the reason I struggle to write sometimes too. There’s usually something else going on. The Love Match was a relatively easy book to write because it was an escape for me during the pandemic, but also because I was teaching from home at the time. I struggled very much with my next project because I was juggling a return to campus, fears about COVID, an increase in responsibilities, The Love Match deadlines, and deadlines for this project. There’s this stereotype that writers pull from the darkness within them to write, and I’m sure some do, but I feel like Zahra, and I benefit from a sense of peace and contentment when it comes to our creativity. However, I never finished a novel as a teen, so her determination and dedication to do so are a step above mine!
In your bio, you mention how you write about swoony novels starring Bengali characters you’d wish you had seen growing up. In your experience, how do you think reading YA fiction with these characters impacts readers?
Representation is so important. As a teen, there were times I wanted to be white, because all of my favorite characters were. I felt like I was ugly for the same reasons—and it didn’t help that one of the few times I ever heard Bangladesh mentioned on a popular piece of western media, it was in the context of a joke about how unattractive Bengali women are. I didn’t see myself in my parents’ media, either. It didn’t reflect my experience as a Bangladeshi-American girl, so I just felt unwanted by everything, and even distanced myself from being Bengali for a while.
It wasn’t until college, when I started writing Bangladeshi characters for the first time, that a lightbulb lit up above my head. I realized why I struggled to finish my previous projects, all of which had all white casts. I still didn’t think I could get published writing what I did, but at the time, the We Need Diverse Books movement was picking up and I thought maybe…
It was as an adult and educator that I picked up Karuna Riazi’s The Gauntlet. Although it was a middle grade novel, I felt a dam burst in me and teared up on the bus to a field trip I was chaperoning for. If it could have such an impact on me as an adult, I just know that this sort of representation is so deeply meaningful to actual teens and children. I wrote The Love Match for brown girls who thought they weren’t beautiful enough to be at the heart of a love triangle, for brown boys who feared “tall, dark, and handsome” always had to apply to white men, for any reader who has ever felt like they didn’t belong. I hope because of books like mine and all of the authors who came before me, brown teens no longer wish to be anything but exactly what they are, because they’re beautiful and clever and worthy of being protagonists too.
Given the book’s ending, are you planning on making a sequel? Any other projects underway that we should keep a lookout for?
At the moment, there isn’t a sequel planned, but if there was enough interest for one someday, I had a solid idea for it, and my publisher was interested, I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed!
In the meantime, I’m currently working on my next YA romcom and recently got to announce my adult debut, a women’s fiction novel with romantic elements called From Mumbai, with Love, about a young woman who—after her mother’s death—learns the father she never knew about is not only still alive, but has an entire other family halfway around the world who are in the middle of a succession war for one of Asia’s biggest companies.
I think readers who enjoyed the cultural elements, romance, and strong platonic relationships in The Love Match will find that these other books are their cup of tea as well, even if they’re a little different!
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Thank you Priyanka for answering my questions and writing The Love Match! I admired the characters and their dynamics along with the comedic relief. I’m definitely adding From Mumbai, with Love on my Goodreads. As always, thanks to Alex Kelleher from Simon & Schuster for sending me a finalized copy of the book and giving me the chance to interview Priyanka about her debut.
If you enjoyed reading about The Love Match and are interested in more about Priyanka, follow her on Twitter and Instagram and be sure to add her adult novel on Goodreads!