Dancing as if No One was Watching
Review of the Blackstone Publishing audiobook (August 9, 2022) of the original University of Georgia Press paperback (June 2020)

I missed out on reading This Is One Way to Dance when it was first released in 2020, but the title and the cover image immediately attracted me when I saw the author's tweet about the 2022 release of the audiobook edition. The title alone was able to convey to me the experience of being the child of immigrant parents and finding your way while growing up in a culture not of your own family background. Shah is of Gujarati heritage and her parents immigrated to the USA from India and Uganda. She grew up in upstate New York.

This book is a collection of essays written over 20 years, where several of the earlier ones have also had recent edits made to add perspective. It communicates the joy of learning of your own culture and first seeing it onscreen in a western (as opposed to Bollywood) film by director Mira Nair;

I remember it still as a bodily sensation, the visceral pull toward the screen I felt that day, when watching the film. I can still feel the electric current when I hear the music - effervescent - when I write this. I wanted to fall into that blazing color during the songs. Bright orange and yellow marigolds, red saris, pink turbans, the sky streaked with color, laundry fluttering outside. ... After watching Monsoon Wedding, we wanted to dance - we wanted someplace to unwind and expend the coiled energy built from listening to electronic dance music. But the only place I knew to go dancing on a Tuesday night was a salsa night at a local bar in Northampton. - [describing the experience of first seeing the film Monsoon Wedding (2001)] excerpt from the essay "Matrimonials".

The stories range from childhood joy to those of bullying and racial taunts in school, the latter starkly conveyed in Mike Does Not Live Here, where Shah's mother discovers to her dismay that Sejal's brother Samir has give himself a new name in order to better fit in at school. She only learns this when asked by her son's playmates whether "Mike" can come out to join them and after having given the title answer. There is the inspiration of learning with a charismatic teacher on Shah's studying with poet Agha Shahid Ali. There is the tragedy of the loss of friends and members of the family. There is escape when Shah's own career path is derailed and she escapes to the Burning Man Festival for a woefully unprepared experience.

See photograph at https://longreadsblog.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/one-way-to-dance-book.jpg?w=16...
Photograph of the author at the Burning Man Festival. Image sourced from her essay of the experience "Your Wilderness is Not Permanent", published online at Longreads.

And lastly there is the reconciliation of compromise with the desires of your elders and in-laws in the planning for an elaborate Hindu wedding ceremony where Shah learns that she is not "attending" it but is herself the focus of the event. There is all the humour and the rebellion that goes with that knowledge as well.

Life is not about weddings but about cooking and dishes, laundry and work, writing, parents, teaching, taking out the recycling. I know this now. House hunting, moving, drafting a will, taxes. Making the appointment for snow tires. Determining the compromise temperature, the maximum number of blankets and books the other person can tolerate on the bed. Life is not about colors and themes or even saris. I know this now, but still, weddings astonish me: the threshold, the intention, the cusp; the crucible, the gathering, the hope. - excerpt from the essay "Saris and Sorrows".

Do you have Old sorrows I can use as curtains for a while in my bedroom Or in other places until we get curtains? - [Author's text reproduced as autocorrected from the word "saris" to "sorrows"] excerpt from the essay "Voice Texting with My Mother".

The narration performance by Priya Ayyar in the audiobook was excellent. Ayyar adds some appropriate South Asian accents to the voices of the senior family members.

Trivia and Link
The author's website has a considerable number of links to various online essays (including some included in this collection), interviews, short stories and poems of her writing which you can access here. ( )