Humor, Writing, and Catharsis

Payal Mehta’s Romance Revenge Plot is out in just a few short days (Tuesday! September 24!), so I thought I’d share the letter I wrote for the galley. It’s a look at why I wrote the book, and how I think humor can help us work through difficult topics (and the catharsis of laughing at things that hurt us when we don’t have any other weapons at our disposal).

When I was eighteen or nineteen, I had a very similar experience to Payal’s. I was at a party, talking to some boys. I hit it off with someone—or I thought I did; we spent a few hours chatting and laughing and enjoying ourselves. At the end of the night, I waited for him to ask for my number. He didn’t. Instead, he offered up his Indian roommate’s number . . . his Indian roommate, who was not at the party and who he hadn’t mentioned all night. I was thrown. And then I was angry.

As a teen, my understanding of racism was clear. I was a visibly brown kid in high school when September 11 happened. I was terrified of people calling me a terrorist, or making jokes about bombs, or of someone hurting me because of the way I looked. That was a racism I understood how to recognize, and one that I knew how to denounce.

In tandem with all of this, I was extremely happy with my culture, with my personal relationship to religion. My high school, like Payal’s, was very diverse. My friend group was mostly a motley crew of kids of color—Indian, Chinese, Black, Indo-Caribbean, Lebanese—and white kids; we used to joke it was like being in a United Colors of Benetton ad. We had simultaneously joyful and furious relationships with our various races and ethnicities. There was a crassness in how we talked about them, and in how we tried to take ownership of the best and worst things that came as a result of our identities. Try being seventeen and brown and having a fellow student tell you to get the hell out of their car if you don’t tell them where Osama Bin Laden is. But then you turn around and dance to “Pyaar Ke Geet” at the cultural festival and your classmates beg you to teach them how you did your garba steps. It was confusing and frustrating and wonderful and terrifying.

This is the thinking Payal was borne from. Being a first-generation-born American comes with a lot of baggage—and it’s hard to parse through it when you’re young. It’s hard to know how to talk about it. And it’s okay to want to laugh and joke your way through learning to love your identity, through learning what is and isn’t worth your time and effort, if that’s what you need. I wouldn’t have survived without being able to laugh my way through it. And I don’t know if Payal would either.

There’s a long history of using humor* for catharsis and protection, to laugh at the thing hurting you and try to dull its teeth. Laughing at a threat—especially when that threat is absurd—is a great way to signal to others how ridiculous it is, how they shouldn’t buy into it as a conceit at all, and it takes away some of threat’s power. But there’s an understandable anxiety around letting teens on the page have these awkward and uncomfortable interactions with serious topics. Will laughing at it make people outside the community think it’s okay to joke about it in the same way? Will it falsely minimize the harm? I don’t think there are absolute answers to any of these questions, and every situation is unique — but what I do know is that members of a community have a right to use whatever tools they can to cope and survive and inspire others to do the same.

There is no perfect way to handle how we’re impacted by racism — and this is doubly true when you throw that impact in among all these other coming-of-age angsts that exist for young readers. So, using fiction and humor as a way for us as adults to cope is again doubly true for giving it to kids as a tool.

*Of course, humor isn’t the end of the journey. Some of the most difficult moments of writing Payal were when I couldn’t default to a joke, and she had to confront the pain she was in — so all of this talk of humor is with the caveat of understanding that acknowledging the hurt we feel is necessary.

Words, Words, Words

An updated slate of Payal Mehta’s Romance Revenge Plot events for you!

GEORGIA

9/24, 7:30PM EST: Launch! Payal Mehta’s Romance Revenge Plot at Brave + Kind books with Julian Winters

10/5, The Decatur Book Festival, 4:15 PM EST: Panel, Falling in Love is Hard to Do 

NEW YORK

10/9, TIME TBD: In conversation with Zoraida Córdova at WORD Brooklyn, more solid details to come but for now Save the Date!

In addition to the aforementioned Payal, I have a series currently running on the Marvel Unlimited app — House of Harkness. It’s written by me, illustrated by Jodi Nishijima, with colors by Ian Herring, and letters from Ariana Maher. Alanna Smith and Kaitlyn Lindveldt handled editing. We’re four issues deep, and I have to say, it is a good time. Set in an alternate universe, teen Wanda Maximoff is heading to a magical boarding school called the House of Harkness. You can read more about the series here.

Things I’m Into That You Might Be Into

It really is a delightful read — and perfect for fans of Holly Black’s Folk of the Air series, especially if you want to foray out of Young Adult and into the literary sphere. I was particularly taken with the audiobook, narrated by Ell Potter and Michael Dodds. It’s the first in a trilogy, with the third book releasing early next year. Highly recommend!

Cool Things from Cool People

Every month, I’m going to turn a section of this space over to someone else to talk about a project you readers might be interested in. Today, my very good friend and fellow YA author Julian Winters is here to tell you about his latest novel, Prince of the Palisades!

EndorFUNs

Not a ton to say about this other than Bong Joon-ho’s follow up to Parasite looks batshit and amazing—thank you, Robert Pattinson, as ever, for existing—and I cannot wait to see it. If for nothing else than we will surely get another (1) excellent (2) GQ (3) profile of RPattz during the promo tour.

Alright, that’s it for me. See you on the other side of publication my buds!