Prachi Gupta: On the Myth of the Model Minority, Creating Meaning from Tragedy in Art, and Her Debut Memoir ‘They Called Us Exceptional’
Prachi Gupta’s debut, They Called Us Exceptional, (Crown, 2023), is a multi-generational memoir that grapples with the impacts of the model minority myth on immigrant families, mental health, and Asian American belonging. Gupta casts a compassionate light on each member of her story, with an honest, vulnerable, sometimes painful retelling of her upbringing and its lasting effects on her and her brother’s lives. I was elated to sit down and talk with Prachi. We discussed the current political climate, her relationship to love and selfishness, the courage behind her writing process, and the parts of her family she chooses to carry with her.
MC: There are many times that I write something true and honest, but only under the conditions that I never show it to anyone. Your story delves into yours and your family’s mental health challenges, as well as the effects of racism, immigration, and the model minority myth. How did you find the strength and courage to write, and keep writing, such a vulnerable, honest, and revealing story about your family?
PG: I was terrified. There's so many times where I almost pulled the plug. There are a couple of things that forced me to keep going.
If my brother hadn't died, I would never have written this book. I have so much rage over how he died, and why, what led him down that path. I felt a sense of urgency, because I could see that what happened to him was happening to so many boys and men and brothers and fathers across this country, especially in our communities, and I felt like I had to say something, I had to use what happened to him. I think if I hadn't done that, I don't think I would have been able to heal at all. I needed to create meaning, to turn this horrible tragedy into something manageable.
I also felt really angry that there's so many people who thought his death was from left field. There was a path. This wasn’t a freak accident. He made decisions that took him there, and I think not analyzing that was sort of an insult to him. It was also a lost lesson. It felt really important to me for this story to be a part of this legacy, to be used as a way to help other people.
Every time I had these fears come up, I was confronted by this greater purpose. And there were people along the way who gave me a lot of courage. My grandfather, my dad's dad, supported me. He sat down for a bunch of interviews. He's very honest. He understood the implications. I want people to read this, and I think it will help change things. I got a lot of courage from my aunt and uncle, who were in the book.
At the end of the day, I'm at peace with the idea that this was my story, and I did the best I could to tell it. My intention was to use it to help other people, and I always held on to that.
MC: Knowing what you know now, what is one piece of advice you would have given the version of you who had just started this book?
PG: I don't think that I would have been able to listen to my advice. I just had to go through the mess and
get the experiences and lessons that I have now. Maybe I wanted to document the process more because now it feels blurred. And then to maybe have confidence in myself because I was working in a vacuum
for a lot of it.
MC: How did you find an agent and editor who you could trust your story with? Especially in an industry where there is very minimal South Asian-American representation.
PG: When I left Jezebel, I published this essay, “Stories About My Brother,” and then that won a couple of honors. It really sparked a conversation that made me realize that I have to tell my whole story. I was freelancing, and I decided I needed to write a book. So I started looking for an agent, found one through my journalism community, and told her about my book idea. I didn't really know how it was going to come together, and it was very abstract. But we clicked, and she liked the idea. She signed me, and then I began working on the book proposal with her for a year. That was during the pandemic, and it was a terrible time to become a freelancer. But it was during that time that I met my editor who was a journalist. When she made the switch to publishing, she reached out saying that she was a huge fan of my work and wanted to read the book. And I trusted her because she knows my writing, she is South Asian, and I need that deep level of trust to write the thing that I'm going to write. So a year later, I sent her the proposal, her team loved it, and it was basically a dream. It all really came together.
MC: They Called Us Exceptional speaks about the model minority myth. It’s clear how that myth permeates Asian American identities involving academics, career, accomplishments. Your family’s story also shows how it permeates gendered expectations, sexuality, within the family. Can you speak more about that intersection?
PG: The myth shows up kind of everywhere. This concept has been around since the 1960s and Indian American exceptionalism was an offshoot of the model minority myth. In the past decade, there's been awareness of how this myth is damaging at a societal level by pitting communities of color against each other. But one of the things I wanted to show in the book was how the myth affects our mental health, our relationships, our sense of self. As a reporter covering politics, I noticed that people don't respond to facts and data. They respond to emotions, and stories. Even though people are aware of the harms of the model minority myth, if you're a person of color, a child of immigrants, and this is how you've been raised, and it's a survival strategy that's been passed down from your parents who had to assimilate into a new country, and if it helped you get ahead, then you are not really going to abandon the story. The rational argument that it's better for society might not reach you. So I wanted to use my personal story as a way to show people the emotional argument: There is a deep personal cost you are paying that you don't realize yet. It is a steep cost that we all pay when we buy into this myth, and we pay for it with our relationships, with our sense of self, with our authenticity. It has major repercussions on our lives, on our bodies, on our happiness.
In the aftermath of writing this book, I'm hearing from people across the country about how they're changing their lives. They're having conversations they never had before. They're making new decisions. They're learning to embrace their authenticity. They needed somebody to tell them that not only is it okay to embrace your authenticity, but that's where your happiness lies. In our Asian American communities, we're told to hide our authenticity in order to be accepted, and it's so deeply ingrained in our homes and our cultures.
MC: You mentioned that stories are the way to connect with audiences and bring about change. What was like the story that awakened you to start changing?
PG: The moment when everything began to change was when I was playing by all the rules. I graduated college, started working in management consulting, and was engaged to a doctor. I was on that fast-track to that very specific upper middle class life that as an Indian American woman I was raised to have.
When I got into that job, I was miserable. I was very unhappy. My mental health was abysmal. I felt spiritually, emotionally, that I was just sort of dying. And then I saw what happened to my brother, my best friend, seeing how the pressure of achievement, the desire to excel in these hyper-competitive environments robbed them of happiness and sanity. It didn't matter to me how successful my brother was, what mattered to me was our relationship. In my family, we couldn't necessarily see that. The year my brother passed made me begin to question my worldview. I thought our success made us immune to struggles, to mental health issues, to hardship. And what I saw was that it just masked our unhappiness. It was a way to escape from the hardship, and it actually made things worse.
MC: Your book speaks to your lived experience but also incorporates a lot of research. What was your intention behind that decision?
PG: Instead of lived experience and research, what reaches people is empathy, and seeing themselves in the experience of somebody else who is maybe at first glance, unlike them. We all know what it feels like to be humiliated or isolated. We all know what it feels like to experience joy and happiness. As a writer, my job is to help tap into those emotions so that my readers can begin to see themselves in what I’m writing. I did that by using both my personal story, and research histories. We live in a very individualistic culture that teaches us we are all on our own, that we created our success and our problems on our own.
I wanted to show people how the individual relates back to the system and vice versa. There's a lot of power in understanding that, because suddenly something that seems like a you problem becomes a collective one. You start thinking: maybe there's a societal issue here that is making me feel this way. And paradoxically, even though that suddenly makes it such a bigger issue, it also empowers you because you can work with other people to help address that and change that issue.
MC: You speak a lot about the word ‘selfish’ in your book, the way it was thrown around in the family, your internalization of it. How has your relationship with that term changed?
PG: It's something that I still struggle with. I was doing things that in our community and my family would have been seen as very selfish. I quit my job and pursued writing. I broke up with
my fiancé at the time. I was putting myself first, and that was selfish. The reason that I was able to do it was because I had tried everything else. I had really tried so hard to fit in the mold and the expectation. And I saw that if I kept going down this path, if I kept breaking myself to be this thing that I'm not, I felt like I was going to die. It felt that urgent to me. It was like an act of desperation that I finally chose myself.
Once I did that, though, the world began to open up. I saw things falling into place. I saw dreams that I've always had coming true. I saw that I was feeling better. I saw so many positive changes that encouraged me to continue going down that path. Deep down, I still felt very selfish, especially because in the spaces that I was in I was one of the only South Asians, and I felt like I'm betraying something culturally. It really was finding my therapist, Reka, who was an Indian American feminist, and having conversations to realize that what I had been called selfishness was self-preservation.
MC: Earlier on in your memoir, you mentioned your definition of love was the ability or the extent to which you could care for a person. Towards the end of the book, you mentioned that your understanding of love was now a non judgemental, genuine curiosity about a person. What is your understanding of love now?
PG: That's the way I still understand love. I will say that there's a distinction between the love you feel for somebody, and cultivating that love. The love that I have for my family is deep and will never go away or change. But there's a difference between the feeling of love and attachment versus the ability to cultivate and care for that kind of love. And in the West, we don't know the distinction between those two things. You can deeply love somebody and your love for them is unconditional, but the ability to maintain and care for and cultivate that love and intimacy is difficult. The simple part is loving my family. The complicated part is all the other things that stand in the way of us having the relationship that we want to have. Cultivating intimacy is different, and it has conditions with pretty much everybody that we meet. Part of loving somebody well, is having boundaries, is knowing where you begin and where they end. That’s what creates this sort of non judgmental space.
MC: Something else that has been true to my experience is that social change comes in concentric circles. If one person has a shift, that can ripple out to their social circle, which can ripple out to each person from there. How do you understand social change?
PG: It's very hard to conceptualize change, but I do believe that one individual's actions have tremendous ripple effects. For example, my therapist chose to become a therapist, right? And if she
hadn't done that, I don't know where I would have been. Her making that choice helped me get here to write my book. Me choosing to write my book has now helped you be here in this conversation, and whatever insights you gain are going to affect decisions that you make going forward. And so already, in one person’s decision to embrace something authentic, there are three ripple changes. I'm not an expert on social movements in this way, but meaningful change happens within yourself. It affects every aspect of your life, and that radiates outward to everyone that you know. My book is a testament.
I have no concept of mass change, but I do have a concept of individual change: the small decisions we make that can add up to huge differences. If I had stayed in consulting, this book wouldn’t have existed.
MC: As someone who has both lived and research experience in the intersection of the model minority myth and American exceptionalism, what are your thoughts on the opposing ideologies that Usha Vance and Kamala Harris present? What has surprised you about this political situation? What was your initial reaction?
PG: It was a mix of intense motions. I've been really critical of the Biden administration, and the way that they've handled the genocide in Palestine, against Palestinians is unconscionable. For a long time, my politics have, I think, become “radical,” but I don't see anything radical about wanting people to not die, wanting equity, wanting livable conditions and wages for all people, considering healthcare a universal and human right. Trump’s election was my wake-up call and the root of my strong desire for change. But it's been hard to balance that desire for liberation that I don't think will come from either political party within America, with the reality, as a person of color, as an Indian American, that this moment is historic. It is a meaningful milestone to have a Black woman, a South Asian woman, running for President. There is a part of me that's really excited. These conflicting feelings are not unique to me. And now, Usha Vance is also involved in this election; it really primes all the stories of Indian American exceptionalism to really take root. When people ask: How can an Indian woman support all this? Well, if you understand the historical context, if you understand the model minority, and when you have done very well in America, and you don’t understand the specific reasons and privileges you have, then it's really easy to dismiss obstacles that exist for other people. It's really easy to see America as a meritocracy, so I don't think it's a huge leap. We shouldn’t be surprised that you can have two women who share the same heritage and represent very different things.
MC: A lot of the book has been about unlearning culture, your parents upbringing, your worldview. What are some values you cherish from your family?
PG: That’s a new question. There was a closeness in my family that I really love and miss. An involvement in each other's lives that was really beautiful. We ate dinner together, and family was more important than anything else. I loved that level of commitment to each other, even if it didn’t manifest in the way I would have wanted. My brother and I shared this entrepreneurial spirit that my dad really instilled in us. He showed us we don’t have to be one thing in the world because he switched careers.
My grandfather took the ultimate risk by leaving India, so my brother and I grew up with a large appetite for risk and betting on ourselves. I’m also really grateful for this ability to think really critically. My dad always questioned authority, and passed on to me and my brother.
We learned how to think for ourselves, and that's also why, ironically, I sort of ended up going so far out of the family system. But that value in and of itself, to think critically for yourself, and to question and be curious is something that I developed at home. From my mom, there was a genuine softness and caring that deeply affected me. This loving, kind and friendly approach towards others that I really admire and that I aspire to be like that I learned from her. The ability to approach the world with a gentle touch, a compassionate gaze, an empathetic intention, that is what I absorbed from her constant and caring presence growing up.
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Prachi Gupta is an award-winning journalist and author whose work focuses on destigmatizing mental healthcare for children of immigrants, breaking down gender roles and stereotypes, and building compassion through storytelling. Her debut memoir, They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us, was named one of the best books of 2023 by Amazon, one of the best memoirs of the year by Audible, nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award, and named a “book of the day” by NPR.
Her reporting on data privacy and discrimination for Marie Claire was included in 2021's Best American Magazine Writing, and as a former senior reporter at Jezebel, she won a 2020 Writers Guild Award for her investigative essay, "Stories About My Brother." The essay was also named one of the best essays of 2019 by Longform and Longreads and a finalist for the South Asian Journalists Association Nonfiction Writing Award. In 2016, Prachi covered the presidential election for Cosmopolitan.com, where she "set the standard" for interviews with Ivanka Trump, per Media Matters; interviewed former First Lady Michelle Obama on her first solo trip to the Middle East; and traveled to Jordan to report on the refugee crisis. She has also written for the Atlantic, the Washington Post Magazine, the Guardian, Salon, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, and elsewhere. Prachi frequently offers commentary on race, gender, mental health, and politics on outlets MSNBC and NPR, and speaks to students, educators, employees, and mental health professionals at colleges, nonprofits, and private companies across the country.
