Prachi Gupta with her debut memoir, *They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us*.
Photo courtesy of Prachi Gupta

True community, to me, is a group of people who support one another, each other’s growth and living as one’s authentic self. It’s rare and difficult to find, especially in New York City, which rides on individuality, consumerism, and career advancement. Yet, it can be found in little pockets: a book club, an art collective, a climbing gym,…a running club.

Prachi Gupta found this type of community within PPTC. Prachi is a lifelong runner which is how most club members first knew her. However, Prachi is also an award winning writer and covered politics for nearly 10 years. She covered the 2016 election for Cosmopolitan.com and later covered politics for Jezebel. Prachi identifies interviewing Ivanka Trump and being insulted on Fox Business News by Donald Trump for being a “non-intelligent reporter” as one of the highlights of her career.

Prachi’s latest work has been her memoir, “They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us,” which dives into the pressures of living as an Indian American in white America under the model minority myth and how its impact can lead to fissures in the foundation of a family. Named one of the most anticipated books of the summer by New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, the book received a starred review by Publisher’s Weekly, and has been lauded as “a marvel” by Scott Stossel, the national editor of The Atlantic. The book is out on Tuesday, August 22nd and is currently available for preorder (if you are thinking of buying a copy, preorder! It’s super important for new authors).

In July, I had the honor of reading Prachi’s book. I finished it in four days. I was struck by how she empathetically conveyed her story and infused it with hope despite its weighty topics of racism, sexism, and mental illness. Prachi was kind enough to meet with me to discuss it over lunch. We met at IX, a Guatemalan restaurant in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. In between bites, Prachi answered my questions, reflecting on her childhood and her journey to the now. Along the way, she recounts how running played a part and joining PPTC helped her writing process, but that she had never expected to find community within it.

Rachael (she/her): First, thank you for meeting up with me and talking about this. I just wanted to start off by telling you what an honor it has been to read your book. You wrote a heart wrenching story about family and the pressures of growing up in white America as an Indian American in a beautiful and thought -provoking way. They Called Us Exceptional and Other Lies That Raised Us is filled with hope, love, and care despite and because of the heavy topics it covers. Thank you for writing your story and sharing it with us all. It’s one that needs to be heard and it carries such important messages.

R: I know you have an elevator speech for your book, do you mind sharing that?

Prachi (she/her): The memoir is a deeply personal story with a very strong political message: In America we’re raised to idolize the American Dream, which is this idea that if you work hard and keep your head down, you can become successful, and being successful will make you happy. My parents are immigrants, and immigrants are really pressured to buy into that dream. They’re also often the face of this dream, and used to propel this dream forward. I wanted to show how the pressure of that dream and the uncritical adoption of it can destroy a family. It can wreck our relationships and sense of self.

There’s a price that we pay to buy into this dream, and a part of ourselves that we give up, when we value external markers of success and prioritize that above all else. I think American society really pressures us to do that. My book is about those hidden costs and the psychic and social effects of those costs. My hope is that by having an honest conversation about some of these pressures, we can confront some of the things that are really stigmatized in our society, like mental illness, things that we internalize as failures, and we can begin to talk about trauma in a more compassionate way that enables us to deal with it.

The cover of “They Called us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us” by Prachi Gupta.
Cover: Crown Publishing
Artwork: Arsh Raziuddin

R: What led you to write “They Called Us Exceptional”?

P: In 2017, my brother died. We had been estranged for two years at the time of his death. As I attempted to understand how he died and the decisions that he made that led to his death, I began to investigate his death and who he was. That investigation resulted in an essay called “Stories About My Brother” which ran on Jezebel, where I was a senior reporter. I was very nervous about publishing that essay because I’m a feminist and my brother had espoused some men’s rights views. I didn’t know how people would respond to my love for a complicated person that they never met.

I was blown away by the response. It won a Writers Guild Award, which was an incredible honor, but what really floored me was the people who reached out to me. I heard from Asian men who had gone down a similar path and the essay helped them make different choices and seek help. I heard from mothers who said they had no idea what their kids might be going through in terms of their mental health, and they were going to start to talk to them. I heard from sisters who were similarly estranged from their brothers who didn’t know how to bridge that gap. The essay helped them have more compassion for what their brothers might be going through, and try a different approach to talking to them. When I saw that response two things struck me: 1) How common these issues were and 2) How alone people felt in dealing with them. I realized then that I had to tell my full story.

Prachi reporting for Cosmopolitan.
Photo: Cosmopolitan.

R: I remember meeting you when you first joined PPTC in the summer of 2021. You had mentioned that you were starting to write your book then. What inspired you to join PPTC during that time?

P: Well, it was a confluence of things. We were in the midst of the pandemic, but things were looking better and places were starting to finally open up. I am also a lifelong runner but I had stopped for a long time and I missed it. I missed, specifically, the community aspect of it. I was dealing with a really difficult breakup and needed community. Running has always helped me ground myself, it’s been really important for my mental health. I knew that I needed running and community, now more than ever, with writing this book. So, for me joining the club was a way to release some of the anxiety from the book writing process, get my mind off of it, and engage with people. Meeting new people forced me to be in a totally different head space and get out of the one that I was in with my book. It helped turn me outward when the writing process was so inward. Yet, when I joined, I didn’t expect to make so many meaningful friendships and actually find real community with the club.

Prachi racing in her Prospect Park Track Club singlet!
Photo courtesy of Prachi Gupta

R: Has running helped your writing process?

P: Yes. (laughs) I can expand on that if you want.

There were times when I would have sentences come to me while I was running and I would have to stop to record them on my phone or take notes. There’s something meditative about running and even when I’m not writing, the thoughts are still percolating somewhere in my head. This is probably something a lot of people experience, but when I run words just show up and they just come to me in ways that they can’t when I’m sitting at the computer and forcing it. The actual act of running helps me process my thoughts and get a clear head, be embodied, and get back in my body. I feel good when I run and it’s always been a lifeline for me.

R: In your book, you talk about how running helped you love yourself as a teenager, but then your dad forced you to stop running. How did that influence you?

P: I’m American, but as an Indian American or as a person whose parents are of Indian origin, I wasn’t seen as American, I’m still not really seen as American to people. One of the ways we learned to assimilate into American culture was through sports. But I was always pretty horrible at sports that require hand-eye coordination. Therefore, I thought I was unathletic. My inability to play sports sort of confirmed the “model minority” stereotype to myself and others around me—that I was seen as a nerd and couldn’t be anything but that.

It turned out that I had a natural talent for running. When I joined cross country as a freshman, I couldn’t run a mile. I almost threw up after my first 5K, which took me 30 minutes. But a few months later, by the end of the season, I was second on varsity at my school. I had qualified for districts, the race that qualifies for states. My coach told me that if I kept up with training, I’d likely be able to get some sort of scholarship to college for cross country. Running opened up something in me. It was a way for me to learn how to see myself beyond other peoples’ perceptions of me. I got made fun of a lot for how I looked, and running helped me feel less ashamed of my body or my appearance. I couldn’t hate myself so much when running made me feel so powerful and strong.

Unfortunately, my dad didn’t really approve of me running. He forced me to run on the treadmill in the basement instead of outside, which I hated, so I barely ran in the off season. Then he forced me to quit the team after two years. There is not really a culture of running in general for South Asians, and I think as a girl there was that sexism at play—you’re not supposed to do things that are “unladylike”. It’s a very old school idea of what it is to be a woman or a girl, and I don’t think he liked the way running was making me more confident or outspoken.

Prachi racing for Pitt during college.
Photo courtesy of Prachi Gupta.

After he forced me to quit, I had a lot of rage. I felt very angry and very demoralized about not being allowed to run. My dad was pretty hard on me, and I used running to punish myself. When I was 18, I ran on the treadmill to the point of getting multiple hairline stress fractures, because I thought I should have been stronger or tougher. Later in college, I decided to try out for Pitt’s cross country team. I met with the coach and he told me basically, if I could keep up with the training, I had a spot. So six years after my dad forced me to quit running, I trained for a summer, and then I made the team. Pitt’s a D1 school. I struggled a lot with injuries and was very hard on myself, so my relationship with running was a bit toxic. In PPTC, I’ve been re-wiring that relationship, which is part of why I haven’t been running many races. I want to find and keep the joy in running, first and foremost.

R: Throughout your book, you address your mom. It provides the reader with an intimate lens of a daughter’s love for her mother. What inspired you to write your memoir as a letter to her?

P: After my brother died, I really wanted to connect with my mom. I didn’t want something to happen to one of us without me having the chance to show her who I really am and explain to her why I’m not the daughter my parents expected me to be, and why that doesn’t say anything about how much I love them. My brother’s death really made me think about my mortality and their mortality. I didn’t know how to say it, so I knew I had to write it.

The other reason for me to address it to her, was I didn’t want to translate my experiences. I grew up triangulating my own identity based on how other people expected me to be. I didn’t want to write a memoir in which I did that, so I start with the assertion that my experiences, my world, was normal. Because to me that’s what was normal, and I wanted to bring the reader into my world in an intimate way. To me, the most authentic way to do that was to have all my explanations be in service to my mom, so I’m not translating for white readership or catering to certain assumptions. All of my translations and explanations of identity are in service to this person that I love.

R: Aside from your mom, is there anyone else that you had in mind when you wrote your book? In other words, is there anyone specific or any group of people, specifically that you’d like to read your book?

P: There are so many communities that I hope will read it, but I think specifically I was thinking about children of immigrants and Asian Americans. Asian Americans, that’s a huge, huge group of people. It’s not a monolith. There’s 20 million Asian Americans in this country from 24 different countries of origin and each generationally different, but we’re very often lumped together into this “Model Minority” stereotype, which is this perception that we are all good at science and math, we are high-achieving, have no problems, and have stable tight-knit families.

Prachi teaching Michelle Obama how to do a boomerang. While working for Cosmopolitan, Prachi covered the 2016 election and interviewed Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Ivanka Trump among others.
Photo courtesy of Prachi Gupta

That stereotype had a really significant impact on how I saw myself. As an Indian American girl growing up in the 90s, there wasn’t a lot of awareness and conversation or representation in the media, so I felt like an outsider in my own country. These stereotypes were the only stories that I knew and I identified with them and understood them as my own identity. It was very limiting and flattening. There’s something really confusing and it generates shame to see oneself that way. I think there’s a lot more awareness now about how damaging the model minority stereotype is in terms of pitting communities of color against each other, but I don’t think there’s a lot of awareness about how damaging the stereotype is to our mental health and what it does to families. I wanted to use my story as a very personal argument as to why we need to abandon this myth and how this myth is used to perpetuate the myth that the American Dream is accessible to everybody.

R: You and your family deal with a lot of mental illness due to various circumstances including the pressure of fulfilling the model minority myth. Do you have any tips for others who may experience mental illness due to these types of pressures?

P: I’ll answer this question very generally. Therapy is a very personal choice and these journeys are different for all of us. For a very long time, mental health institutions in this country have not acknowledged or understood the complexities or the specific issues and challenges that Asian Americans face. They haven’t acknowledged the realities of Black Americans either. People of color in general haven’t been acknowledged.

I saw a few therapists before I started seeing my current therapist, who I’ve been seeing for 6-7 years. Therapy wasn’t helpful for me at all until I found somebody who really understood the issues that I dealt with. Our identities are very similar, she’s an Indian American woman who identifies as a feminist and Buddhist. Having someone to talk to who I didn’t have to justify or explain the racism or sexism or cultural confusion that I dealt with made a really big difference. I was able to develop deep trust and faith in therapy and in the process with her. I credit the work that we did and continue to do together for my ability to write the book with the perspectives that I did.

R: Readers witness you grow throughout your story- obviously through childhood but then as an adult too. Part of that growth was a major career change. What spurred you to follow your dreams?

P: I had a really successful job, I was engaged to a good guy who was a doctor. My life was on a very particular path. I had always been told that if I had these things, I would be happy. Yet, at the moment that I had all the things that were supposed to make me happy, it seemed like my family life was falling apart, I was miserable at work, and I was unsatisfied in my relationship. I didn’t know why. I thought maybe there was something very, very wrong with me, because of the contrast between how I was feeling and what I was achieving. I couldn’t square the dissonance; this was supposed to be what created happiness, and I was absolutely miserable.

I didn’t like who I was becoming. I was depressed and I knew the depression was going to get worse. I knew one thing that made me really happy, creating art—specifically writing and painting. I didn’t know if I could actually make a living doing those things. I didn’t know what role they’d play in my life moving forward, but I knew that those things gave me peace and I needed to find out if I could do that for my job. I was trying to do things the way that I was supposed to, the way I was taught, and I was miserable. So, it was that. I couldn’t live this way anymore and I knew I needed a change.

R: Towards the end of your book, you discuss feeling disconnected from your Indian culture and unsure of your identity. Where do you find yourself in regards to your culture and identity now?

P: I think that growing up in a diasporic context where there’s a dominant culture, by which I’m referring to white American culture, is it eclipses our other identities. I think a lot of immigrant communities struggle to assert or define what their own cultural identity is. There can be this tendency to create a static identity because it’s in opposition with the dominant identity. Culture by definition changes and evolves. However, often in diasporic communities it’s very hard to change things or let them evolve because there’s constant tension with trying to hold onto your roots or push back against stereotypes that are created by the dominant culture. It’s very hard to focus on what you actually want the culture to be, and it puts you on the defensive about your own cultural identity.

For a long time, I was in that space and I thought there was only one way I could be Indian. Now I reject that idea and I’m a lot more comfortable with my identity. I love my identity and I love my culture, but I realize there’s so much I don’t know and I’m still learning so much. I also don’t think there’s anything incompatible with me having the beliefs that I have and being Indian. There’s not one right way to be.

R: What overall would you like people to get out of your book?

P: I believe that each of us has the power to change culture. Culture seems like this immovable force, and I think right now we’re in a political moment where things can feel bleak and hopeless. I really do believe that each of us has the power to make a lot more change than we realize we can. It happens in small decisions, such as deciding to hold someone we love accountable. In our relationships, we can create a lot of positive change and that has ripple effects. In the book, I tie in a lot of research, reporting, and history. I wanted to show how systemic forces shape our identities and vice versa to help people begin to untangle the systemic from the individual, to empower them to make change.

R: Is there anything else you’d like people to know?

P: The club is an incredible and safe space for me and I want to keep it that way. It sounds ridiculous to say, because I wrote a book about my life and you can find out so much about me in this book, but I am a fairly private person and I don’t love to talk about myself. I certainly never planned to write about myself. As a reporter, I like reporting—not talking about myself. One thing I really love about the club is we all get to know each other as people—not defined by our jobs or what we do.

Interviewee: Prachi Gupta (she/her)
Introduction and interview questions: Rachael DePalma (she/her)

PPTC is a diverse and supportive team. We want to celebrate the diversity of our club and membership. We welcome and encourage everyone to share their stories with us.

Member Spotlight: Prachi Gupta