The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #78: Nina Sharma
"Strangely, even though I write nonfiction, I have to think of myself as a character to get out of my own way and basically tell on myself."
Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.
Here’s the 78th installment, featuring , author of The Way You Make Me Feel: Love in Black and Brown. -Sari Botton
NINA SHARMA’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, Electric Literature, and The Washington Post among other publications. She received her MFA in writing from Columbia University’s School of the Arts and has been awarded residencies from Vermont Studio Center and St. Nell’s Humor Writing Residency. Nina is formerly the Programs Director at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and with Quincy Scott Jones she co-created Blackshop, a column that thinks about allyship between BIPOC people, featured on Anomaly. A two-time Asian Women Giving Circle grantee for her workshop, “No Name Mind: Stories of Mental Health from Asian America,” she currently teaches at Barnard College and Columbia University. Nina is a proud co-founder of Not Your Biwi Improv. Her debut memoir-in-essays is THE WAY YOU MAKE ME FEEL: LOVE IN BLACK AND BROWN (Penguin Press 2024).
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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?
I’m 44. I took my first writing class at 24/25, but was writing/writing-curious long before then.
What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?
The Way You Make Me Feel: Love in Black and Brown, May 2024
What number book is this for you?
First!
How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?
Memoir-in-essays. I published many of the essays as individual pieces before I conceived of them coming together as a book. I sold on proposal, knowing that I had a body of work on Afro-Asian love and allyship springing from stories of me and my husband, Quincy, and beyond. I still saw it as an essay collection though. But over the course of working on the book, I really invested in these characters. Strangely, even though I write nonfiction, I have to think of myself as a character to get out of my own way and basically tell on myself. Outside of writing, I do a bit of improv comedy. And I heard an improviser call this the “protection of a a character.”
In the case of this book, I gave Q and me the pseudonyms of “Harry” and “Sally”—an homage to When Harry Met Sally. One thing I wanted to do with this book, it being a love story, was to challenge the racist constraints of the American rom-com, where characters of colors are like quirky prop figures, if there at all. What does a love story look like when BIPOC people take the lead? In my experience of writing this book, it means conversations about anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and mental health emerge in the meet-cute and continue to flourish thereafter. In my chapter “Jersey Jahru,” I talk about Mira Nair’s trailblazing Afro-South Asian love story Mississippi Masala saying, “It’s a rom com for us, by us, for those of us who can’t turn away…” I wanted to write in that tradition.
As soon as I began to see this book as a continuous love story that at the same time challenged the constraints of the love stories I had seen and felt excluded from growing up, something clicked. That’s when it became memoir-in-essays to me.
One thing I wanted to do with this book, it being a love story, was to challenge the racist constraints of the American rom-com, where characters of colors are like quirky prop figures, if there at all. What does a love story look like when BIPOC people take the lead? In my experience of writing this book, it means conversations about anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and mental health emerge in the meet-cute and continue to flourish thereafter.
What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?
A hilarious and moving memoir in essays about love and allyship, told through one Asian and Black interracial relationship.
What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?
I think I said this to someone recently—I really just became a writer on a dare, daring myself at every step. I dare you to take a writing class (at 24/25), I dare you to go to an open mic, I dare you to share aloud. Each time I was like, okay, I did this, what’s next?
I always loved reading and writing but I never thought I could do it professionally. I come from a family mostly in the sciences and it felt like that’s where I was supposed to go.
After college, I got involved with The Asian American Writers’ Workshop, first as a volunteer and then they couldn’t get rid of me. Eventually I became the Program Director there. Just hearing other Asian American writers share their stories was utterly transformative. I felt so seen and I even felt like I began to recall parts of my experience that I might have blocked out. It was then that I began to cross a certain threshold and really name that I wanted to do this. The Asian American Writers’ Workshop weaves through the book, it is a profound part of my journey. Special shout out to those staff lunches where, alongside critical conversations, we took l time out to analyze early text messages from Quincy.
I began to write the book, though, when I left the city in 2010. I think I had a lush literary life in NYC but when I moved, I saw how distracting it was. With more time on my hands, I simply wrote more. I applied to MFAs with that body of work. I knew by that point I wanted to write about African-American and Asian-American history. I already knew the essay was my non-fiction drug of choice and I wanted to learn more.
I left Columbia feeling pretty confident about my skills as an essayist but less so about how I could pull all that I had written into a unified project. It wasn’t my priority there. A few more years of writing and editing and writing more. Then I secured an agent, which wasn’t the end of this process but partnering with someone as I did this work. All that, from beginning to write, to selling this book on proposal in 2020 = 10 years.
What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?
I think the hardest part of writing this book was taking essays I had written separately, without a sense of continuous storyline, and figuring out how they honestly and enduringly fit together.
I kept something Elissa Wasshuta said in mind about challenging expectations for narrative structure when writing My Body is a Book of Rules, “I wanted to make a lumpy, misshapen book. Like a very old comforter with batting bulging in the corners.” I had gotten so many rejections from agents that essentially were like, “I don’t see it coming together.” But Wasshuta made me think twice about taking that note as pure gospel.
Before the book was The Way You Make Me Feel, it had another title and story arc and it just felt contrived. When it finally came together it felt a bit like oh duh, that’s exactly right, that’s what I have always been writing toward.
And when I think of debuting on the whole, I think of when I asked a writer coming out with her second book how it’s going and she said “it doesn’t feel as existential as the last.” I think that’s it. There are so many different aspects to that existential feeling—lots of “pinch me” life moments and also fear and doubt.
This is not to mention I also felt much anger and sadness on tour. The day before my launch, I was helping a student who was part of the Columbia University Gaza Solidarity Encampment and whose graduation was rescinded. The Way You Make Me Feel is about allyship and solidarity, and as Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people continued to unfold through book tour, I couldn’t imagine not speaking up. Sometimes I felt not alone in this work, and sometimes I walked into rooms that felt choked by a silence over the genocide.
How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?
Early in grad school, I was handing in essays in which everything was just a little too perfect. It did not make for a great workshop. I wasn’t doing this on purpose but then a teacher said to me, “Well my marriage is not like this…” I thought he was implying that his marriage is messier than what I wrote. But I thought My marriage is messy too, and how come that’s not clear on the page? Marriage is full of complexities. I was surprised my work hadn’t captured that. So I tried again. I put in more arguments, I put in when I was being an asshole (see also “Joke Limit”). I poured in all of us, warts and all. I noticed people resonated with the stories more as I did. And it just made writing more fun.
Working on this book, I didn’t share my work with my family. I asked my parents a few questions but I did not give the manuscript to anyone besides my husband. I wanted to write into my parents’ anti-Blackness but not in an all or nothing way. I wanted to share my mother doting on Quincy with food one moment and nagging him to cut his dreads the next. I wanted the world of this book to sit in that difficult contradiction. And I think I worried if I showed the book to my family and they were mad, I might start to soften that. I feel lucky that they are very supportive so far. But I am open for conversation even if they are not. I think that should always be the case as a CNF writer.
That said, I think I might show them the book next time if only because I created a bit of distance between myself and my family when I wrote. I lost time with them. I think now if their opinions ever do block me, so what? I’ll get through it.
I began to write the book when I left the city in 2010. I think I had a lush literary life in NYC but when I moved, I saw how distracting it was. With more time on my hands, I simply wrote more. I applied to MFAs with that body of work. I knew by that point I wanted to write about African-American and Asian-American history. I already knew the essay was my non-fiction drug of choice and I wanted to learn more.
Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)
I remember reaching for Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son when I was writing a scene that felt particularly tough to crack. I ran to the bookshelf and opened the titular essay to the scene where he goes into the Jim Crow diner and throws the water glass. He uses light imagery, the “brown out” for instance, to really root us in all the intensities of this moment. Put us entirely in its atmosphere. I do not remember what scene I used it for. It’s killing me. But I truly remember running to the bookshelf and feeling like ah, I got it now.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?
Keep going. It’s a two way street. Not being chosen by an agent or editor isn’t an indication of your worth. It’s just that you haven’t found the right fit.
Be in community. Find people you would trade work with.
Read alongside your project. Books that fall on a spectrum with either your theme or your style of writing. That helped me more than I realized it would. I wish I did it even more.
What do you love about writing?
Melissa Febos once said, “The story you told yourself to get through it may not be the story you need to tell on the page.”—I love getting to that other story.
What frustrates you about writing?
Shitty first drafts and slightly-less-shitty 300th drafts.
What about writing surprises you?
When something great slips out unbeknownst to yourself. I once was in a class with Amy Hempel where she said, “We write in spite of ourselves.”
Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine or writing at specific times?
I wish I had more of this. I think I write more in the morning than evening. But my best practice is not making it very precious. I write at all odd times. I wrote part of my chapter “Not Dead” at a day job. I remember a co-worker coming over and asking me what I was working on. I said an essay about The Walking Dead. And he said loved the show but then he said something super racist in the guise of camaraderie. I was like welp, that’s going in the essay. So I guess in some way my process is just staying open, you never know when or where it’s going to happen.
I asked my parents a few questions but I did not give the manuscript to anyone besides my husband. I wanted to write into my parents’ anti-Blackness but not in an all or nothing way. I wanted to share my mother doting on Quincy with food one moment and nagging him to cut his dreads the next. I wanted the world of this book to sit in that difficult contradiction. And I think I worried if I showed the book to my family and they were mad, I might start to soften that. I feel lucky that they are very supportive so far. But I am open for conversation even if they are not.
Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities do you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?
I think performing, improv mostly, is part of my writing life now in a way that feeds my writing life. I think it helps me stay in my body. I also do a lot of storytelling and a lot of first drafts come out there.
What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?
A book that among other things grows out of the comedic storytelling I do, and pulls deeper at the mental health thread in The Way You Make Me Feel.