A ROOM WITH A POINT OF VIEW
WHEN A ‘PERFECT FAMILY’ BEGINS TO IMPLODE
They Called Us Exceptional – And Other Lies That Raised Us begins on such a happy note, a picture-perfect family sitting down for dinner together. But that’s all it is, a picture, an image that her family would like her to project, and it doesn’t match the reality. Not remotely. Image credit: KEVIN DELVECCHIO on Unsplash.
The immigrant community is coming of age. Quite literally so, going by the books that are being written by second-generation Canadians and Americans.
Because, perhaps like Prachi Gupta, they feel the written word would not ignore them or treat them differently.
The first generation, by all accounts, was one that adopted a “head-down-and-get-ahead” approach. That emphasized the work harder and smarter than everyone else mantra as the only way to succeed. Success, in turn, being the ticket to belonging.
The generation that was born or raised here sees things differently. They succeed, but on their terms. Because they’ve witnessed first-hand the price their families have paid.
They Called Us Exceptional – And Other Lies That Raised Us is a searing, no-holds-barred account of one girl’s life, of a family descending into one crisis after another, of a community that tries so hard to live up to an image, and of the larger societies that encourage this dual life to serve their own purpose.
It begins on such a happy note, a picture-perfect family sitting down for dinner together. But that’s all it is, a picture, an image that her family would like her to project, and it doesn’t match the reality. Not remotely.
In the book that is composed as a letter to her mother, Gupta writes, “That was the story about our family that you and Papa likely would have wanted me to tell. I want you to know: I wanted to tell that story too. I wish that I could have. But that is not where our story ends. That is where our story begins. In order to tell that story, I have to tell this one, too.”
She sees memories “as haphazard blots of ink in a Rorschach test that we assemble along the lines of a story we are told about who we are”.
Her real story, however, is one of an overachieving father who expected perfect scores from his children and berated his wife for the smallest perceived misdemeanour while their children cowered in fear.
“Stupid, uneducated, worthless, good-for-nothing, you can’t even read a simple map? Read it again! Why are you so stupid?”
Moving between Toronto where her grandparents lived, Winnipeg where her father’s sister lives, and different cities in the US where her parents made their homes in, Gupta traces the unravelling of her family. Seeking answers to questions she never thought to ask, because she, too, at one point, bought into the narrative, believed this is how immigrant families were. This is how a father showed his love.
Sometimes real lives parallel lives of fictitious characters, like that of Ashima in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, with her dadiji substituting Granny Smith apples for green mangoes in the chutney she devised for the crumbled corn flakes and spiced fried lentils “dal moth” snack.
There are light moments – like Gupta’s crush on Hrithik Roshan in the film Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai – until her father shames her for acting like an airhead.
Prachi Gupta. Image credit: RUBEN CHAMORRO.
Her brilliant brother Yush buys a shot for Elon Musk and toasts Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story. “To Infinity and beyond!”
No one, not his family nor his therapist, picks up on how close he was to a psychotic break.
“That is how good Yush was at meeting the expectations of others.”
You become aware that everything is building relentlessly to the trainwreck of a family that they are becoming as relationships splinter and then break beyond repair.
And yet, the image that is projected is so good that everyone is taken in. Her friends – South Asian and non-South Asian – and family members all tell her that what she calls mistreatment is a misinterpretation of the lengths to which her father had gone to ensure her success. When she refuses to accept that explanation, they pull away, labelling her ungrateful.
It’s only when Gupta begins working in progressive media, when she reads feminist literature that she understands the dynamics of her home were not based on love and duty. “Harsh, unforgiving words” like domestic violence, emotional abuse and gaslighting described the situation better.
Could she have fictionalized the account, saved her parents from this public shame? Of course. And Gupta did consider it. But then she would again have been playing to expectations.
“Every time I performed normalcy and denied my reality, I fractured myself; every time I spoke my truth to people who denied it, I fractured myself. Eventually, I had to distance myself to preserve myself.”
To such an extent that she relies on detailed notes in the journals she kept over the years as she revisits memories.
There’s also the fact that the truth was so unbelievable that every time she did try to write about her father in a work of fiction, she was told he came across as a caricature, as the sexist, strict, controlling father people were tired of seeing.
It’s hard to imagine the courage it must have taken to write this book. But then Prachi Gupta is the same journalist who took on Ivanka Trump in an interview. Whom Donald Trump described as “very rude” on Fox News.
The Trumps accused her of lying. In They Called Us Exceptional, Gupta presents her truth, unvarnished, brutal.
They Called Us Exceptional by Prachi Gupta is published by Crown, $37.99.
The debut memoir is a probing, heartfelt exploration of the psychological harm caused by the model minority myth and the price one must pay to break free.
It is a call to re-evaluate deeply entrenched cultural beliefs about success in our immigrant communities.
Prachi Gupta articulates the dissonance, shame and isolation of being upheld as a success story while privately navigating trauma that remains invisible to the world.
Read, and take heed.