{"id":368281,"date":"2025-08-23T22:31:18","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T22:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/368281\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T22:31:18","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T22:31:18","slug":"ruminations-between-the-co-founders-of-brown-girl-bookshelf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/368281\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruminations between the co-founders of Brown Girl Bookshelf"},"content":{"rendered":"

In August 2020, friends Mishika Narula and Srisruthi Ramesh created Brown Girl Bookshelf (BGB)<\/a>, a platform and growing community dedicated to celebrating South Asian literature. What began as a shared love of recommending books to one another has since evolved into a dynamic space that spotlights the richness and complexity of South Asian narratives, both within the subcontinent and across the diaspora.<\/p>\n

With curated book lists, original reviews, and thoughtful commentary, BGB has become a trusted source for readers seeking stories that reflect the nuances of South Asian identity. As the platform marks its five-year anniversary, Narula and Ramesh reflect on the books that shaped them, the storytelling that continues to draw them in, and the moment they realised they were building something bigger than just a bookshelf.<\/p>\n

Mishika Narula (MN): Let\u2019s start where we always do \u2013 with a book. Do you remember the first book I recommended to you? Do you remember how you felt about it?<\/p>\n

Srisruthi Ramesh (SR): Yes, A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza. I remember going into it with really high expectations, since we usually align on book taste, and honestly, I was a little nervous it wouldn\u2019t live up to the hype. But it absolutely did. It was such a gorgeously written, wrenching book. The characters emerge slowly as though the readers are building a slow friendship with each.<\/p>\n

MN: Do you remember the moment we realised we were doing more than just recommending books?<\/p>\n

SR: It\u2019s funny, because I think that realisation came earlier than we were ready for. In the beginning, we didn\u2019t expect BGB to be anything beyond sharing South Asian authored work with our friends and family and maybe a handful other people. But in that first year, thousands of strangers followed us. I remember having a conversation at that time about what we wanted this to be. And we actually said we wanted it to be strictly a platform, not a community. At the time, \u201cplatform\u201d felt more manageable, something we could scale or sustain more easily. \u201cCommunity\u201d felt like something that was harder to build through a screen.<\/p>\n

But, in five years, it happened anyway. We kept getting messages from South Asian readers and writers who said BGB made them feel seen or encouraged them to put their work out there more given the audience eager to receive it. That audience formed itself before we even claimed it. And over time, we realised that was the real gap we were filling. People weren\u2019t just looking for book recommendations. They were looking for somewhere their story belonged.<\/p>\n

SR: We\u2019ve always said we\u2019re drawn to a certain kind of storytelling. But what is that kind of story?<\/p>\n

MN: We both read pretty widely, but one through-line has always been memoirs. We\u2019re drawn to stories where someone is telling the truth about their life, even if it\u2019s quiet or messy. That instinct has shaped BGB from the start. We\u2019ve always wanted to celebrate the range of South Asian identities, not just across cultures or countries, but across moods, genres, and lived experiences. That, in itself, is a kind of truth-telling. So much of what gets marketed in our stories leans into trauma or tropes. But where\u2019s the joy? Where\u2019s the softness? We want that full spectrum. Joyous stories, complicated ones, and everything in between.<\/p>\n

SR: Which titles are you\u2019re excited to read in the second half of the year?<\/p>\n

MN: Speaking for both of us, I think we\u2019re especially curious about Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy. She doesn\u2019t publish often, and when she does, it feels like a literary event. We\u2019ve read her essays, her fiction, her speeches, but a memoir feels like something else entirely. I am interested in that space between the public voice we know well and the private one we rarely get to hear from.<\/p>\n

Separately, I am overdue to read Saraswati<\/a> by Gurnaik Johal. I was on a panel with him earlier this year, and there\u2019s a calm intensity to the way he thinks and communicates that really stayed with me. From what I\u2019ve read about it thus far, the novel sounds expansive. Part family saga, part reflection on Hindu nationalism, threaded through with concern for the earth, its destruction and preservation, it sounds ambitious, asking big questions without shouting.<\/p>\n

\"\"Srisruthi Ramesh and her stack of books.<\/p>\n

MN: Let\u2019s gush. Which books have truly stayed with you this year?<\/p>\n

SR: I am lucky that many books this year have been those ordinary, quiet stories that weave together longing, self-discovery, and the human condition. Most of them have been memoirs, in some capacity.<\/p>\n

The True Happiness Company by Veena Dinavahi was resonant, which is surprising, because it\u2019s a cult memoir. In sharing her shocking story of joining and then escaping a self-help cult, Dinavahi completely reframed how I thought about the power of manipulation and the radical act of reclaiming your voice on the other side of it.<\/p>\n

Another memoir, in a sense, was Searches<\/a> by Vauhini Vara. It\u2019s also business and technology nonfiction, which somehow, Vara makes feel intimate. In an unexpected combination, she treats conversations about grief and the societal impacts of technology, capitalism, and AI with clarity and care.<\/p>\n

In They Called Us Exceptional<\/a>, I found language for something I hadn\u2019t seen written about with such precision: the loneliness of estrangement in South Asian culture. Prachi Gupta shares an incredibly vulnerable story to expose how model minority pressures and masculinity can unravel trust and safety in a home.<\/p>\n

I read Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar this year, a 2020 novel I only just caught on to. I was floored by the way it held contradiction: the desire to belong to America and the impossibility of it, especially for Muslim immigrants. The narrator\u2019s voice takes you through dream sequences, identity crisis, financial collapse, and post-9\/11 racism, and still somehow feels completely coherent.<\/p>\n

SR: Social media has definitely changed how we discover books, but do you think it\u2019s also shaping how we read, and what kinds of reading get valued?<\/p>\n

MN: There\u2019s a lot of energy online around fast reads and big numbers, especially around moments like mid-year check-ins or end-of-year wrap-ups. And I get it. There\u2019s something satisfying about setting a goal and hitting it, and it can be motivating and joyful to make reading a habit in that way.<\/p>\n

But sometimes the pressure to read a certain number of books, or to always have something new to post, makes it harder to sit with the slower, more demanding reads. Some of the books that we\u2019ve loved this year, like Searches by Vauhini Vara or The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai, ask for your full attention. Searches might initially seem like niche, dense non-fiction for the tech industry until you get deeper into it. Desai\u2019s novel is nearly 700 pages and opens with a family tree, which is an early sign of the scope and complexity to follow.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think there\u2019s one right way to read. But I do think we need to talk more about the kinds of books that take time, even the ones that ask for a reread.<\/p>\n

MN: We\u2019ve had DMs from readers in Sri Lanka, India, Canada, etc. What\u2019s the most unexpected joy of building this international community?<\/p>\n

SR: I think we both assumed at some point we\u2019d get pushback like, \u201cYou\u2019re from the diaspora, you don\u2019t understand the real South Asian experience.\u201d But that hasn\u2019t happened. And that\u2019s been such an unexpected joy. Instead of division, we\u2019ve seen this incredible sense of connection from readers around the world in Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Canada, the UK \u2013 just people who resonate deeply with the stories we\u2019re sharing. It\u2019s been a reminder of just how much common ground exists across borders, and how books help illuminate that.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s also been humbling is realising we don\u2019t represent every community or identity, and yet, we get to help surface stories that do. Readers have reached out saying things like, \u201cI\u2019ve never read a book by a Muslim woman with her own love story,\u201d or \u201cThis is the first novel I\u2019ve read that\u2019s set in Kerala, where my family\u2019s from.\u201d Sometimes a book heals a small part of someone who\u2019s long been minimised or stereotyped.<\/p>\n

We still have so far to go. We recently asked on Instagram what narratives people still want to see, and we got hundreds of responses<\/a> for every narrative and intersections of identity \u2013 requests for West Indian diaspora stories, about tribal communities, stories of divorcees or single parents, immigrants in the Middle East, or independent women living in India. The community doesn\u2019t just consume what we share; they shape it too. That\u2019s been the most rewarding and surprising part: how expansive this space has become, and how ready people are to keep growing it with us.<\/p>\n

\"\"Mishika Narula at a BGB event.<\/p>\n

MN: What\u2019s a conversation we\u2019ve had off Instagram that you wish more people could hear?<\/p>\n

SR: We talk a lot about the responsibility that comes with running a fairly visible digital platform, like how to represent authors fairly, even when a book doesn\u2019t personally resonate with us. We made a deliberate choice not to post negative reviews, and built out our guest reviewer model to include more perspectives both in the number of books shared but also the genres, writing styles, and topics that might connect deeply with someone else other than us two.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve also thought about how to share sensitive or deeply personal stories, ones that touch on identity, trauma, or current events, with care. In some ways, those are the most important topics to bring out of the dark and heal in the light, but can also be triggering or spark strong emotions to just encounter on your feed. So we talk about how to use our platform and reach for social good while also keeping it about the books. That kind of intention shapes everything we do, even if it\u2019s not always visible.<\/p>\n

SR: What\u2019s something people often misunderstand about what we do \u2013 and what would you say instead?<\/p>\n

MN: People sometimes assume we\u2019re a platform for women readers and authors only, and I get where that comes from. But the \u201cgirl\u201d in Brown Girl Bookshelf really just reflects the two of us: we\u2019re two South Asian women running the platform. That doesn\u2019t mean our community is limited to women writers or readers. We’ve also heard assumptions from being on social media where there are other \u201cbrown girl\u201d monikers that we are perhaps not interested in \u201cserious\u201d literature, which, if you consider the books we’ve mentioned, even just in this conversation, this is far from. From the start, we\u2019ve read and recommended stories across all genders and identities. This space has always been for anyone who believes in the importance of expanding how South Asian stories are told. We want to broaden the conversation, not narrow it.<\/p>\n

SR: If you had to describe the future of Brown Girl Bookshelf in one sentence, what would you say?<\/p>\n

MN: We see BGB evolving into a platform that not only champions South Asian literature but also serves as a thought leader \u2013 contributing essays, reviews, and cultural commentary to literary and mainstream publications, and shaping how these stories are read and remembered.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a mouthful, but the aspiration is clear. We\u2019re really grateful that a small idea between two friends has grown into something people trust, return to, and see themselves reflected in. That part will always matter most, and we\u2019re here to remind each other of that along the way.<\/p>\n

\"\"Srisruthi Ramesh (left) and Mishika Narula.
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