Book Of The Month: Why Not Me?

Hayyyy the book of this month is a hearty, extremely fun, and brilliant read. In that light, I will try to make this short, sweet, and simple, along with the lines of the book. Before this book, I did not know that much about Mindy Kaling. After reading this book, she feels like a friend in my head! Haha.

"If my childhood, teens, and twenties were about wanting people to like me, now I want people to know me. So, this is a start."  Mindy Kaling

Mindy was the type of girl to bring a large bag of Skittles to school on her first day to get people to like her. In short, this book is about coming of age; becoming more confident in your person. It recounts experiences since she grew from the person who tried incredibly hard to get people to like her to who she is now.   She does this with this collection of short essays of her personal experiences in life; from tongue-in-cheek beauty tips; to her stint at a sorority she joined in college but left abruptly after realizing she had nothing in common with the girls; to telling us about her best-friend, B.J Novak who is also her ex-boyfriend (she admits to the weirdness of their relationship); to dating Will who works for President Obama; to her honest admission of feeling sad when she was not nominated for an Emmy. Each essay tells you just a little bit more about this charming daughter of Indian immigrants from Boston, who rose to fame on hard-work and her witty nature.

Her candor and the personal way she approaches every essay was very refreshing. And I found myself chuckling a lot at the turn of every page. I like how she liberally dropped names of important people she knows without coming off as braggy. The entire tone of this book is like that of your sister or friend whom you grew up with, but became famous and then tries her possible best to give you a glimpse into fame and what it feels like. Despite how relatable it seemed, there was still a shield of some sort: she only let us into the parts of her life she wanted. She does it with style and grace though, and not until you are done would you realize that she deliberately did not delve into certain things like her mother's death even after mentioning [in passing] her illness.

On a more serious note, to the questions: How? Why you? Why are you so confident despite being you know, so different from every Hollywood chick out there? And this question can be tweaked to fit different situations: How are you so successful? How are you a great entrepreneur, with that rockstar family, and still look so smashing? How can you, a black/purple/Asian/African woman achieve so much excellence? How come you, from that inner city with violence 24/7, dared to dream so much that you ended up in an Ivy League? How can you the child of an absent Kenyan Father, and a struggling white woman, grow up to become the first black president of America? Why you?


Mindy's response is Hard-work. When you know your stuff, you will be confident. Sometimes, you are not confident because you just have not earned the right to be. You have not worked hard enough. You are not yet entitled to be. Even after your hard-work, some will probably still question your authenticity or the fact that you are an "unlikely leading lady". You would remind them of your work ethics or like Mindy, the admirable values your suburban immigrant parents instilled in you and growing up with  your “suburban Boston peer group of kids who thought Cornell was a safety school.”

So when they do, throw the question right back at them: "Why Not Me?"

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