Q&A: Shilpi Somaya Gowda questions the American Dream in 'A Great Country'

Immigration, class tensions and generational conflict all come together in the new book, "A Great Country," by local author Shilpi Somaya Gowda.

The story follows the Shahs, a close-knit Indian American family adjusting to their new life in Pacific Hills, a fictional, affluent neighborhood in Southern California. But when they find out the police have beaten and arrested their 12-year-old son, everything changes. As that violent incident ripples across the community, the Shahs start to wonder: What is the price of the American dream?

"A Great Country" is Somaya Gowda's latest novel. She will celebrate the book in several events this spring, and read on for her in-depth interview on KPBS Midday Edition.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Can you briefly describe to us what 'A Great Country' is about?

Gowda: ‘A Great Country’ is the story of a community, a fictional community in Southern California, kind of in the Orange County area. And there are multiple families from different ethnic backgrounds, different immigration statuses, different levels of socioeconomic comfort and privilege, and they all interact with one another in this neighborhood and in this school community. The book centers around the Shah family, and an incident of police violence happens to their 12-year-old son, and that sort of throws the family into a tailspin. And it also forces a reckoning within their community.

This book really reflects the current moment. What inspired you to write it?

Gowda: I started thinking about this idea in 2020 and began writing it in 2021, and it was just on the heels of my last book being published. And obviously, along with everybody else in the world, I was really shaken by the events that were transpiring, not just the pandemic and all of the associated life changes, but I was watching as incidents of violence against Asian Americans were on the rise, really for the first time in many years. And I watched the video of George Floyd, along with many other Americans, and was horrified by that.

That incident in particular made me reflect on a personal experience I had had 30 years earlier when I had been an intern for the Minneapolis Police Department while I was in college. And while that had been a very eye opening experience, 30 years later, I was sort of trying to understand how what I was watching on that video could transpire. So all of the things that were sort of happening in America, the lack of civil discourse, the extremism, I think I just was watching and observing that. And I found myself longing for a different kind of dialogue, one in which people could really listen to one another, listen to their neighbors and be heard, have their opinions heard, and maybe try to move toward some sort of level of understanding or even compromise. So, this book was sort of born out of that period and watching that transpire and wanting to reach for something different.

You mentioned interning with the Minneapolis Police Department. What did you see there?

Gowda: Well, I think I was about 19 or 20 at the time, so it was a very eye opening experience. I spent most of my time riding along at night in patrol cars and just going to whatever calls the police officers were called to. So I saw a lot of eye-opening things. I saw different slices of society that I hadn't seen before as someone who'd had a typical sort of suburban upbringing. And then I also watched the interaction of the officers with the communities. They were very entrenched. They knew people. They all knew one another's names. They had regular relationships where they worked to keep one another apprised and informed and safe. And I saw the bravery of a lot of officers as well, putting their lives on the line every day.

So, obviously, I probably had a varnished view since I was an intern. But I later worked to try to reconcile or at least make sense of that experience and what I'd seen that summer with what I later saw.

How did you reconcile that experience with these horrific incidents of police brutality and violence?

Gowda: Well, I think these incidents have always happened. It's just that they've become more visible to us with the rise of everybody having a camera phone and the ubiquity of being able to capture things by civilians. And so, obviously, nothing is a monolith. Police officers are not a monolith. Criminals are not a monolith. There is diversity and variegation in every community. So I'm not sure "reconcile" is really what I've been able to do. I think I have a broader understanding of the differences that can occur within any group or community, and I don't think one necessarily negates the other.

I still believe that a great majority of police officers are brave and work hard to keep their communities safe. But it also means that the things we've seen in the news are also true and that different communities have different experiences with the police. So, I think my understanding has broadened to encompass all of those things. And I think that's one thing we could all stand to learn a little bit instead of sort of taking a polarized position.

That brings us to your book. The first part takes place over one night. Getting the call that your child's been arrested, I mean ... That's something no parent ever wants to go through. Was that difficult to write about?

Gowda: The fact that the first half of the story unfolds really over one evening was very different compared to my previous novels, most of which take place over many years or decades. So there was definitely a challenge in trying to pack all of that dynamism and those plot points into a very tight time frame and imagine what it would feel like minute by minute, hour by hour, for this whole family that's being thrust into this situation that they never experienced.

But I think that also was exciting for me as a writer, to be able to write in a different way and to sort of conceive of the story in a different way in terms of terrible things happening to your child. I think that's one of the things I've learned to do as a writer from my first book. "Secret Daughter" focuses on the death of an infant girl at birth because she's a girl in rural India. So that's probably the hardest thing I've had to imagine as a parent. But there really is an element of being able to put yourself into someone else's shoes and develop an empathy for what they're going through. And I think there's a universality to parenthood and to the worries and concerns we all carry, no matter what those circumstances are.

What I find so interesting about this book that you wrote is that we're not just following this one family. We're actually hearing from their whole community. Why did you want to zoom out and tell this story from so many different perspectives?

Gowda: Yeah, that was one of my main goals in telling this story this way was. I think back to the inspiration for the book, seeing what was unfolding in communities and neighborhoods in 2020 and 2021 really made me realize, again, how interrelated we all are. We don't live in bubbles, and everything we do impacts our fellow citizens. And the same is true in the reverse. So I thought it would really be interesting to show a broader view of how various people, various families from different backgrounds within a single neighborhood respond to the same event differently and how it affects their understanding and how it might unfold given their life perspectives. I think that's part of what we miss when we're just following the story of a single person or a single family. Is that the truth? The story or the event can be perceived differently depending on what you bring to it.

Speaking of community, the Shahs are really trying to fit into this neighborhood. Tell us more about that and how you're representing class divides in this book.

Gowda: Yeah, the Shah family moves from more of a new immigrant, middle class neighborhood where they're surrounded by people similar to them — other immigrants that have been there for a similar amount of time, too. They catapult themselves into this very upper class neighborhood where there's not really anybody that looks like them around. So, they feel a sense of isolation that I think they didn't expect to, particularly because they go into this time of crisis soon after moving. They're not entrenched enough in their new neighborhood to have developed friendships and relationships amongst people who can support them, so they're sort of caught in between.

I think it's this very classic dilemma of the American dream — how much do you assimilate and try to climb the ladder and fit into this aspirational sense of what it means to achieve the dream? And how much do you hold on to what brought you to this country in the first place and maybe helped make you successful? The Shah family struggle with that. And they find that most of their support and a sense of belonging that they feel still occurs in their old neighborhood. That's part of their learning, about the shine coming off of what they thought was going to be the answer to all their dreams.

And you also come from an immigrant family. Can you tell us more about your relationship to the United States and India and how that influences your writing?

Gowda: Well, my parents were immigrants from India to Canada, and I grew up there, and I've lived in the United States since I came here for college. So more of my life has been spent here than I spent in Canada. But I think growing up, I got used to toggling between two different worlds, not just the country of India where all my extended family still lived and the country of Canada, but the two different cultures — the one I had at home with my parents, which was very steeped in all things Indian culture, music, food, values — and the sort of westernized culture I had at school with my friends and peers. So I think that, in some sense, has been good practice for me as a person and as a writer, because I can usually see multiple sides of things. I usually understand as a little bit of an observer standing outside that there are particularities to any culture or any community. And so I even lived in California for a long time, but I've also lived in New York City, in the South. And so I've been able to observe and witness all of those subcultures. And in a sense, I feel like I've taken something with me from all those places I've lived and all the people I've met, and they're all part of a whole now. So I don't really feel people will often say, like, "Do you feel more Indian or more American or more Canadian?" And my answer is, "Yes, I feel all of those things." They're all sort of part of the mosaic of me.

What do you want readers to take away from this book?

Gowda: As I said before, I really am hoping to start a different kind of dialogue. Part of the reason I ended up representing so many different points of view in this book — I mean, even the police officers, there are three or four points of view within that group — is I really hope people will both find something to identify with. They are likely to find a point of view or perspective that represents their own. But then I'm also hoping that they will see another one that they don't necessarily identify with, but they're willing to read about and listen to and maybe try to understand a little bit. I do think that is one of the greatest powers that fiction can have, is that it enables us to step into somebody else's shoes and to feel a little bit of what their life might be like. And hopefully that's a way of building some bridges to understanding and conversation in our country.

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