Giller Prize Spotlight: Deepa Rajagopalan
September 25, 2024
Deepa Rajagopalan’s short story collection, Peacocks of Instagram, has been longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize.
Deepa Rajagopalan won the 2021 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award. Her work has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies such as the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, the New Quarterly, Room, the Malahat Review, Event, and Arc. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph. Born to Indian parents in Saudi Arabia, she has lived in many cities across India, the US, and Canada. Deepa works in the tech industry in Toronto.
What inspired you to write Peacocks of Instagram?
I was getting discouraged by the use of race or cultural background as a proxy for characterization, as if painting broad strokes describing a person’s cultural background was enough to describe a character. I wanted to write a book that challenged stereotypical narratives about the South Asian person.
In Peacocks of Instagram, I have tried to counter narratives of the immigrant being submissive or dangerous or univentive or humourless or only a certain kind of smart. The narrative that the immigrant is so sure of her identity or that her concerns are beyond the realms of existentialism. I wanted to centre people who look familiar, and subvert the reader’s expectations of them. In this collection, there are people who are coffee shop employees, housekeepers, nurses, engineers, playwrights, students, singers, and potters, and they all come with their own specific dreams and desires and rage.
What do you hope readers take away from Peacocks of Instagram?
I hope there will be readers who connect with the book, who will feel seen on the page. And I also hope the book finds readers who are surprised by, and perhaps even a little humbled by the characters in the book. And I hope it will encourage them to notice and question their biases.
Where is your favourite place to write and what is your process?
There’s an orange chair in my living room beside the fireplace where I write early in the mornings when the house is asleep. At other times, I write at my desk, in cafes, on trains, in hotel rooms if I’m traveling. I edited a lot of this book from a cafe that is loud and bright and has bad wi-fi, all of which was good for writing.
I usually set goals for a week or ten days at a time, like writing (or revising) 20 pages in 10 days. That way, if I don’t meet my goals on a daily basis, I can usually catch up during the weekends.
Is there an activity you do to help inspire writing?
I get inspired when I read books or stories by authors I deeply admire. I recently read a book called The Illicit Happiness of Other People by Manu Joseph, and it inspired me tremendously to think about how every sentence can be simultaneously heartbreaking and hilarious.
When I need ideas, or when I’m stuck, or struggling with structure, I go on long walks. It is quite incredible what a walk can do to your brain.
What’s a book you recommend others read and why?
The novel God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy for its irreverent and inventive style, and for the way in which it distills human emotion to the simplest, most potent form. For short stories, How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavonga for its piercing precision.