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If You Sing Like That For Me
"What distinguishes a great story writer from a mediocre one? Akhil Sharma would be among the few living authors I would choose, along with masters like Chekhov, William Trevor, Eudora Welty, and James Alan McPherson, to tackle that question. It’s not what a writer gives a character and then takes away that makes a good story — we have all learned to live with, and oftentimes become indifferent to, other people’s losses. But six months from reading the story I may wake up one morning, to a raining day or a snowing day, in my own house or in a hotel room, feeling the devastation that runs through Anita at the end of this story. No words prepare us for grief." - Yiyun Li
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About theÌýAuthor: Akhil Sharma is the author of Family Life, a New York Times Best Book of the Year and the winner of the International DUBLIN Literary Award and the Folio Prize. Sharma’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Best American Short Stories, and the O. Henry Award anthology. A native of Delhi, he lives in New York City and teaches English at Rutgers University–Newark.
About the GuestÌýEditor: Yiyun Li is a Chinese American writer. Her debut short story collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers won the 2005 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and her second collection Gold Boy, Emerald Girl was shortlisted for the same award. Her debut novel The Vagrants was shortlisted for the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In 2015, her story “A Sheltered Womanâ€� won the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award.
She was named a 2010 MacArthur Fellow. She is an editor of Brooklyn-based literary magazine, A Public Space.
About the Publisher: Electric Literature is an independent publisher amplifying the power of storytelling through digital innovation. Electric Literature’s weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading, invites established authors, indie presses, and literary magazines to recommended great fiction. Once a month we feature our own recommendation of original, previously unpublished fiction. Recommended Reading is supported by the Amazon Literary Partnership, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. For other links from Electric Literature, follow us, or sign up for our eNewsletter.
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About theÌýAuthor: Akhil Sharma is the author of Family Life, a New York Times Best Book of the Year and the winner of the International DUBLIN Literary Award and the Folio Prize. Sharma’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Best American Short Stories, and the O. Henry Award anthology. A native of Delhi, he lives in New York City and teaches English at Rutgers University–Newark.
About the GuestÌýEditor: Yiyun Li is a Chinese American writer. Her debut short story collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers won the 2005 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and her second collection Gold Boy, Emerald Girl was shortlisted for the same award. Her debut novel The Vagrants was shortlisted for the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In 2015, her story “A Sheltered Womanâ€� won the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award.
She was named a 2010 MacArthur Fellow. She is an editor of Brooklyn-based literary magazine, A Public Space.
About the Publisher: Electric Literature is an independent publisher amplifying the power of storytelling through digital innovation. Electric Literature’s weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading, invites established authors, indie presses, and literary magazines to recommended great fiction. Once a month we feature our own recommendation of original, previously unpublished fiction. Recommended Reading is supported by the Amazon Literary Partnership, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. For other links from Electric Literature, follow us, or sign up for our eNewsletter.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
48 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 9, 2017
6 people are currently reading
56 people want to read
About the author
Akhil Sharma
33Ìýbooks241ÌýfollowersAkhil Sharma was born in Delhi in India and emigrated to the USA in 1979. His stories have been published in the New Yorker and in Atlantic Monthly, and have been included in The Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize Collections. His first novel, An Obedient Father, won the 2001 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. He was named one of Granta's 'Best of Young American Novelists' in 2007. His second novel, Family Life, won The 2015 Folio Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award 2016. Sharma is currently a Fellow at The New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 18, 2019
Other than getting familiar with the lives of people of India, what does this story have to offer?
I hope I'm mistaken, and the underlying theme of this short story is something different. But behind its 'sari' of local colors, I found dark traces of the suggestion to surrender to a sick society.
I think it suggests: in a society that young women are forced into arranged marriages and are not allowed to attend their own engagement ceremony, they should know their place, they must accept life as is, and try to fall in love with their psychopathic husbands, and surrender their humanity in order to get as content with life as their husbands permit. They're better than their wretched fathers, after all.
I hope I'm mistaken, and the underlying theme of this short story is something different. But behind its 'sari' of local colors, I found dark traces of the suggestion to surrender to a sick society.
I think it suggests: in a society that young women are forced into arranged marriages and are not allowed to attend their own engagement ceremony, they should know their place, they must accept life as is, and try to fall in love with their psychopathic husbands, and surrender their humanity in order to get as content with life as their husbands permit. They're better than their wretched fathers, after all.
May 4, 2021
Weirdly, the more I learned about Rajinder, the less I liked him. He was easier to root for when he was solemn and ambiguous. Once he became more chummy with his wife, he revealed a sort of detached calculativeness that made me virulently dislike him.
July 13, 2020
I despise it when male authors write female charaters poont of view.
December 12, 2020
A young woman finds herself in an arranged marriage by her parents to a man whom she's only known for several months. After being married for only seven months she wakens and comes to the conclusion that she will never love him again as she does at this moment. This tale of a submissive wife and her relationship with her husband has been forged since she was a child, and her parents decision making for her instead of her taking some control of her own being.
January 7, 2022
Outstanding, if you can read between the lines.
December 8, 2022
Just read The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri instead.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
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