First published 2026
Rishi arrives at Stanford with her freshman year mapped out. She will shed her strict Indian-American upbringing in Florida, explore her queer identity, fall in love, and document it all for her Asian American Autofiction class. The plan works at first. She gets a tattoo, finds her first real best friend, navigates an unlabeled romantic relationship, and experiences heartbreak. Then COVID hits. Virtual classes replace campus life, so Rishi joins a farm collective with her classmates. They wrestle with America's political chaos while managing their own sexual tensions and responsibilities. But even these new bonds start cracking under pressure from poor choices, one-sided crushes, and jealousy. As her relationships fracture, Rishi must reconsider the narrative she has written for herself. Kannan explores the connections between best friends, lovers, mothers and daughters, and writers and their own stories.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, coming-of-age, contemporary, 21st-century, college-romance
Vibes: bittersweet, emotional, intimate, introspective, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, first-love, found-family, self-discovery, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Stanford, Florida, America
Period: 2020, COVID-19 pandemic
352 pages · Paperback · Henry Holt and Co.
Content warnings: mental-illness