Like the spinning dancer that graces the cover of Sejal Shah's "This is One Way to Dance", this collection of essays blur the lines between lyrical and factual, between longing for home and being self sufficient, between proudly declaring a heritage and being caught in vulnerable moments of self doubt and questioning. Shah delves into the complexities of her childhood, of a racialized upbringing in a white neighborhood, of wanting to connect to a home that isn't quite home, of the inexplicable bonds created by poetry and writing that can carry across generations. As a whole, the reading is light, fast paced and often compulsive, like the mesmerizing spins of a Bharatanatyam dancer.

Quotes:
"I wrote about 9/11. I wrote about what it feels like to lose a language you grew up with and to be able to express this loss only in another language."

"Why must I give context for my characters? Who is my audience? Why should I explain myself to you? How do you make it through a program without giving another's point of view and references more weight than your own?"

"In the books I read growing up, there were always words I couldn't quite imagine. I remember, with a specificity that surprises me, the foreignness of certain colors: kelly green, strawberry blonde."

"My name means water. You are the absence of rock: something that can hold, something that is whole without it."

"Love. You, turning toward me in the bed, light slanting in from the streetlamps, through the lattice window, from the coming sunrise, from the day."

"Which Indian restaurant would you recommend in the area? I tell him I don't eat Indian food out. I tell him that I only eat Indian food (and we just call it food) at my parents' house. I tell him I find this question unprofessional."

"There are stories we tell ourselves, stories we tell each other; weddings are stories we tell ourselves; we are stories we tell each other."