MEET ME IN MUMBAI

Eighteen-year-old Mumbai native Ayesha Hameed is determined to make the best of her senior year, which she’s spending in Bloomington, Illinois, with her relatives Salma Aunty and Hafeez Uncle.

Although she dreams of academic success, Ayesha doesn’t count on falling in love with Suresh, a boy she has sex with during their secret Thanksgiving weekend alone at his house. Convinced that coming home to India pregnant and unmarried is not an option, Ayesha decides to give her baby up for adoption. The White lesbian couple that Ayesha chooses to raise her child allow Ayesha to move in with them and go to school in Houston for her final semester of high school—under the guise of attending a university prep program—so that she can hide her condition from her family. Years later, Ayesha’s now-teenage daughter—whom her adoptive mothers named Mira—discovers a box full of letters Ayesha wrote her while she was pregnant. They make Mira curious about both her Indian identity and birth mother. But can she explore her past without alienating the family who raised her? Told in two perspectives, this story is filled with action, leaving little room for the characters to fully process the emotional weight of the crises they experience. Consequently, both the characters and their relationships feel rushed and underdeveloped. Nevertheless, the narratorial voices are original, sincere, and frank.

An honest story about adoption and family.