Latest news with #ThisAmericanWoman:AOne-in-a-BillionMemoir
Mint
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Mint
Zarna Garg's memoir: The super-sad story of an immigrant comedian
It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you are a female American comedian of any standing, you must write a memoir. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have written best-selling ones, Mindy Kaling has written no fewer than three, and chances are every female comic you've heard of, from Ellen Degeneres to Hannah Gadsby, Caitlin Moran and Ali Wong, has had a memoir out. Obviously, at some point, someone in publishing decided that this was a bankable genre and guided by the spirit of the late, great Nora Ephron, went full steam ahead. I'm not complaining here; I've read Fey, Poehler and Kaling and they were all immensely satisfying. Beyond such cynical calculations, however, I think the reason comedy memoirs work is because all of us who consume comedy are seeking to answer one question: where does comedy come from? Male comedians observe people around them from a great height and find them absurd; female comedians examine the absurdity of their own lives with a microscope and turn the sad bits into funny bits. This is what Zarna Garg does with This American Woman: A One-in-a-Billion Memoir, and she has so much material to work with. Those who have watched her standup routines might be already familiar with parts of this story: Garg grew up in an affluent, traditional, steeped-in-patriarchy business family in Mumbai as the youngest of four siblings in what we today call a 'blended family" (her mother was her father's second wife whom he married to look after his three older children). She was the pampered youngest till she was not—her mother died when she was 14 and her father immediately wanted to marry her off. Also read: 'Gunboy' review: A bloody good thriller set in the badlands of Maharashtra Garg ran away from home and couch-surfed for two years, drifting between relatives' and friends' homes till she gave up, returned to her father's house and agreed to get married. Then, a miraculous call from a US college allowed her to get away to her step-sister in Akron, Ohio and start life all over. In someone else's hands, this could have turned into a very different kind of memoir. Though Garg was a late bloomer, having started her comedy career less than a decade ago, she decided to mine her story for its comedic potential. All female comics need a narrative Garg with her daughter Zoya. (male comics? They can get by with disjointed jokes and stray observations) and Garg's became her transformation into an American woman. If our idea of NRI women is shaped by popular culture (and embarrassing videos of our NRI friends dressing up and dancing to Bollywood songs on every suitable and unsuitable occasion) as largely conventional people who did well in engineering college and work in IT while dealing with crushing cultural isolation, Garg defies the stereotype. Her story is full of dysfunction and uncertainty. This material works great on stage— Garg clearly knows how to land a joke and play the audience—but does it work well as a book? Well, broad generalisations about life in India tend to do better in a stand-up setting, whether it's something as banal as bathing out of a bucket because of water rationing or more readily come dy-friendly material, such as arranged marriages. Garg is 50 and it is difficult to accept when she says, in the book, that 'in India" everyone gets married in their teens or that it's unusual for chil dren to be inter ested in books and magazines, as she was. The parts of the book that are really riveting and bene fit from Garg's sharp observation skills are the account of her relationship with her husband and their harum-scarum wed ding, and then, later in the book, the story of how she became a writer and performer of comedy. Also read: The continuing stranglehold of Indian film censorship This section of the book—a quintessential American success story about an Indian housewife who becomes a stand-up sensation opening for the likes of Poehler and Fey—is not quite stage material, but works fantastically in this form. These are the bits comedy lovers will lap up—the kind of stuff watching five seasons of The Marvellous Mrs Maisel, about a 1950s housewife who becomes a standup comic, and Hacks, about a legendary female comedian's comeback, has primed us for. There's the story of how Garg's teen age daughter Zoya convinces her stay at-home mom to start working on comedy; the one about doing open-mic at a New York comedy club; and the details of finding her writing voice and winning a prestigious award for her first ever screenplay. What could be more American than the story of a woman who tries her hand at match making and ends up making fun of arranged marriages? And yet, her growing up years are where her comedy essentially comes from, I think. In fact, one does not work without the other—among the first jokes Garg ever wrote was 'I am an immigrant living in America. People often wonder if I have some sad, depressing backstory. And I do."
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Business Standard
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Standard
This American Woman: Aunti Zarna takes the mic and the spotlight
This American Woman: A One-in-a-Billion Memoir Published by Penguin Random House 306 pages ₹799 One often has to be reminded of their talent and told: 'Hey, you have it in you.' In the Indian-American comic Zarna Garg's case, that person was her daughter Zoya, who asked her mother to try her hand at stand-up comedy. It'd have been daunting for Garg to embark on this ambition, 18 'failed LLCs later'. But Garg acted on her 'special gift' and transformed herself into Auntie Zarna, her onstage persona and as her fans love to call her, bursting onto the standup comedy scene after being a 'stay-at-home mom' for 16 years. Garg's jokes have a near-universal appeal. She encapsulates in them the trials and tribulations of everyday life, enhancing relatability. The avatar of a no-nonsense, middle-class Indian mom further accentuates her screen presence. She's likeable, and the reels and videos she posts are unskippable. But lately, she has been in the news because of her book, This American Woman: A One-in-a-Billion Memoir. Comprising 21 chapters, one of which is written by Zoya, the book begins with a question Garg had asked her agent: 'Do Tina Fey and Amy Poehler need an opener for their new tour?' The response to this question paid dividends, though Garg doubted whether these two famous figures were 'ready for a foul-mouthed real-life Indian auntie who hated meditation'. This anecdote in the introduction to this book intrigues the reader to learn about the 'transformation of a loudmouthed, backtalking Mumbai teen into a manic, deranged Manhattan housewife, and then back into her loudest, backtalkingest, most unshutable beast form: a New York City standup comedian'. The initial chapters describe how Garg was an 'oops' child. Her mother didn't want anything to do with children, for she had already brought her siblings up and gotten them married before marrying herself to a 37-year-old man who had three children from his previous marriage. Perhaps that explains a sort of indifference Garg may have experienced as a child from her mother. However, her siblings, much older than her, mothered and fathered her. Sister Sunita became a friend-cum-confidante, while Suresh acted as that brother-cum-protective figure. Such siblings are comforting when your father happens to be a taskmaster. He wanted to be obeyed. Though Garg admired him, she critiqued him for thinking nothing beyond what he believed a girl child or a woman must do: Marry and rear children. As one sifts through the pages of this breezy memoir full of interesting anecdotes and life lessons, two subliminally influential experiences that helped shape Garg's life before her marriage can be noted. First, despite being in the patriarchal strongholds of her husband, Garg, 'the original troublemaker', remained nonchalant. There was something more to her that people got to learn only upon her death — the evidence of her philanthropy. Garg notes that even after 35 years of her mother's death, the ones she helped still think of her. Second is visiting her sister Sunita and her husband Deepak in Akron, Ohio, in 1983. Experiencing the freedom of roaming freely without thinking of being unsafe or raped or thinking that a 'kid [there] really can be a kid' was revelatory and revolutionary to an eight-year-old Zarna. But more than that, it was an encounter at an American nightclub with a DJ. Upon being asked if she was comfortable, a young Garg replies, 'No, I don't like this at all, but that only proves I am an intellectual destined for great things!' This made the DJ laugh and confused the young girl. Garg writes, 'When I vocalised my opinions in India, people usually told me I was crazy or stupid or to shut up. Only Suresh took me seriously. I wasn't prepared for laughter.' But there's this third thing that she experiences only after her marriage, noticing the unshakeable belief her husband had in her at a charity event. People were having fun at her expense when her husband, Shalabh, quipped that 'they're all scared that one day you're going to find your thing, and then you'll simply be unstoppable'. Nothing prepares one for such moments. The thing that this memoir, written in a conversational tone, teaches you is that you must take life as it comes. As in the case of Garg, it may so happen that you may have to escape being married at 14 or find your husband on an 'Indian singles website' or think of everything failing all over again when you happen to make inroads into your calling when the world gets a lockdown because of a pandemic. But then, the only way to respond to tragic situations is not to lose the ability to laugh, which is precisely what Garg has done throughout her life. Even in her writing. For example, no matter whether a chapter technically deals with grief or guilt, Garg's writing has the quality of delivering a joke on paper. While there's an implicit critique of race, caste, and class, there seems to be a celebration of the American capitalist way of living. There's a moment when Garg notes that now she knows what '[her] price is'. This commonplace acceptance of this notion as a metric to gauge others' success is in many ways problematic. Nonetheless, Garg's memoir is thoroughly readable and keeps you in stitches, inspiring you to take charge of your life. Most importantly, it makes you believe that it's perfectly all right to start again whenever you want, or are ready.
Time of India
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Stand-up comedian Zarna Garg opens up about struggles: ‘I escaped an arranged marriage'
(Picture Courtesy: Facebook) US-based Indian stand-up comedian Zarna Garg recently took to Instagram to share a heartfelt and humorous glimpse into her life's struggles and victories while promoting her upcoming memoir, This American Woman: A One-in-a-Billion Memoir, set to release on Tuesday, April 29. "I escaped an arranged marriage .' In her now-viral post, Zarna Garg candidly outlined her journey, revealing, "I escaped an arranged marriage, my wealthy father left me, I came to America, got married, had kids, began doing stand-up comedy after a late start, and failed in 18 businesses." She also touched on the darker times, including her husband's job loss and their experience with homelessness. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like The Cost Of Amusement Park Equipment From Mexico Might Surprise You Amusement Park Equipment | search ads Click Here Undo 'If you need a laugh, a cry…' Blending humor with courage, Zarna Garg encouraged followers to pick up her memoir, writing, 'If you need a laugh, a cry, a kick in the pants, a wake-up call, inspiration, motivation or a table weight – I've got you ." She added playfully, 'Get it for yourself, give it to your sister, throw one at your mother-in-law, order it for your colleagues, and impress them as your early good taste." 'Zarna Garg: One In a Billion' Trailer: Zarna Garg starrer 'Zarna Garg: One In a Billion' Official Trailer 'Pre-order to help me' Acknowledging the power of early support, she joked, 'Pre-order to help me and I'll FedEx you good karma points (more valuable than Chase Sapphire unless they give me a deal in which case … forget this post existed!).' Netizens react - 'Hint shockingly not my mother in law' Zarna's post was soon flooded with humorous comments from netizens. One comment read, 'Hint shockingly not my mother in law.' Another comment read, 'How did you manage to run 18 businesses in 2 years?! Mad respect!.' A third one commented, 'I just finished reading your book and it was so good. I learned so much and feel so motivated by your story. Can't wait for the world to read it.'
