Pricha Gupti is the author of the memoir They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us. The book starts out when Pricha is young. Pricha's mother came from India as part of an arranged marriage. Her father was born in the United States. He was a successful engineer who made great money but chose to go back to school to become a physician because physicians are esteemed more than engineers. Soon her little brother, Yush, is born. The family had one foot in the east Asian society and the other foot in mostly white suburbs of Pennsylvania. Pricha was raised to be successful and at first she was. In high school she rebelled and was not a good student anymore. I enjoyed reading about her youth and her friends and her adventures. Once she became a college graduate the book changed flavors. Now all her writing was about her unhealthy family dynamics, her father's mental illness, and her brother's mental illness. This part of the book is where the author is writing to her mother explaining how her action or inaction made things worse for her. To find personal success Pricha had to distance herself from her family. By the end of the book I hoped Pricha would stop focusing on the mistakes of the past and start living her life. Why waste five years rehashing old memories?
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