Sejal Shah

Sejal Shah is an Indian American essayist whose work examines memory, language, family, race, and the meanings attached to place. Born to Gujarati immigrant parents and raised in western New York, she has taught writing at several universities and developed a form that moves between lyric reflection, cultural criticism, and personal narrative. This Is One Way to Dance was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2020 as part of the Crux series in literary nonfiction. The collection brings together linked essays written across many years, tracing Shah's experiences in Rochester, New York City, the American South, and India. Dance, food, friendship, marriage, and multilingual family life become ways to think about belonging without reducing identity to a single origin. The essays also attend to how Indian American women are seen, misread, and remembered. Shah's flexible structure suits a book concerned with movement: each piece stands alone while recurring people and questions create an accumulating portrait.