Aparna Nancherla, UNRELIABLE NARRATOR: Me, Myself, and Imposter Syndrome
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[1:03]Aparna Nan Cherla is the author of Unreliable Narrator, Me, Myself, and imposter syndrome.
[1:09]Aparna is a comedian and general silly billy.
[1:12]Her sense of humor is dry, existential, and absurd, with notes of uncalled for whimsy.
[1:17]Think of why you didn't order.
[1:19]You can hear Aparna as the voice of moon on Fox's Great North, or have heard her as the
[1:23]voice of Hollyhock on Bojack Horseman.
[1:26]You can currently watch Aparna in the drop on Hulu, or as Dr. Pocha on Lopez vs. Lopez
[1:32]on NBC.
[1:33]You may have watched Aparna as Grace, the beloved HR rep on the critically acclaimed comedy
[1:38]central show, Corporate.
[1:40]She also has a half hour special on the second season of The Stand-ups on Netflix, as well
[1:45]as appearances on Late Night with Stephen Colbert on CBS, and two dope queens on HBO.
[1:51]Other acting credits include a simple favor, modern love, Bob Spurgers, crashing master
[1:55]of none, and inside Amy Schumer.
[1:58]She's written for totally biased, with W. Kamu Bell and Late Night with Seth Meyers, as
[2:03]well as Mythic Quest on Apple Plus.
[2:06]Aparna was named one of the 50 funniest people right now by Rolling Stone.
[2:10]In 2019, she was in a Super Bowl commercial with Michael Boobley, or Sparkling Water
[2:15]Nae Seltzer.
[2:17]In 2016, she released her debut album, Just Putting It Out There, on Tik Natara's label,
[2:22]Benson Ball Records, and recorded a half hour special for Comedy Central.
[2:26]She was chosen as one of Variety's top 10 comics to watch.
[2:28]Aparna currently lives in Los Angeles, if you can even imagine.
[2:32]Welcome, Aparna.
[2:33]Thank you so much for coming on momstone.
[2:34]Have time to read books to discuss your latest and newest and only memoir unreliable narrator,
[2:39]me, myself, and imposter syndrome.
[2:41]Congratulations.
[2:42]Thank you.
[2:43]Thank you for having me.
[2:45]So what made you decide to write a memoir?
[2:47]I think for me, more led with the imposter syndrome than the memoir part, I think the imposter
[2:53]syndrome was something I was struggling with, I must stand up, and I think I was having
[2:58]a lot of performance anxiety, and I'd been getting more career opportunities, and that
[3:04]had led to an increasing sense of self doubt rather than the fantasy you have of success,
[3:12]where everything is fixed, and you're done, and life is all rainbows and unicorns.
[3:19]So I think because more success seemed to translate to more mental angst, I started
[3:26]to feel kind of like, oh no, what's the point of any of this then as my existential brain
[3:31]loves to go to those places?
[3:33]So then, you know, the self doubt seemed to get louder, so I was like, well, if you have
[3:38]so much to say, why don't you do some work?
[3:40]So I decided to write a book about self doubt, amazing.
[3:44]And you write in the book about how hard it was for you to write the book, which is always
[3:48]fun.
[3:49]So you're constantly procrastinating, and of course you do it in such a clever way,
[3:52]but was it really hard?
[3:54]Tell me about it.
[3:55]Yeah, it was, I mean, it was my first book, so I think it was just a new muscle to exercise
[4:01]at all, but then, yeah, I naturally am procrastinating perfectionists, so I think it was
[4:07]very easy to be like, have an idea of a book in my head and then sit down and be like,
[4:13]well, this doesn't, this isn't how it's supposed to go.
[4:15]I'm supposed to just write effortlessly and then take my little afternoon coffee break.
[4:21]So I think it was a lot of me coming up against my own kind of unrealistic expectations.
[4:28]And I will say I did, you know, end up writing it, but I won't say I had like any kind
[4:33]of set routine of, hey, got up every day at 9 a.m. like for a while, it was going to
[4:38]a writing center.
[4:40]Other times I would start writing it like 11 at night, which I wouldn't recommend, but
[4:45]yeah, I think it was, it was a lot of trial and error of getting it out onto the page.
[4:51]I think it's far more rare to have the person who sits down and just it all comes out
[4:55]on a regular schedule.
[4:57]I mean, I think you have to be like three or four novels in or something.
[5:00]That's my, I don't know, to have that be your routine and it just comes out, I don't
[5:04]know.
[5:05]Yeah, totally.
[5:06]Or sometimes you'll read and interviews, you know, someone will be like, I just
[5:10]couldn't stop writing for a month straight and then it just all came out and I was like,
[5:15]no, that's not how my muse seems to operate.
[5:18]Well, I mean, you talk about a lot of really tough topics and you talk about things that
[5:22]you admit in the book as not having talked about really ever before starting with your
[5:26]surgeries and talking about, you know, you're a lot about your relationship with your
[5:30]body and looks and yes, the cultural ways the culture plays into that, but your own
[5:36]relationship with how you look, what that means, you know, you have this interesting
[5:40]part where even though you don't want to be on those lists because it's terrible when
[5:44]like guys make lists of like the best looking and you don't want to be part of that
[5:47]system.
[5:48]You also don't want to be excluded from the list, you know, I just all these like, you
[5:53]know, paradoxes that as women, we mostly we have to deal with all the time.
[5:58]Tell me a little bit about that and how it felt opening up and and why you hadn't talked
[6:03]about some of the stuff before and why you're ready to now.
[6:06]Yeah, I mean, I think also some of the appeal of writing a book was that, you know, previously
[6:13]I had touched on some of these topics in my stand up and I think in that sense would stand
[6:19]up.
[6:20]Everything is sort of you only have so much real estate because you are, you know, supposed
[6:25]to get to a punchline and also you only have so much time to get your point across on
[6:29]stage.
[6:30]To be a little more polished, there has to be a little more emotional remove, I think,
[6:35]in getting into some of these topics and I wanted to be able to delve into them in kind
[6:39]of a messier, less resolved way.
[6:41]So I think that maybe gave me the opportunity to go to some of these places I hadn't been
[6:46]able to before where it is, yeah, these kind of paradoxes you wrestle with where there isn't
[6:52]like a clean and now I know better, you know, sort of ending.
[6:56]Yeah.
[6:57]Yeah.
[6:58]You know, brush our hair and look in the mirror every day, it's like, yeah, get rid of it.
[7:03]Can I read a paragraph from the book?
[7:04]Is that okay?
[7:05]I love this section.
[7:06]This is sort of along the lines of self image and everything.
[7:09]You said, what I've learned with time is that no matter how much I change what I look
[7:12]like, there is no salvation in it.
[7:14]Yes, looking in the mirror, stepping on a scale can take up your entire brain, but to what
[7:18]end, a fleeting sense of passing muster, but who's and is it ever enough?
[7:22]I still struggle more often than I care to admit with how both my body and I look and
[7:26]present.
[7:27]Now I can finally see outside of this perpetual dissatisfaction in a way I couldn't when
[7:31]I was younger and see it for what it is.
[7:33]Just another way of grasping at a sense of affinity, a pyramid scheme of acceptance, because
[7:37]most of this endless fixation is for other people, even if it's often a projected version
[7:42]of them.
[7:43]And why should any system or person have so much to say over how I feel about myself?
[7:47]I have committed to this perspective as a practice because I know I will lose sight of
[7:50]it again, but every new reminder of it provides a respite.
[7:53]Love that.
[7:54]Oh, thanks.
[7:56]So good.
[7:57]How do you keep this front and center?
[7:59]It's one thing to sit down and make all these resolutions about acceptance of ourselves or
[8:04]maybe this is just me.
[8:05]I don't know.
[8:06]But then to put it into practice all the time and remind yourself of this, do you feel
[8:11]like this did the trick for you?
[8:14]I think it helped to be able to elucidate it on a page, but yeah, it is as I say in the
[8:22]book kind of an ongoing battle.
[8:24]And you know, some days they're better than others.
[8:26]I will say I kind of stop checking social media in a very real way in compared to like,
[8:34]I used to check it all the time and now like very, very rarely do I go on the platforms.
[8:39]And I think for me that afforded me a lot of space that I think I needed mentally and just
[8:45]being in an industry that is always kind of pitting people against each other.
[8:49]I think there is a real under valuing of creating like room for yourself and kind of room
[8:57]for okayness with yourself.
[8:59]So I think I've been working very hard in the past few years on just like protecting
[9:05]that space and being a lot more considerate towards myself of that space.
[9:10]Interesting.
[9:11]I love it.
[9:12]Well, you also talked about your history with depression and how it came on at age 19 and
[9:17]how you had to cope with that, how it's hard sometimes for other people to really understand
[9:22]what you're talking about.
[9:23]You said like you started describing the symptoms and they were like, oh, that must be
[9:27]so hard.
[9:28]You're like, wait, this is like the prologue to the symptoms.
[9:30]You don't even know.
[9:32]Tell me about that and how you, you know, you list a lot of the different meds and the different
[9:36]ways you've gotten through this and managed it now.
[9:39]It's become a part of your life and also you have a chapter on anxiety and how that
[9:42]has, you know, played a big part as well.
[9:45]I've also struggled with these things and know where you're coming from on a lot of it.
[9:50]So I don't know, tell me about your experience there and about these parts of the book.
[9:54]Yeah, I mean, I think for me, again, like some of the first ways I wrote
[10:00]these topics was through my stand-up and I think that gave me a certain relationship to them as kind
[10:06]of this compartmentalized thing I could talk about in a more polished way and because the book
[10:13]let me get more into those nuances, it did let me kind of put down the whole journey of how I first
[10:22]kind of was able to name these things for myself and then later how my relationship to them
[10:28]changed but I specifically was really interested in writing about like if you do start talking
[10:33]about your own mental health in a sort of more public way what does that do to your relationship
[10:39]to it internally and I did find that really interesting of how like when people maybe more associated
[10:46]with me with someone who would talk about anxiety and depression and their stand-up like it still
[10:51]wasn't like fully conveying the experience of what it is like to actually have it you're
[10:56]it's still you're you're able to you know sometimes people would ask me like how do you talk about
[11:02]these things and struggle with them like I feel like I struggle but then there's no way for me to
[11:08]actually like kind of make sense of it or later translate it to people and so to me it almost
[11:14]felt like a split sense of self sometimes between the like more presentational way I would talk
[11:19]about it versus my actual experience of it so I do think the book helped me kind of bridge those
[11:26]two things of like yeah this is something I talk about in my work but that's still a more clean
[11:32]version of the actual living with it day to day yeah and you also point out how it's now sort of
[11:39]on trend to reveal your mental health struggles right like self-care yeah whatever's going on being
[11:47]real you're like well now this is like a thing you know what we do with that which is very odd
[11:52]like the way it's been commodified like it's obviously like a positive thing that it's become
[11:58]more just openly talked about like that feels good and like progress but then yeah it sort of feels
[12:04]like it's gone to the other extreme where it's kind of this buzzword or like this identity thing
[12:10]where you know people wear t-shirts that are like don't have to be my inside your whatever it is
[12:16]like yeah it's a little strange like our relationship to it right now feels like it's in a
[12:22]odd phase true I guess we'll see where this all lands yeah the pendulum is swung one way
[12:28]we'll see what happens yeah you write a little about you know we're deciding to do stand up and
[12:35]have either like nobody thought I was funny or like you did you was unexpected at the time right
[12:40]you were like yeah so tell me a little more about about that piece of of your life and how you
[12:47]feel I know we're mid-rider strike and all of that so you don't know details or anything but just
[12:51]in broad strokes how you feel about you know what what you do yeah I mean I think I think I
[12:59]yeah if you had talked to me as the kid I never would have in any remote realm of possibility
[13:04]been like I'm gonna be a nup as a stand-up comedian like I think it was something I kind of stumbled
[13:09]into like first from just an interest in comedy and then kind of going to an open mic and realizing
[13:15]it was something anyone could do like I very much like my career has been kind of one foot in front
[13:21]of the other oh like no one no one has turned me away I guess I'll just keep going like I I've
[13:27]always had trouble kind of formulating like a concrete goal so I think stand-up has been very much
[13:34]the same thing where I like showed up and then everyone seemed okay with it so then I just kept
[13:38]showing up and kind of going where that led and yeah I think even now sometimes I'm like
[13:45]can't really believe that I do it like there is a little bit of a disconnect where I'm just like oh
[13:51]I guess this is my life like it because I am someone who lives so much in my head that sometimes
[13:57]it feels they're like there's a reality going on upstairs and then like what's actually happening
[14:03]and I have to remember to yeah engage with the real world and be like yeah people think you're a
[14:10]stand-up and you are and you have to go make them laugh tonight have you read other memoirs like
[14:17]comedian memoirs I read the Seinfeld one but I'm not sure what else I've read what did you read a
[14:21]bunch of others to prepare or just have you read them I think I've read a hand full over I'm
[14:28]I don't know if I read any to prepare but I do think I was like I don't want to you know
[14:36]steal what someone else was doing so I will you know make sure I'm kind of doing my own thing but
[14:42]I think I read Jesse Klein's essays we have going into it and maybe I reread one of Mindy
[14:48]Kaling's essay collections and I remember I read Tina Fey's like back when it came out and I was
[14:56]like I can't look at that because it's gonna make me feel very like incapable of writing my own
[15:03]book yeah but I had read yeah I'd read like Amy Poehler's and yeah I kind of love I had most
[15:09]recently read Maria Bamford's but that had come out like a lot sooner after I had written mine but
[15:15]yeah I think I just love like the way you hear different people's voices come so clearly
[15:21]through and they're writing yeah and also when you read them those are the edited versions of
[15:26]Tina Fey and Amy Poehler's books it's not like it's hard when we're like writing you compare what's
[15:32]in on the word doc to the book and there's a lot of steps in between totally totally
[15:37]would you want to write another book or are you writing another book I'm not writing another book
[15:42]at the moment but I think I'm open to it I yeah I'm like I don't know if it's like a thing where
[15:47]you like block out the really hard parts and you're like yeah I could do that again but I think
[15:52]I would just write maybe a different style of book like I think I wouldn't maybe feel the need
[15:58]to write another vulnerable essay collection anytime soon right I loved your resume of failures
[16:06]and like the things that happened and then you were like the fact that somebody else already thought
[16:10]of this is just another failure on brand on brand on brand do you really lose your diplomas or was
[16:17]that just funny no I couldn't not I could not tell you where they are so so great oh my gosh
[16:25]so what else do you like to do when you're not working and you're not writing books and
[16:28]like what's what's your favorite stuff that you do on your free time yeah I mean I'm a big reader
[16:36]myself I think curling up with the book is my happy place I was a kid who you know went to the library
[16:42]like it was the candy store like I was subsided and yeah I just love kind of nature getting out
[16:48]hiking yeah I live in LA so it is like I want you a lot of movies but I think that's just maybe
[16:54]everyone these days but yeah I mean I think I love above all regardless of what I'm doing just
[17:01]like spending time with people I love and I feel like even being in comedy like some of the
[17:06]hardest laughs I have or just you know with friends and yeah that feels ever more valuable especially
[17:13]after the pandemic yes so true you have to check out my bookstore in Santa Monica it's called
[17:18]Zivey's book shop oh my gosh I definitely will love a book of February so yeah that's been so
[17:25]much congratulations thank you thank you after reading the book do you feel like people know
[17:30]everything there is know about you or do you feel like you intentionally withheld some very important
[17:35]things that maybe you just want to keep to yourself I think I tried to be as open as I could I think
[17:43]for me it's more that especially with a form like memoir like writing from your life you're just
[17:50]we're all constantly changing so quickly as people like even from week to week day to day within the
[17:56]same day that sometimes it's like going back and reading something I'll be like well I don't
[18:01]feel exactly like that anymore so it is kind of that that balance of being like okay with
[18:08]something representing maybe a snapshot of where you were when you wrote it and knowing that
[18:13]you might not exactly be that person anymore totally that's true well you also I keep
[18:20]feeling like you also did this and you also did that but you did a lot of great things in the
[18:23]fact that you talked a lot about introversion and how you know coming out of your shell
[18:29]it's supposed to be this great thing and isn't necessarily a good thing to discuss
[18:34]yeah I mean I was raised I think I mean I think American culture period is like very you know
[18:43]being outgoing being the most charismatic person in the room is like an unalloyed good thing
[18:49]and I wouldn't argue that those are bad things but I do think if you're not that that is also
[18:56]okay and like a valid way of being like to not always pushing yourself to be the center of
[19:03]attention or like the person with the perfect anecdote like I think I have always been kind of a
[19:08]more thoughtful reserve person and like I think before I speak and if I am going to speak kind
[19:15]of like would stand up like I know what I'm going to say ahead of time it's a very controlled
[19:20]thing so I think only in the past few years have I really learned to be like that's okay like you
[19:27]don't have to always be pushing yourself to like speak more or take up like more space than then you
[19:35]are like I think there is also as a woman of color sometimes this idea that if you're like not trying
[19:41]to take up more room people aren't going to give it to you and I think I've had to kind of
[19:45]of navigate that line for myself of like what is just my own comfort zone and what is me trying
[19:51]to make myself smaller hmm yes well there's a lot to chew on when you think about people you know
[20:00]putting it down, sliding it onto the bookshelf.
[20:02]What do you want them to really take away from the breed?
[20:06]Yeah, I think for me, it is just like,
[20:08]these are things I wrestle with on a daily basis
[20:11]and maybe just like connecting with other people
[20:14]in their own struggles with these things.
[20:17]Cause I think I kind of went for topics
[20:20]where I was like, I don't think I'm ever gonna
[20:23]cleanly resolve my feelings or thoughts on these things.
[20:26]And I think it's nice to just know
[20:29]that we're all kind of on our own journeys at all times
[20:33]with different aspects of our lives,
[20:35]whether it be our bodies or our mental health
[20:37]or the way we relate to other people or our work.
[20:41]And yeah, just kind of meeting someone
[20:44]in wherever they are on their journey
[20:46]and hopefully like giving them a little company.
[20:49]That's lovely.
[20:50]Well, everyone can use a little company,
[20:51]especially through the tougher terrains.
[20:54]Yeah.
[20:55]What is your parting advice for aspiring authors?
[20:59]Oh my gosh, I would say my parting advice is even,
[21:05]I guess even in your lowest moments
[21:07]that's like still part of the process,
[21:11]like like cating the book,
[21:13]cating yourself like that's still, I guess, on task.
[21:18]Yep, not a straight line.
[21:20]Yes, that's a straight line.
[21:23]Okay, great.
[21:24]Well, Aparna, thank you so much.
[21:25]Thanks to congratulations on unreliable narrator.
[21:28]I wish you all the best.
[21:29]It's not always fun having to market a book
[21:32]as an introvert, but I wish you all the best.
[21:34]And we have a fun time and yeah, go check out the store.
[21:39]Thank you, I will.
[21:40]Okay. All right, take care.
[21:41]Bye, bye.
[21:44]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time
[21:47]to Read Books.
[21:48]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[21:50]at ZB Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[21:53]Also sign up for my newsletter at ZB Owens.com
[21:55]and sign up for my virtual book club
[21:57]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[22:00]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan,
[22:01]in fact, texture sound for the sound editing.
[22:03]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[22:05]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.