People Change
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4.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
*FINALIST FOR THE CITY OF CALGARY W.O. MITCHELL BOOK PRIZE*
“A deeply generous and honest gift to the world.”
—Elliot Page
The author of I’m Afraid of Men lets readers in on the secrets to a life of reinvention.
Vivek Shraya knows this to be true: people change. We change our haircuts and our outfits and our minds. We change names, titles, labels. We attempt to blend in or to stand out. We outgrow relationships, we abandon dreams for new ones, we start fresh. We seize control of our stories. We make resolutions.
In fact, nobody knows this better than Vivek, who’s made a career of embracing many roles: artist, performer, musician, writer, model, teacher. In People Change, she reflects on the origins of this impulse, tracing it to childhood influences from Hinduism to Madonna. What emerges is a meditation on change itself: why we fear it, why we’re drawn to it, what motivates us to change, and what traps us in place.
At a time when we’re especially contemplating who we want to be, this slim and stylish handbook is an essential companion—a guide to celebrating our many selves and the inspiration to discover who we’ll become next.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Transforming yourself is both exciting and scary—and Vivek Shraya is here to help you through it. Shraya has relished the act of changing herself since she was a kid, growing up in a Hindu household where the gods were constantly morphing and growing. In this refreshingly honest read, she sheds light on the difficulties of embracing change and discovering our individuality in a world that often tries to suppress fluidity in favour of rigid stability. We loved reading about how Shraya’s positive relationship with constant change has bolstered her relationships, her art, her career, and, most importantly, her sense of self. We were floored by her honesty—and inspired to be kinder to ourselves when it comes to expressing ourselves and letting ourselves grow. People Change inspires us to keep transforming.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Musician and artist Shraya (I'm Afraid of Men) weaves savvy cultural criticism with raw personal reflections in this masterful investigation of reinvention. Even as change is acknowledged as inevitable, Shraya interrogates the negative connotations attached to the concept of transformation as something inherently superficial and unnecessary—pointing out that "the phrase ‘reinvent the wheel' is generally preceded by the warning ‘don't'." Yet reinvention, she argues, has played a pivotal role in the histories of everyone from pop stars to gods, as well as her own. Looking to examples from her life, she celebrates the positive impact that change has had on her growth; her divorce from her partner, for instance, "unexpectedly allowed me to fall in love with her again and again," and her coming out as trans, she writes, only reaffirmed her certainty "that I want to keep changing." As she gracefully flits from meditations on the self to Krishna (the embodiment of "multiplicity") and Madonna's 1998 "comeback" album, Ray of Light (a symbolic victory over the "shadow of controversy... that landed on her career during her Sex book era"), she offers a poignant exploration of identity and the ways it can be transcended as an act of resistance. This makes an enlightening case for embracing change during a time that needs it most.
