Celadon Books Acquires Aarti Shahani Memoir at Auction

Celadon Books is pleased to announce our latest acquisition, HERE WE ARE by Aarti Shahani. Upon reading the manuscript, Senior Vice President and Co-Publisher Deb Futter knew Aarti’s authentic voice about her family’s immigration story needed to be shared. She acquired the book at auction from James Levine at Levine, Greenberg, Rostan.

HERE WE ARE: AMERICAN DREAMS, AMERICAN NIGHTMARES follows the lives of Aarti, the precocious scholarship kid at one of Manhattan’s most elite prep schools, and her dad, the shopkeeper who mistakenly sells watches and calculators to the notorious Cali drug cartel. Together, the two represent the extremes that coexist in our country, even within a single family, and a truth about immigrants that gets lost in the headlines.

Ultimately, HERE WE ARE is a coming-of-age story, a love letter from an outspoken modern daughter to her soft-spoken Old World father. She never expected they’d become best friends.

“It is so rare to read a memoir with tremendous heart that is also about an issue that is so timely and important,” Deb says. “Aarti Shahani’s messy, wonderful family story about their immigration will touch reader’s hearts as well as highlight this important topic. It is a must read: exuberant, heartbreaking, moving.”

Aarti Shahani is a Technology Correspondent for NPR based in Silicon Valley. Before journalism, she was a community organizer in New York City, helping prisoners and families facing deportation. She authored a study of immigrants inside Rikers Island that became pivotal to a successful campaign to sever ties between the jail and the Department of Homeland Security and shape the national sanctuary cities movement. Aarti received a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago.

HERE WE ARE will publish in October 2019.

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