Author Tahmima Anam on The Startup Wife and Her Creative Influences

The Startup Wife, by acclaimed author Tahmima Anam, is a fresh and bold examination of society’s obsession with social media and glorification of its creators. At once wickedly clever, hilarious, romantic and shocking, Anam's latest is a genuine literary gem that I could not put down, and has already received starred reviews and praise from the likes of Publishers Weekly, Kirkus and author Rumaan Alam ahead  of its July 13 release.

The story follows tech genius Asha Ray as she introduces a new program that replicates her husband’s ability to create profound sacred-yet-secular rituals, from a funeral service derived from the arcane lore of Game of Thrones and The Great British Baking Show to a cat baptism. Asha’s new form of social media is meant to fight the inherent “evils” of technology, but plans spiral out of control when Asha’s invention goes beyond viral and the world deems her husband the new messiah. As the story hurtles toward its shocking conclusion, we witness the thousand subtle cuts Asha takes as she struggles to assert herself in the white, male-dominant tech industry. 

In this interview, Anam opens up about the library’s role in her childhood, her background in social anthropology, the inspiration for Asha Ray (fun fact: she's partly based on my wonderful college roommate, Anam’s younger sister), and why she wanted to question male-dominated tech culture.

Off the Shelf (OtS): Welcome, Tahmima Anam, to Off the Shelf! I’m so excited to pick your incredible brain. Let’s get started with a little background: what’s your first memory of visiting a library?

Tahmima Anam (TA): Well, as it so happens, my first memory of visiting a library is in New York! We moved to Queens when I was seven years old. I had just started speaking English, and my parents took me to the public library in Flushing every weekend. I still remember the smell of those bookshelves, the quiet, the rows and rows of books—I spent so many happy afternoons there. Recently, we spent a few summers in Astoria and I got to do it all over again with my children. I think the public library system [in New York City] is just amazing. 

OtS: As an author, what do libraries mean to you?

TA: Libraries are little miracles. I was an only child [for almost 15 years], and reading was my most beloved activity growing up. It’s a cliche for writers to say that, I know, but it’s true. We lived in Thailand when I was a teenager, and there weren’t many English-language libraries. We used to drive all the way across town, several hours there and back [to the library] and we’d come home with a huge pile of books for the week. My father is also a voracious reader, and some of my happiest childhood memories are of sitting side by side with him on the sofa, each of us with our own book. 

OtS: You were born in Dhaka, live in London, but The Startup Wife takes place (mostly) in New York City. How did your story wind up in the city that never sleeps?

TA: When I was two years old, my father got a job with the UN, so we left Bangladesh and moved to Paris. Then, a few years later, my father got transferred to New York, and we moved again. This city had a major impact on our entire family—my mother went back to school and got a masters in social work from CUNY, and I learned English. I remember how intimidating New York felt to all of us at first, but by the time we left, we were all heartbroken, because it had become so familiar. 

OtS: Your book is told from Asha’s perspective. She is a Bengali American grad student and newlywed working on developing empathy in artificial intelligence. She’s wildly brilliant, funny, relatable, and has a very cool pi tattoo. She felt so real, so layered, like someone I would love to befriend. Who or what inspired this character?

TA: Asha is the girl of my dreams. One of the really great things about being a writer is that you get to imagine a life that you maybe didn’t have the opportunity to live yourself. I got to live vicariously through Asha, to imagine a woman who was much more at ease in the world than I ever was—someone sassy, brimming with confidence, and with a wicked sense of humor. She’s inspired by my incredible girlfriends, who fill my life with laughter and wisdom, and also by my younger sister, who takes no prisoners. 

OtS: Asha’s program mimics her husband's ability to create profound rituals. Both the program and Cyrus generate these rituals by homing in on the most influential aspects of a person’s life, such as their history, traditions, a favorite pop culture reference, and their desired ritual type. The results are fascinating and captivating. How did you come up with this concept?

TA: I studied social anthropology in college and grad school, and ritual is central to the way we understand culture. I’ve always found ritual fascinating as a central organizing principle, and when I was trying to come up with a startup that would be worthy of Asha, it seemed like a perfect fit. 

OtS: I know absolutely nothing about the worlds of tech or startups, but you clearly do. You not only designed Asha’s program but also the intricacies of Utopia, the incubator that acquires the program, plus the other startups inside it. What is your connection to this world?

TA: I’m an insider/outsider in the tech world. My husband runs a music tech company, and I’ve been on the board for the last ten years. So I’ve watched this company grow, and been able to be at board meetings, investment pitches, and tech conferences. I enjoyed imagining what it might have been like if I’d been running a startup - and that’s where the character of Asha was born. 

OtS: Utopia seeks tech “that will support human community” after the world’s end. They list a pandemic as one of the possible endings, and at one point we begin to see the ripples of COVID-19. Did you plan to incorporate a viral pandemic, or did our reality influence your plot?

TA: I wrote most of the novel before there was even a hint of a global pandemic, so it was kind of eerie when it actually happened. I set up the Utopia incubator as a home for preppers—people who were going to use innovation to deal with the apocalypse. I was in the process of editing the novel when the actual pandemic hit, so I felt compelled to include little hints of it towards the end of the novel, if only so my characters could say “aha, I told you this would happen!”

OtS: In many ways, The Startup Wife is a story about society’s obsession with and reliance upon technology and social media. But it’s also a story of a woman of color entering the tech industry, a typically white male dominant world. Why did you want to tell these stories?

TA: In tech, the word “disrupt” is sacred; people think technology is going to change everything. And yet, some of the major structures of power, like gender and race, are still firmly in place. In fact, the way that tech founders are seen as visionary leaders, almost as the prophets of the new era, is just reinforcing the notion of the white, western, male hero. So I wanted to question that, and to portray this world from the perspective of a woman of color, and what obstacles she might face on her journey.

OtS: I know many of our readers have The Startup Wife on their To Be Read list. I’d love to know, what books are on yours? 

TA: Right now I’m reading Katherine Heiny’s new book, Early Morning Riser. Other books by my bedside: Black Buck by Matteo Askaripur, Assembly (September 2021) by Natasha Brown and Elif Shafak’s new novel, The Island of Missing Trees (November 2021), which I think is her best yet.

Anam crafts a fascinating world of well-intentioned social-tech that had me yearning to download fictional apps—even after discovering their flaws. For now, I’ll have to content myself by visiting the utopiacollective.ai, a “fun thing” Anam built, inspired by programs in The Startup Wife (which continue to receive funding offers from real startups). I recommend perusing the site after reading the book; it’s a great extension of Anam’s incredible mind.