Interview with Author of Are You Enjoying? Mira Sethi

On 31 March, 2022, Morningside College virtually welcomed the author of our One Book Programme Selection, Are You Enjoying?, Mira Sethi to campus. Each year, one book is chosen by the College for first-year students, fellows, and the wider Morningside community to read. In an interview with the college, Sethi discussed Are You Enjoying?, the craft of writing, and contemporary Pakistan’s culture and politics. She explores how the structure of her writing, in addition to her own life growing up in both Pakistan and the West — the United States and the United Kingdom — has shaped her fictional narratives. University community members can access Are You Enjoying? digitally through the library and her full talk can be viewed here.

Students at Morningside have had many opportunities to interact with Are You Enjoying? First year students were required to read two of the book’s short stories, “A Life of Its Own” Parts One and Two, for our General Education 1001 course “Current Dilemmas and their Histories” and consider how philosophical frameworks can be applied to realistic fictional situations.

Our first-ever Morningside Exhibition and annual photography competition were similarly inspired by Are You Enjoying?. The exhibition, titled Not Just a Selfie: Inquiries of the Present, asked students to consider how snapshots of their lives, much like the short stories presented by Sethi, can be representations of identity in specific times and places. The themes for Morningside’s 2022 Photography Competition – Past, Present and Future – also drew inspiration from Are You Enjoying?, with Sethi acting as the final judge for the competition. Sethi announced the grand prize winner on the College Instagram, which can be viewed here.