The Best At It (Book Review)

Suggested Citation: Siwach, A. (2021, April 8). Book Review: The Best At It. Queer Academia. URL.

About the author
Maulik Pancholy is an actor and debut author who is best known for his roles as Jonathan on 30 Rock and Baljeet Tjinder in Phineas and Ferb. Pancholy came out as gay in a November 2013 interview with Out. Pancholy also served on President Obama’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. During his time with the administration, he helped co-found an anti-bullying campaign that he is still actively leading, which is called Act to Change. The message of the campaign is one that Maulik clearly lives his life by, celebrating diversity.

Why this book?

One of the reasons I chose this book is that I had to go through a major identity crisis during not just childhood but even after the teenage as well. I was excited to know about the journey of an Indian boy in a country that is considered more advanced and open than India. Not only the book focuses on the issues related to identity but also all major conflicts any child goes through during middle school all of which made me curious to see how the life of an Indian-American child is fantasized around the same lines, which I have lived in India.

Introduction - Setting, Characters

Gender identity and sexuality are still associated with the social stigma and extreme taboo in South Asian society and this book by Maulik Pancholy is an effort to bring about understanding to the generations that still look down on these subjects. The best at it is a fictional story that revolves around the journey of a twelve-year-old boy, Rahul. Rahul, the lead character of the story is a typical Indian American boy from a small town of Indiana, who is beginning to realize that he may be gay. Given the social stigma and taboo associated with the concept of homosexuality, this realization brings anxiety and bullying at school due to his cultural and sexual identity.

In this book, Pancholy tried to express the presence and impact of family and communities such as school, around the protagonist. While Rahul is quite inclined towards his own path, he also has loving parents, a grandfather(Bhai) who is one of his closest friends, and a large, complicated, and nuanced South Asian community of aunties and uncles which ultimately makes a home for him.

Summary Of Arguments
The title of the book is based on one of the major themes of the story. The story focuses on Rahul’s struggle as a twelve-year-old child who gets into all kinds of conflicts due to his identity and is different from the majority of the peers around him and how his parents encourage him to find help. Given all these struggles, Rahul develops issues like waking up at odd hours, worried about doors left unlocked or stoves left burning, feeling the need to check things multiple times. His grandfather Bhai, notices this, and one night, he tells him a story and he acquires a major takeaway that if he finds that one thing, which he is best at, all his problems will be solved. His journey to being The Best at It begins from there while at the same time he finds two major obstacles, one is that he doesn’t know what to even be the best at, and the other is that he’s terrified of failure but with the help of his best friend Chelsea, Rahul could begin his journey to be “The Best at It.”

Summary Of Content
As the story begins, we see how Rahul avoids playing on the streets during the vacations because there is a fear of being bullied by the schoolmates, fear has created restrictions for him. This fear is a result of the constant bullying that he faced at the school. As the story progresses, we see how his grandfather helps him to set out to discover that one thing he can be “the best at,” he finds himself to accept his own complicated identity, and measure the potential fallout of squeezing it into a world where the acceptance of being different is almost negligible.

Despite the struggle to find something that he is best at, many other issues are showing up that he doesn’t know how to deal with, such as his OCD, sexuality, bullying, and racism. Much of the bullying that he faces at school is due to his perceived sexuality by one student, and because Rahul is Indian. Throughout the story, Rahul learns to embrace who he is despite what others may say and come to terms with all of the differences.

This story dealt with so many topics in such an interesting way, without being overwhelming for the age group that it was intended for. While the book was written for ages 8-12, I think that it would be useful for high schoolers as well because the characters are quite relatable. I could relate to my own schooling experiences while reading the book.

Analysis
According to Erik Erikson, personality develops in a predetermined order through eight stages of psychosocial development, from infancy to adulthood. During each stage, the person experiences a psychosocial crisis which could have a positive or negative outcome for personality development. For Erikson (1958, 1963), these crises are of a psychosocial nature because they involve psychological requirements of the individual conflicting with that of society. Rahul was also constantly negotiating his psychological needs with the norms of the society he was a part of. Rahul developed disorders such as OCD as expressed in the story which was due to the failure in completing one of the stages of development according to Erikson. Rahul’s age is twelve which is the age where Identity vs. Role Confusion begins and success leads to the virtue of fidelity according to the fifth stage in Erikson's theory of psychosocial development. In this sense, not just Rahul but some of his peers also seem to have failed the stage because they are not able to commit to others on the basis of accepting others, when there may be ideological differences.

This is Rahul’s age of adolescence, an important stage for the transition from childhood to adulthood. Rahul is becoming more independent and begins to look at his relationships, families, housing, etc. Since he found himself different, he started putting all the efforts to belong to society and fit in. He seems to be questioning his morality and stuck between what is right and what is wrong.

The adolescent mind is essentially a mind or moratorium, a psychosocial stage between childhood and adulthood, and between the morality learned by the child, and the ethics to be developed by the adult (Erikson, 1963, p. 245).

During this stage, adolescents re-examine their identity and try to find out exactly who he or she is. There are majorly two identities of an individual that are involved, the sexual and the occupational.

If we see from Kohlberg’s point of view, Rahul is at the conventional level of moral development, where we begin to internalize the moral standards of valued adult role models. Authority is internalized but not questioned, and reasoning is based on the norms of the group to which the person belongs. (Kohlberg, 1984). Rahul continuously questioned his identity to be moral or not but the support from his grandfather and parents helped him to form positive views about himself.

Conclusion
Pressuring someone into an identity can result in rebellion in the form of establishing a negative identity, and in addition to this feeling of unhappiness(Erikson).

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, “By age four, most children have a stable sense of their gender identity.” This inherent aspect of one’s identity comes from within. We do not choose our gender. It is one of the most fundamental aspects of a person’s identity, deeply influences every part of life. This crucial aspect of identity is narrowly defined and rigidly enforced. People who identify themselves to be outside of its norms, face disapproval, discrimination, and even violence, which I, Maulik, and Rahul faced in some or the other ways.

Maulik has actually drawn inspiration from his own journey. When Maulik was a middle schooler, he was also trying to run away from himself, he made all possible efforts to just fit in as a normal boy, and was struggling to find comfort in who he actually was. I can totally relate to that, when I was growing up, I had been through a similar kind of Identity crisis. There was just no one I could talk about it to. There weren't even any characters in the movies or books who looked like me, I struggled to find that same connection with who and what I saw in the media around me as a child and teenager but this book to me, looks like a potential solution for children and teenagers like myself, Maulik Pancholy and Rahul to remove shame and secrecy associated with LBGTQIA+.

At last, Rahul realizes that being the best is finding something you love and doing it until you get better at it.

Maulik’s biggest advice:

“Live your truth. If you’re struggling, know that there is help. But always be yourself.”

References

Erikson, E. H. (1963). Youth: Change and challenge. New York: Basic books.

Erickson, E. H. (1958). Young man Luther: A study in psychoanalysis and history. New York: Norton.

Kohlberg, L. (1984). The Psychology of Moral Development: The Nature and Validity of Moral Stages (Essays on Moral Development, Volume 2). Harper & Row

Written by: Ankit Siwach

Reviewed by: Smriti Gupta and Aashi Singh

About the Author: Ankit is a student of MA Education. He is keenly interested in exploring the psychological aspects of education for adolescents.