{"id":270906,"date":"2025-02-03T13:25:39","date_gmt":"2025-02-03T18:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/?p=270906"},"modified":"2025-02-03T17:21:12","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T22:21:12","slug":"upasna-barath-comedic-timing-bi-dating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xtramagazine.com\/culture\/upasna-barath-comedic-timing-bi-dating-270906","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Comedic Timing\u2019 is an unusually accurate depiction of dating as a bi woman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

REVIEW: Upasna Barath\u2019s swoony debut novel challenges the norms of queer literature<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In early 2020, after a couple of years of exclusively dating women or gender nonconforming people, I found myself in a scenario I didn\u2019t expect to happen ever again in my life: I met a straight cis man I was attracted to. I already felt shaky and uncertain in my queer identity, having only come out as queer in my early 30s and convinced that I wasn\u2019t gay enough<\/em>. While it didn\u2019t work out, it did lead me to understand the expansiveness of my sexuality, which is still something I grapple with at times. It\u2019s also an experience that, while extremely common among my peers, isn\u2019t something that I often find in the queer literature I read. While bisexuality certainly comes up in literature I\u2019ve read, it never feels quite like my own lived experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, as the romance genre keeps gaining popularity and getting modernized for a new generation of readers, having queer characters is becoming more of a thing. The popularity of the very queer, very horny novels of Casey McQuiston has helped to usher new queer writers into the genre. Upasna Barath\u2014whose debut novel Comedic Timing<\/em> was released by the buzzy new romance novel company 831 Stories<\/a>\u2014is one of those voices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barath, who identifies as bisexual, knew she wanted to write a romance novel that shed light on the experience of dating as a bisexual woman. Comedic Timing<\/em> follows Naina Rao, fresh off a breakup with her longtime older girlfriend Sofia, and moving to New York from Chicago. At a party, Naina meets David and their connection begins just as friends, but leads Naina into a tailspin about her own sexual identity. Barath wanted to write Comedic Timing<\/em> because at times she feels left out of queer conversations as a bisexual person, but she also didn\u2019t want to create something that felt defensive. \u201cI wanted to add something to the conversation about bisexuality and I wanted to take a risk because maybe Naina was with a man and then she finds herself attracted to a woman for the first time. But I feel like that [type of bisexual representation] is more so the expectation,\u201d Barath explains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Naina and David first meet, there\u2019s instantly an easy attraction between the two as they make jokes about being the brown people at the party. Barath says she admires the way writers like Tia Williams (Seven Days in June, The Perfect Find)<\/em> write about characters of colour. Comedic Timing<\/em> isn\u2019t about race, but it inherently applies to all the choices the two make. \u201cThe nature of David and Naina both being brown adds a lot to their dynamic and their level of comfort. They have so much comfort with each other immediately because of that. They move through the world in similar ways in terms of their colours. So that was something that I wanted to do, but I didn\u2019t want it to necessarily be about an Indian woman and an Iranian man,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While that\u2019s something that immediately unites them, Naina is in a new space that exists outside the queer Chicago circle she had established with her ex-girlfriend and gay male best friend, Jordan. So when David assumes that her ex was a cis man, saying he wouldn\u2019t have guessed that Naina dated women, she immediately gets defensive. Barath says she wanted to take Naina out of her comfort zone in order for the character to take a look at how she defines her own queerness. \u201cI found it really interesting when I was writing it. What does it mean to take this character completely out of her element and the things she relied on before to determine her queerness or validate it? What happens when we take those things away? And I guess the answer is she has to confront the fact that she doesn\u2019t need anything to anchor herself in her queerness other than her unapologetic acceptance of it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What roots Barath\u2019s swoony narrative in reality is Naina\u2019s rocky road to accepting her queerness, while also accepting her newfound attraction to someone unexpected. Barath touches on familiar and beloved romance tropes such as friends-to-lovers and even forbidden romance to explore Naina\u2019s bisexuality in the context of this blossoming relationship with a heterosexual cis man, which also allows her to explore Naina\u2019s own internalized biphobia. That\u2019s a risk that Barath purposefully wanted to take. \u201cI wanted to do the reverse and I also wanted to challenge queer readers with this book. For me, it\u2019s not so much about presenting a heterosexual relationship as much as what does it look like to be a bisexual cis woman and date a straight cis man because even though it\u2019s not necessarily a queer dynamic, the character is approaching that dynamic through a queer lens. It completely colours her experience in a way that a straight woman does not experience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Barath wants to challenge queer readers with some of the experiences of dating as a bi woman, it was also important to show Naina\u2019s desire for both David and her ex Sofia. While her connection with David begins as friends and slowly becomes more emotional and eventually physical, Sofia is introduced toward the end of the novel and it gives a whole new view on Naina\u2019s desire for women and specifically her relationship with Sofia. But it also gets into the assumptions that can be placed upon her now that she\u2019s dating a man. Light spoiler: Sofia does not take it well. Her reaction, while painful, feels realistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This reiterates what Barath wants to do with the novel. \u201cWhat I said about feeling like this book is a part of a greater conversation about bisexuality, again, I really wanted to challenge the very common narrative of bisexuality. I mean, there are so many narratives about bisexuality: that it\u2019s just a pit stop, or bisexual women being the butt of the joke because they have a cis straight boyfriend, which is funny. I get the humour in it, but I do think it can also, just like any joke, harm people. I wanted to challenge readers, especially queer readers, who are reading this book, and if they feel [an] aversion to Naina\u2019s attraction to David, to ask themselves where that comes from.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naina\u2019s questioning of her sexual identity and\u2014by and large\u2014everything about herself, understandably causes major anxiety and upheaval in her already morphing and changing life, and Barath says it was important to make sure those anxieties showed up, especially in the ways that shape Naina\u2019s relationships. \u201cNaina\u2019s anxiety really needed to be in there because my point in doing that wasn\u2019t just to write a book about what it means to be anxious and dating, but also the inherent bisexual experience, regardless of what the relationship looks like on the outside\u2014what the person is experiencing is inherently a part of this greater experience in the queer community,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was reading Comedic Timing<\/em>, it felt nice to get a book that just got it\u2014the anxiety-inducing feeling of unexpected attraction shaking up an identity you\u2019ve just got comfortable in. But it also shows how important it is to not write off those attractions. While that relationship didn\u2019t work out for me, it was one that helped me to understand what my queerness looks like, and to be unapologetic about it. Barath wants to challenge audiences with this book, especially as more stories about bisexual characters come out. But at the same time, she wanted it to have something that anyone could relate to. \u201cThere is a universal truth that I was hoping would apply to romance readers because the fact of the matter is I think a lot of straight white people are going to read this book. I want my work to always challenge people. So whether you\u2019re challenging your own implicit bias or challenging a world view that you have, or creating space for a new lens, that was something that was really important to me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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