I am delighted to welcome author Priyanka Taslim back as we celebrate the release of Always Be My Bibi, a YA travel rom-com set in Bangladesh! In case you missed it, you can read our interview for her debut, The Love Match, here.
Interview with Priyanka Taslim
Let’s start off with a quick teaser about your book—describe ALWAYS BE MY BIBI in five words:
Fashionista and farm boy scheme!
What was the inspiration for ALWAYS BE MY BIBI?
A couple of things inspired ALWAYS BE MY BIBI! I wanted to write a heroine reminiscent of Cher Horowitz and Elle Woods, since you don’t really see main characters who fit that archetype who AREN’T blonde white girls.
It was also inspired by my trip to a tea garden in Bangladesh. It was incredibly beautiful and ethereal, but also the sort of charming destination Bangladesh never gets acknowledged for. I wanted to be able to write about the country in a way that highlighted special things about it, since similarly, travel romances almost always center the same European countries over and over or the “right” kind of Asian countries.
What was your favorite part about writing a book set in Bangladesh?
As mentioned above, Bangladesh is rarely mentioned outside of Bangladeshi media, especially in any positive context. I grew up with people never knowing what it was—what I was—so it was wonderful to get to set a rom-com there!
When Bangladesh IS mentioned, it’s usually to reference something bad. Glass Onion has a white character who employs sweatshop labor there. Extraction follows Chris Hemsworth’s character saving an Indian drug lord’s son from Bangladeshi captors. How I Met Your Mother—the very first time I ever saw a Bangladeshi character, played by an Iranian actor, in American media—includes a Bangladeshi man as a recurring taxi driver for the white main characters and makes a crack about how ugly Barney finds Bangladeshi women. There’s actually a long history of weaponizing western beauty standards and eugenics against women of color, because that was an element of Richard Nixon’s rhetoric for why it was okay for the U.S. to finance atrocities happening to Bangladeshi people during the independence conflict that Bibi’s grandmother tells her about—something only lightly touched on in the book, because it is ultimately a happy rom-com.
I hope that people are able to learn more about Bangladesh and appreciate its rich history and culture, as well as the ways it’s been exploited by colonization and imperialism to this day. I really want to show that Bangladeshi characters can be just like everyone else and deserve to be protagonists, not just tragic background characters with a yellow filter slapped over them.
ALWAYS BE MY BIBI is swoony and dramatic and bighearted and hilarious. It’s filled with mouthwatering descriptions of food, drop dead gorgeous fashion, settings that are unique and breathtaking. People and places like that deserve to have their stories told too.
Did your writing process change while working on your second novel or stay the same as when you wrote your debut, THE LOVE MATCH?
There were definitely ways that my writing process changed! THE LOVE MATCH is set in the city where I grew up, so I was as familiar with Paterson as the back of my own hand. ALWAYS BE MY BIBI, on the other hand, reflected my—and Bibi’s, and lots of other diaspora folks’—feelings as an outsider in a place like Bangladesh.
Bibi and I may have cultural ties to it, but we’re only slightly at more of an advantage than any other tourist. I actually decided to make her even more wrongfooted, to reflect a character unlike Zahra who can at least speak the language and is surrounded by the culture constantly—because I figured it would make Bibi a great reflection of most of my readers, who won’t be Bangladeshi. Bibi calls herself a coconut—brown on the outside, kind of white on the inside. She lives in Paterson like Zahra, but in this wealthy enclave that sets her apart, and she attends a private school with other rich kids who are not Bangladeshi. She can’t speak the language very well. Her idea of being South Asian is influenced only by her own family and things like Bollywood, which do not reflect Bangladesh authentically.
I’m more like Zahra when it comes to my own experiences, but we’re all far from experts when it comes to authentically portraying Bangladesh. Because of that, I needed to frontload writing ALWAYS BE MY BIBI with a bunch of research that THE LOVE MATCH didn’t require. I read about weather patterns and flora and fauna and the struggles faced by tea laborers, about the environmental impacts of the tea industry, about how the business is run—honestly, so much stuff. So a lot of my first draft had info dumps about those sorts of things—really, for my own future reference—and then, in later drafts, I had to go through and pare out whatever wasn’t necessary to the plot. Both books were pretty heavily plotted, but ALWAYS BE MY BIBI needed that extra touch.
What advice would you give to aspiring rom-com writers?
I think we sometimes forget the “com” part of a rom-com and focus only on the romance (probably because it can be genuinely hard to write humor, something that takes as much skill to write as any other genre)! The romance is the most important aspect in a rom-com, but don’t be afraid to have fun with the plot too!
Rom-coms often rely on situational humor, and building romantic chemistry also requires situations that encourage proximity between your two leads, so all you have to do is make those situations as silly as you can stomach them! In Bibi’s case, it helped that her voice is also naturally funny, so I was constantly giggling to myself while writing the book.
If you feel like you’ve gone too far, that’s where outside feedback comes in—beta readers, critique partners, your agent or editor if you already have them. Don’t be shy; test the waters and experiment with it! Read some popular rom-coms and see what makes you laugh or seems to fall short! Watch comedy specials and series that DON’T focus on the “rom” because their priority is the “com.” Strike the balance that works for you. Like any other skill, it can be learned and honed!
Can you share any teasers about what you are working on next?
Yes! My next book will hopefully be my adult debut, FROM MUMBAI, WITH LOVE. It’s not a straight up romance like my first two books as much as it is a commercial family drama with a romantic subplot, but I think (or at least hope) fans of THE LOVE MATCH and ALWAYS BE MY BIBI will enjoy it!
It follows a young woman who is invited to her estranged half-sister’s wedding in Mumbai after taking a DNA test reveals that the father she never knew is actually one of the wealthiest men in Asia, in the midst of determining which of his children should become the next CEO of his company. Not only that, but she’s pulled between two handsome, charismatic men who she meets there.
It’s been a hard book to write in many ways, but I hope readers of my young adult novels will find something to love in FROM MUMBAI, WITH LOVE too!
About Always Be My Bibi
Release Date: June 10, 2025
Find it: Goodreads, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Amazon
Clueless meets Jenna Evans Welch in this young adult rom-com about a spoiled American teenager who faces some major culture shock—and potential romance—when she jets off to Bangladesh for her sister’s wedding.
Bibi Hossain was supposed to get her first kiss this summer.
Too bad her father finds out and grounds her for breaking his most arcane rule: No boys until your sister gets married.
Just when Bibi thinks she’ll be stuck helping him at their popular fried chicken chain until school reopens, her oh-so-perfect older sister Halima drops a bombshell: she’s marrying the heir of a princely estate turned tea garden in Bangladesh. Soon, Bibi is hopping on the next flight to Sylhet for Halima’s Big Fat Bengali Wedding, hoping Abbu might even rethink the dating ban while they’re there.
Unfortunately, the stuffy Rahmans are a nightmare—especially Sohel, the groom’s younger brother. The only thing they can agree on is that their siblings are not a good match. But as the two scheme to break their siblings up, Bibi finds it impossible to stay away from the infuriatingly handsome boy.
Could her own happily ever after be brewing even as she stirs up trouble for her sister’s engagement—or is there more steeping at the tea estate than Bibi knows?
About Priyanka Taslim
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Priyanka Taslim is a Bangladeshi American writer, educator, and lifelong New Jersey resident. Having grown up in a bustling Bangladeshi diaspora community, surrounded by her mother’s entire clan and many aunties of no relation, her writing often features families, communities, and all the drama therein. Currently, Priyanka teaches English by day and tells all kinds of stories about Bengali characters by night. Her writing usually stars spunky heroines finding their place in the world . . . and a little swoony romance, too.
