PositiveThe Literary ReviewSejal Shah seamlessly invites you into the experience of a life other than your own. The Rochester native and creative writing teacher explores life as an Indian-American and her relationships with her culture and identity in this debut memoir in essays ... Each essay is an engaging read. Some are warm and lighthearted, the recollections of a charismatic writing teacher, or about the practice of writing postcards to friends. Others are more grave, the wake of 9/11, a friend who took her own life. While these parts are joined by the running theme of being Indian-American, This is One Way to Dance is by no means a rambling lecture on that one topic. It’s a picture of an individual, accounting for cultural identity among many other things. This is part of what makes the running theme stand out so powerfully ... The memoir brings you in and gives you one person to care about, someone whose clever and compelling voice paints the world around her so vividly, and then shows you how those big problems affect her. This is why it’s so crucial to the functioning of the memoir that the moments captured are widespread, from lighthearted to serious—they create the full picture of a person and make room for connection.