*By Samantha Errico*
Fashion designer Rachel Roy and daughter Ava Dash noticed that very few young adult novels featured Indian narratives. So they decided to write one themselves.
"We realized there have been so many retellings of Greek myths, so we decided that we wanted to be the first," Dash told Cheddar. "So we went through and found a story that really spoke to us."
"I asked her if she knew any Indian myths," Roy said of a telling interaction she had with her daughter, "and she said 'no, you haven't taught me any.'"
According to Roy, who is half-Indian, the book was also inspired by her father, who was born in Bangalore, India.
Eventually, the mother-daughter pair settled on "96 Words for Love," a story about young love and self-discovery. The coming-of-age myth follows a 17-year-old girl who "falls in love and forgets who she is," Dash said. The title, she added, refers to all 96 ways one can say the word "love" in Sanskrit.
Roy said that while she was developing the story, her then-teenage daughter was facing some of the same challenges as her fictional protagonist.
"What do I do next? Is it what my parents want me to do? Is it social media and what I see reflected in entertainment wants me to do?"
Above all, Roy said, she wants to empower her daughter to celebrate "what makes us beautiful both on the inside and on the outside."
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/fashion-designer-rachel-roy-writes-young-adult-novel-with-daughter).
Team USA's Uneven Start, Optimism Plummets & 'Old' Stuns Box Office
Despite the protests and concerns over safety during COVID-19, advertisers haven't stopped backing the Games.
The flame at Tokyo’s National Stadium and another cauldron burning along the waterfront near Tokyo Bay throughout the games will be sustained in part by hydrogen, the first time the clean fuel source will be used to power an Olympic fire.
Australia has garnered enough international support to defer for two years an attempt by the United Nations’ cultural organization to downgrade the Great Barrier Reef’s World Heritage status because of damage caused by climate change.
Cheddar News’ Chloe Aiello reports on tensions between the NYPD and the New York City LGBTQ+ community at the Queer Liberation March this year.
The Big Apple is betting big on Lin-Manuel Miranda's "In the Heights" musical to drive tourism to Washington Heights, a neighborhood hit hard by the pandemic.
High-end smoke shop Higher Standards decided to celebrate New York marijuana legalization by commissioning a mural on the store’s facade at Manhattan's Chelsea Market.
Known as the Indians since 1915, Cleveland’s Major League Baseball team will be called Guardians.
The Tokyo Games have arrived at last, after a yearlong delay. They're a multinational showcase of the finest athletes of a world fragmented by disease.
Jill and Carlo preview this weekend's Olympic events, a sobering warning from the CDC, the NFL trades the carrot for the stick when it comes to vaccines, and more.
