*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).
The 2020 news cycle apparently hasn't gotten the memo we're in a new year. Jill and Carlo break down the early results out of Georgia, what to expect during this Electoral College vote today, plus the growing frustrations over the slow vaccine rollout and much more.
American Airlines said Tuesday that it will ban companion animals gradually by Feb. 1. As required by federal rules, passengers with a trained service dog will still be allowed to bring the dog on board at no extra charge.
This first week of 2021 is shaping up to be a doozy: growing concerns over two new COVID-19 variants as UK goes back into lockdown, Georgians go to the polls, escalation with Iran, and more.
Britain has become the latest nation to abolish the so-called “tampon tax.”
Cheddar looks forward to a new year for music — and everything else — with a playlist to put 2020 behind us all.
Jill and Carlo are back for the new year, and it's already a doozy. They talk about what to expect in this critical week in American politics, why the vaccine rollout is going so slowly, and more.
Ford's vice president of enterprise product line management Jim Baumbick joined Cheddar to discuss the new ad campaign to push for people to continue following COVID safety guidelines into the new year.
The race to vaccinate millions of Americans is off to a slower, messier start than public health officials and leaders of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed had expected.
Farewell 2020 - we're not sorry to see you go! Here is all the news you Need2Know for Thursday, December 31, 2020.
As a safer way to travel during the COVID-19 pandemic, James Ashurst, executive vice president at the RV Industry Association, said the RVs already had been trending with consumers.
