Zarna Garg fled India at age 14 to keep away from an organized marriage. Later, she moved to the Huge Apple and settled into life as a stay-at-home mother for years earlier than realizing that she — and her “large fats mouth” — needed extra.
Now, the award-winning comic — who has opened for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler — is telling her life story in a brand new memoir that, if it’s something like its writer, guarantees to depart readers breathless with laughter and completely impressed, and PEOPLE can completely debut its cowl.
This American Woman, whose cowl sees Garg, 49, sitting within the arms of Woman Liberty and carrying her torch, will hit bookshelves in April 2025 — and hopes to point out readers that it’s “by no means, ever too late to go after your dream,” Garg tells PEOPLE in an unique assertion.
“Do you know that in lots of international locations, being known as ‘an American lady’ is a slur? Together with in India, the place I grew up,” the comic tells PEOPLE. “I obtained known as ‘so American’ on a regular basis for my large fats loud mouth — an enormous legal responsibility for a brown lady. After I escaped an organized marriage by fleeing to the utopia of Akron, Ohio, ‘American lady’ is a moniker I now put on proudly.”
Finally, after fleeing her dwelling nation and touchdown within the Midwest, the comic “obtained to maneuver to New York Metropolis, marry who I needed and lift children I really appreciated,” she explains.
“However then I began having American issues of my very own: I used to be a stay-at-home mother for 17 years and I overlooked who I used to be and what I needed,” she tells PEOPLE. “By the point I got here out the opposite aspect, I assumed it was too late for me to have my very own desires. Guess what? It’s by no means too late.”
Garg says she “tripped and fell on my face just a few occasions,” however “lightning struck” when her children dared her to provide stand-up comedy a strive — and her life fell into place.
“Every thing in my life lastly clicked — my previous, my ache and above all, my weirdness,” she tells PEOPLE, including that she desires anybody who reads This American Lady to know that “it’s by no means, ever too late to go after your dream, irrespective of how messy, loopy or inconceivable it appears.”
Provides Garg: “In the event you win the day earlier than you die, you continue to gained!”
Jamie McCarthy/Getty
To get this message throughout, the comic “turns her astonishing life story right into a hilarious memoir — from narrowly escaping an organized marriage in India to carving her personal path in America and launching a blinding second act in midlife,” in response to the guide’s official synopsis.
“On Zarna’s very American quest to search out herself and her calling, she threw herself wholeheartedly into roles like dog-bite lawyer, loopy perfectionist stay-at-home mother, Indian matchmaker, prize-winning screenwriter and extra,” the outline continues.
“It wasn’t till a dare led her to a stand-up comedy open mic that Zarna lastly discovered her religious dwelling: getting paid chilly, exhausting money for her large, fats mouth. And as Zarna found, after surviving the brutal streets of Mumbai, the cutthroat world of stand-up comedy is nothing.”
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This American Woman comes out April 29, 2025 and is offered for preorder now, wherever books are bought.
