Jyoti Chand (Mamajotes) on Fitting Indian, Growing Up, & What She Hopes for Brown Kids
This conversation is part of the Brown Voices Project, a curated collection of conversations with South Asian Americans living lives that defy the stereotype of what “success” is supposed to look like for us. Their stories are shared here to inspire the next generation to imagine a wider sense of what is possible.
In Brown communities, the stories we hear about success are often narrow: A specific kind of job, a specific kind of life, a specific kind of achievement that signals to everyone around you that you made it. But what does it look like to define success entirely on your own terms… and then actually build it?
That’s some of what I discussed with Jyoti Chand, known across social media as @Mamajotes: an author, content creator, fashion founder, and mother of three. She’s the author of the graphic novel Fitting Indian, creator of a sleepwear brand, and the voice behind a platform that has grown to over 350,000 followers across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Threads. She is also five and a half years sober, and one of the most openly honest voices in the South Asian American digital space.
I spoke with her for the Be Inspired project about building a creative career, writing from her own darkest experiences, the dual identity of growing up Brown in America, and what she hopes for the next generation of brown kids in schools. Watch our conversation on YouTube (you can also listen on Spotify).
When I asked Jyoti how she defines success, her answer was immediate — and it had nothing to do with money, followers, or titles.
My biggest marker of success is that I own my time. Owning your time is more valuable than any amount of money you could hand me.
Jyoti Chand
She didn’t arrive here overnight. Before @Mamajotes was a full-time reality, Jyoti spent years running a concierge tutoring business (Beverly Hills, then Long Island, then Baltimore, then fully online) while building her creative life on the side—doing her master’s in creative writing, doing stand-up comedy in LA, writing…
I always knew the only way I was going to make it creatively is if I had a job flexible enough to allow it. And the only way to have a job flexible enough is to make your own schedule.
Jyoti Chand
The pivot to Mama Jotes full-time came in 2020, when her husband (a pediatric psychiatrist) told her it was her turn to go all in.
“I needed to hear him say: go for it, I can take care of us while you hustle. I couldn’t do it without hearing that. And then I treated @Mamajotes like it was a job before it was a job. I acted like I had a hundred thousand followers and just posted like I did… and then one day I did.”
On Fitting Indian and not wanting Brown kids to feel unseen
Fitting Indian is Jyoti’s graphic novel about a young Brown girl navigating identity, shame, public humiliation, drinking, and self-harm. It is technically fiction.
But it’s not far from Jyoti’s own story.
When she was eighteen, Jyoti attempted to take her own life. She also struggled with alcohol in her young adult years. She is now five and a half years sober.
Jyoti says she wrote the book because of what she needed at eighteen and didn’t have: the simple knowledge that she wasn’t alone.
I felt like no other Brown human had ever faced the problems I faced—because nobody ever talked about it. It was very isolating to not see that represented. So I thought: what if there was a Brown main character who was struggling with the things I struggled with?
Jyoti Chand
The result is a book that has resonated widely, particularly with young adult readers as well as with elder millennials who grew up navigating the same split between a deeply Indian home life and a school world that had no context for any of it.
On growing up between two worlds
Jyoti grew up in the La Puente/West Covina area of California, in a predominantly Mexican community, as the only Indian kid in her school.
Her home was deeply Indo-Burmese—she describes her home life as dad in a lungi, mom speaking Punjabi, her grandmother and extended family always around. Meanwhile, school was something else entirely.
When we were at home, we were so Indian. And then I went to school and there was nothing Indian about it—when Diwali came around, no one knew what that was.
Jyoti Chand
It’s a narrative she knows is shared (which is also exactly why Fitting Indian has resonated so widely).
So many of us battled this dual identity. You’re living with immigrants who are trying to preserve their culture, and you’re at school trying to fit in. That tension — that’s what the book is about.
Jyoti points to one major thing that’s changed for the next generation of our own Brown kids:
Representation. Holy moly. We have politicians, actors, writers, journalists, CEOs. The representation of Indians is not just in the medical or engineering space anymore.
Jyoti Chand
Jyoti Chand’s next book: Unsuitable
Jyoti’s next book, Unsuitable, will launch next year. It follows three generations of Indian women living under one roof: a mother-in-law, a mother, and an eighteen-year-old daughter who is pregnant. And it is, deliberately, not the story you expect.
In media, if a certain culture is portrayed in a certain way… that’s how we get stereotyped. So what if we changed that narrative? What if the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law are besties? What if the reaction to a teen pregnancy isn’t what you think?
On what a younger version of her would think of her now…
And she said a younger her would be proud of her. She also recognized she had to get to here the tough way:
I wish I had a playbook for how I went from low confidence and depressed at eighteen to where I am today — but there is no playbook. It just took a lot of time, inner work, and trusting my gut. That’s the only thing I had.
Jyoti Chand
This conversation is part of the Be Inspired archive, a series of profiles and conversations with South Asian Americans living lives that defy the stereotype of what “success” is supposed to look like for us. Snippets of this and other conversations will appear in Brown Voices: South Asian American Experiences in Schools, rereleasing this fall.
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