A Farmer Is Dependent On

I Am An American, Not An Asian-american. My Rejection Of Hyphenation Has Been Called Race Treachery, But It Is Really A Demand That America Deliver The Promises Of Its Dream To All Its Citizens Equally.

The Picture Of Mother Teresa That I Remember From My Childhood Is Of A Short, Sari-wearing Woman Scurrying Down A Red Gravel Path Between Manicured Lawns. She Would Have In Tow One Or Two Slower-footed, Sari-clad Young Indian Nuns. We Thought Her A Freak. Probably Wed Picked Up On Unvoiced Opinions Of Our Loreto Nuns.

Bengalis Love To Celebrate Their Language, Their Culture, Their Politics, Their Fierce Attachment To A City That Has Been Famously Dying For More Than A Century. They Resent With Equal Ferocity The Reflex Stereotyping That Labels Any Civic Dysfunction Anywhere In The World 'another Calcutta.'

Through My Fiction, I Make Mainstream Readers See The New Americans As Complex Human Beings, Not As Just The Other.

[on Her Writing Agenda:] Make The Familiar Exotic; The Exotic Familiar.