First published 1988
Jasmine adjusts her sari in a Queens apartment, watching her American-born daughter reject the curry she spent hours preparing. In another story, a Ugandan refugee encounters his first Iowa winter while his white neighbors whisper behind storm doors. These characters inhabit Mukherjee's America, where a Vietnamese boat person might fall in love with an Italian barber's son, where a Trinidadian nanny discovers her employer's secrets, where a Bengali professor faces tenure review while his marriage crumbles. Each person carries the weight of two worlds. They experience sudden moments of connection across cultural divides, then retreat into familiar suspicions. Fear mingles with wonder as they navigate job interviews, dinner parties, and chance encounters on city streets. The stories reveal how cultural collision creates both electricity and friction in everyday American life.
Genres: fiction, short-stories, contemporary, cultural
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: America, Iowa, Queens, Trinidadian, Uganda, Vietnam
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
197 pages · Hardcover · Grove Press