BROWN WOMEN HAVE EVERYTHING

Reflections on being a Southeast Asian immigrant woman in America and on the meaning of finding—and making—a home in the West.

Dasgupta, now a UNC-Wilmington professor of creative writing, became entranced by the world outside India after reading Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea as a 9-year-old in New Delhi, never imagining that her love of words would lead her to the United States. In this compendium of 18 essays, the author muses on the peripatetic path that took her from the heat and crowds of New Delhi to an MFA writing program in rural Idaho in 2006 and, later, to a job on the North Carolina coast. Her first challenge was navigating majority-white spaces that, while not overtly hostile, made her uncomfortably aware of her foreignness. Despite feeling excluded, alone, and homesick for India, Dasgupta found a way forward through friendships, marriage to an Indian American Sikh, and a life that, like the Modcloth dress she wore as a wedding gown, defied the Hindu traditions in which she had been raised. When she eventually left to take up a professorship 2,800 miles away, the author surprised herself by feeling “constantly homesick” for Idaho. As had been the case in graduate school, her job made Dasgupta feel the singularity of her status as a brown-skinned female professional among white Americans. At the same time, it also offered her the chance to indulge her passion for adventure while making her crave reconnection to India, which she found by cooking the foods of her childhood. As she explores issues of race, culture, and gender, Dasgupta's lively, intelligent book celebrates the “honor and dignity” of embracing the discomforts of the transnational life, which offers the unexpected rewards and delights of the unfamiliar.

Witty, thoughtful reading.