Growing Up In An Old-fashioned Bengali Hindu

There Was No Audience For My Books. The Indians Didn't Regard Me As An Indian And North Americans Couldn't Conceive Of Me Of A North American Writer, Not Being White And Brought Up On Wheat Germ. My Fiction Got Lost.

You See For Me, America Is An Idea. It Is A Stage For Transformation. I Felt When I Came To Iowa City From Calcutta That Suddenly I Could Be A New Person . . . What America Offers Me Is Romanticism And Hope . . . Suddenly, I Found Myself In A Country Where

I Flew Into A Small Airport Surrounded By Cornfields And Pastures, Ready To Carry Out The Two Commands My Father Had Written Out For Me The Night Before I Left Calcutta: Spend Two Years Studying Creative Writing At The Iowa Writers Workshop, Then Come Back Home And Marry The Bridegroom He Selected For Me From Our Caste And Class.

But, Christ, There's A Difference Between Exotic And Foreign, Isn't There? Exotic Means You Know How To Use Your Foreignness, Or You Make Yourself A Little Foreign In Order To Appear Exotic. Real Foreign Is A Little Scary, Believe Me.

Growing Up In An Old-fashioned Bengali Hindu Family And Going To A Convent School Run By Stern Irish Nuns, I Was Brought Up To Revere Rules. Without Rules, There Was Only Anarchy.