The Traveler Feels At Home Everywhere, Because

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.

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

What Was The Duty Of The Teacher If Not To Inspire?

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.

In Other Words, My Literary Agenda Begins By Acknowledging That America Has Transformed Me. It Does Not End Until I Show How I (and The Hundreds Of Thousands Like Me) Have Transformed America.