Like so many others, I began writing when I read authors whose names sounded like my own. These novels by Lahiri, Rushdie, and Roy won all kinds of awards and provided the retort I needed to the typical South Asian first-gen parental gauntlet of doctor, engineer, or lawyer. How about Booker Prize winner?

I studied these books in college until the tropes became legible: tradition vs. assimilation, nostalgia for a homeland, the pressure of success as defined by the West. I also saw how they performed a very specific kind of cultural translation. On the covers, beneath the awards stickers, sat mangos or a sari, with Persian and Mughal design flourishes that made clear to white people that they would be eating spicy tonight.…