Yet lately it has occurred to me that Lahiri came of age in circumstances very different from mine or Sathian’s. In an essay Lahiri later wrote about the state, she said that her family “didn’t fundamentally belong” there, recounting that her mother once received nine pieces of racist hate mail while working at the elementary school Lahiri had attended. By the 2000 census — the year Lahiri won her Pulitzer — the number of Indian immigrants in the United States had increased 20-fold since 1970. In my mid-20s, after that conversation with Jenny, I decided to write about Indian Americans again. I also started writing the stories that appear in my new collection, “This Is Salvaged,” featuring Indian Americans in multicultural communities.

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Persons: Lahiri, forbearance, Jeff Bezos, Satya Nadella, Jenny, King Rao, ” Organizations: Indian, Microsoft Locations: Rhode, United States, Rhode Island, Saskatchewan, Canada, Seattle, Bellevue, Mall, American, Panamanian, India, —