Spencer Bailey

Yes.

Yes.

That is very true.

And...

I'm trying to think of why those stories in particular.

I mean, I think it was because that class, if I remember correctly, we were also reading the other classics you would expect perhaps in a high school English class.

Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, Catch-22.

Brown Heights.

Yeah, exactly.

And then all of a sudden I'm reading about like...

the Indian diasporic community through Jhumpa's beautifully wrought stories, entering realms and worlds that I never knew I could have access to.

And I don't know, like, Holden Caulfield didn't appeal in the same way that Jhumpa's characters did for some reason.

Like, I felt like

I don't know.

And then the deeper I've thought about it, Jhumpa also kind of existed in this in-between space, and so does her characters.

I mean, she was born in London, raised in Rhode Island, speaking Bengali at home with her parents, speaking English out in, you know, when she was in school, kind of always feeling in between.

And while I certainly...

will be the first to acknowledge I'm a white male, American, very privileged.

Growing up in the motherless condition, you're also put in an in-between, where you see all the other kids and their moms picking them up from school, and you're like, it's gutting.

I'm not really trying to equate those experiences, but I think this in-betweenness...