‘The American Dream is a deeply dangerous idea’

On the experience of being raised in the US by Indian immigrant parents

1 What convinced you to explore the genre of magical realism in Gold Diggers?

I have always liked magical realism. I grew up reading Rushdie and Márquez and Cortázar, and in my 20s I discovered the American speculative fiction canon including people like George Saunders and Aimee Bender. I think Rushdie has said before that magical realism is not mere metaphor when telling stories of migration and displacement. It’s in many ways an accurate depiction of the condition of being estranged from the place you come from. The “absurd” is actually realistic because real life is absurd for immigrants. Ultimately, Gold Diggers uses a magical realist conceit, but it’s basically a socially realist novel.

2 Your characters try to make sense of what it means to be both Indian and American. How has that journey been for you?

Well, the refrain of “What does it mean to be both Indian and American?” is actually satirised in the book. I grew up being told that there were “real Indians” like my parents, and then ABCDS (American-born Confused Desis) like me. I think that’s just a ridiculous way to teach someone to think about their identity, as though the fact that I’m born in America makes me inherently confused. What it does is give me a multiplicitous identity. So the book is concerned with identity, but in ways that are less basic than “Am I Indian or am I American or both?”

3 What makes the American Dream so compelling?

The American Dream is a fiction that we Americans feed ourselves to believe that there is such thing as meritocracy in this country. This is an appealing idea because... Americans are taught to believe that it’s possible to remake ourselves entirely, to come up from nothing and wind up rich or famous or wildly successful. That’s a compelling idea. And that idea is what brought many Indians of my parents’ generation to the US. But the American Dream is also a deeply dangerous idea because it presupposes that those who aren’t wealthy just aren’t striving enough. And it’s hugely irresponsible of many Indians to not think about how we fit into the perpetuation of the fictions of American meritocracy. Not every immigrant has equal access to the American Dream. My novel is written with both empathy for those who are moved by the fiction of the American Dream and distaste for those who buy into it wholesale without considering its contexts.