’Suburban Sahibs’: New Jersey Masala

Suburban Sahibs--get it now!

Washington Post Columnist (and SAJA President) S. Mitra Kalita has just published her first book through Rutgers University Press. Entitled Suburban Sahibs: Three Immigrant Families and Their Passage From India to America, the book is a profile of three Indian-American families pursuing the American dream.

From the NYT review, "Vikram Chandra, Jhumpa Lahiri and other celebrated writers of the South Asian diaspora have given us some of the most exciting new fiction in English of recent years. To a growing shelf of fictional portraits of the Indian expatriate experience, S. Mitra Kalita now adds a work of nonfiction that stands up well in their company. Modest in scope, but as shapely as fiction and as timely as this morning's newspaper, this book is an informative one to read for pleasure."

"The Kotharis, the Patels and the Sarmas are in many ways quite different, but together they exemplify a vibrant new force in American life, the growth of ethnic enclaves in America's suburbs, in this case, Edison, Woodbridge and a few other communities in Middlesex County, N.J. Thirty years ago there were hardly any Indians at all in Edison; now they make up some 20 percent of the population."

Click here to read the full, very positive review written in the New York Times.

To read more about Kalita, click here for her website.

Click here to buy the book from Amazon.com

posted by sajit @ 3:24 PM