>> Alisha Haridasani Gupta, The New York Times
Published: 05 Apr 2021 12:38 AM BdST
Updated: 05 Apr 2021 12:38 AM BdST
Sanjena Sathian, the author of “Gold Diggers," at Piedmont Park in Atlanta, March 19, 2021. Sathian’s genre-bending debut novel about coming of age in Atlanta's South Asian community has already landed a TV deal with Mindy Kaling, but success is something both she and her characters grapple with. (Nicole Craine/The New York Times).
At a sleepover in sixth grade, when she admitted that she hadn’t seen the movie “Grease,” Sanjena Sathian remembers being asked if she was even American.
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“I instinctively said, ‘No, I’m not,’ even though I was born here,” Sathian, now 29, said in a video interview from her home in Atlanta. That was typical for much of her life where she, like many South Asian Americans, was made to feel differently.