On a late November evening in Moscow, Idaho, my boyfriend and I are on our way to dinner. I have requested that it be at our local Thai restaurant because that’s the closest thing I can get to Indian food in our tiny university town. I can already taste the explosion of fish sauce, duck meat, peppers, pineapple, and basil. The anticipation makes me optimistic, even though the evening is the color of ash and…

Tanuja Desai Hidier is the author of Born Confused— the first-ever South Asian American coming-of-age novel. Born Confused’s sequel, Bombay Blues, is out now. So is the accompaniment/‘booktrack.’  We got a chance to talk to her about life, writing and more. Does Bombay Blues pick up where Born Confused left off? Bombay Blues takes place about two and a half years after Born Confused’s summer when Dimple turns seventeen. However, in my…

People often say that the modern world or this culture and that industry are “saturated with sex.” I’m inclined to believe this isn’t true because it wasn’t long ago that most women were regularly married off at twelve. That’s a culture saturated with sex, when it’s acceptable to fuck children. Despite what they said about suggestively wholesome teen pop singers and hot shorts marketed to little girls, my generation wasn’t saturated with sex. We were…