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I don't care if my books don't sell abroad; we have a large enough market in our country. I write for Indian readers.

There was no audience for my books. The Indians didn't regard me as an Indian and North Americans couldn't conceive of me of a North American writer, not being white and brought up on wheat germ. My fiction got lost.

My novels are about a generation of Americans who lived between 1940 and 2000, who resisted the postwar political and cultural forces by choosing a wandering life of impoverishment and wonder. Inevitably, race and economics are a big part of their stories. Childhood, childishness, and children are never far.

I wonder if novels work for women because they give us a safe place to talk about our ish.

I think ethnic and regional labels are insulting to writers and really put restrictions on them. People don't think your work is quite as universal.

Early on my career, I figured out that I just have to write the book I have to write at that moment. Whatever else is going on in the culture is just not that important. If you could get the culture to write your book, that would be great. But the culture can't write your book.

I've come to accept who my readers turn out to be, rather than having some sort of demographic target.

It's true that immigrant novels have to do with people going from one country to another, but there isn't a single novel that doesn't travel from one place to another, emotionally or locally.