Surrounded by Choice: The Millions Interviews Sopan Deb

I first met Sopan Deb in 2020 when I moderated a virtual panel called Brown in America: Community, Culture, and Code, hosted by San Antonio’s Malvern Books. Deb had just published his first book, a memoir, Missed Translations: Meeting the Immigrant Parents Who Raised Me. Missed Translations is a breathtaking read about the contradictions in Deb’s upbringing. He had an all-American suburban childhood in New Jersey, yet was raised by Bengali parents who both drifted away from him by the time he became a young adult. Far from being a paean to loss, Missed Translations is a compassionate, at times humorous, recounting of Deb’s adult efforts to reconnect with both parents, now living worlds apart.

Deb’s first novel, , published earlier this month by Simon & Schuster, is grounded in tragedy, but is ultimately a story of redemption. When the novel’s titular character dies in a car accident just after she’s come out to her parents as gay, her family—who was horrified by her revelation—is destroyed by her sudden death.