Missed Translations: Meeting the Immigrant Parents Who Raised Me

by Sopan Deb, Hasan Minhaj (Foreword by)

Overview

A bittersweet and humorous memoir of family—of the silence and ignorance that separate us, and the blood and stories that connect us—from an award-winning New York Times writer and comedian.

Approaching his 30th birthday, Sopan Deb had found comfort in his day job as a writer for the New York Times and a practicing comedian. But his stage material highlighting his South Asian culture only served to mask the insecurities borne from his family history. Sure, Deb knew the facts: his parents, both Indian, separately immigrated to North America in the 1960s and 1970s. They were brought together in a volatile and ultimately doomed arranged marriage and raised a family in suburban New Jersey before his father returned to India alone.

But Deb had never learned who his parents were as individuals—their ages, how many siblings they had, what they were like as children, what their favorite movies were. Theirs was an ostensibly nuclear family without any of the familial bonds. Coming of age in a mostly white suburban town, Deb’s alienation led him to seek separation from his family and his culture, longing for the tight-knit home environment of his white friends. His desire wasn’t rooted in racism or oppression; it was born of envy and desire—for white moms who made after-school snacks and asked his friends about the girls they liked and the teachers they didn’t. Deb yearned for the same.

Deb’s experiences as one of the few minorities covering the Trump campaign, and subsequently as a stand up comedian, propelled him on a dramatic journey to India to see his father—the first step in a life altering journey to bridge the emotional distance separating him from those whose DNA he shared. Deb had to learn to connect with this man he recognized yet did not know—and eventually breach the silence separating him from his mother. As it beautifully and poignantly chronicles Deb’s odyssey, Missed Translations raises questions essential to us all: Is it ever too late to pick up the pieces and offer forgiveness? How do we build bridges where there was nothing before—and what happens to us, to our past and our future, if we don’t?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062936769
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	04/21/2020
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	365,519
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Sopan Deb is a writer for The New York Times, as well as a New York City-based stand up comedian. Before joining the Times, Deb was one of a handful of reporters who covered Donald Trump's presidential campaign from start to finish as a campaign embed for CBS News. He covered hundreds of rallies in more than 40 states for a year and a half and was named a “breakout media star” of the election by Politico.

At The New York Times, Deb has interviewed high profile subjects such as Denzel Washington, Stephen Colbert, the cast of Arrested Development, Kyrie Irving and Bill Murray. Deb’s work has previously appeared on NBC, Al Jazeera America and The Boston Globe, ranging from examining the trek of endangered manatees to following a class of blind filmmakers in Boston led by the former executive producer of Friends. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for a documentary he produced for the Boston Globe called “Larger Than Life,” which told the story about the NBA Hall of Famer Bill Russell’s complicated relationship with the city of Boston.

He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Author's Note ix

Directory of Debs xi

Foreword Hasan Minhaj xiii

Prologue 1

1 "I'd like to say a few words about race relations." 3

2 "White people have the best lunches." 17

3 "I almost did not recognize you." 35

4 "My son is a star!" 45

5 "Sent from my iPad." 63

6 "To them, he is a common man." 81

7 "Do you wish you were closer?" 99

8 "I might not be around." 111

9 "Do you follow my points?" 125

10 "That country was calling me." 137

11 "My dearest son, I have no regret." 153

12 "The lights of my life are not around me." 165

13 "You've brought me everything." 179

14 "For me, I didn't have a choice." 195

15 "I am happy, yes and no." 211

16 "There were stories I heard." 221

17 "I couldn't even think. I was so lost." 235

18 "Children of immigrants …" 245

Epilogue 253

Acknowledgments 255

About the Author 257

Editorial Reviews

Sopan Deb hilariously and truthfully lets us in on the ups, downs, lefts, and rights of trying to understand - as a standup comedian and a journalist - the two grown-up strangers who raised him. It’s a crazy story, but you know. Good crazy. Funny crazy. Read-this-book crazy.

Pete Holmes

As a man who has both been a performer and covered performance, Sopan Deb now paints his most important picture yet, the self-portrait.

Roy Wood Jr.

Both moving and hilarious, Missed Translations is not just about exploring culture, family, and love, but about understanding where one comes from in the deepest possible way. It’s a wonderful journey.

Jake Tapper

★ 04/01/2020

Deb is a comedian, reporter for the New York Times, and formerly estranged son with a hilarious reckoning to share. His memoir centers on the Bengali immigrant parents who raised him in New Jersey. After coming to the U.S., Deb's father returns to India, leaving his mother and son behind. With Deb's father gone, he and his mother begin to drift apart. The memoir follows Deb as he seeks to build new relationships with his parents after growing up proudly Hindi, briefly idolizing whiteness, and, later, embracing his Bengali heritage again. Along the way, readers get insight into his stand-up career, forays into talk therapy, dating life, and experiences covering the 2016 election as a reporter of color. The book moves quickly through time and space, but Deb's comic genius and strong heart ground the narrative. His writing style is plain, confessional, and filled with laugh-out-loud passages about everything from memories of his childhood to learning to accept his insecurities as an adult. Perhaps most impressive of all, Deb addresses firsthand experiences of ignorant racism with wise humor. VERDICT A delightful memoir of people and place that will draw in Deb's fans and attract plenty of new ones.—Sierra Dickey, Ctr. for New Americans, Northampton, MA

Library Journal

2020-01-07
A New York Times reporter and stand-up comedian travels to India, looking for clues to his immigrant parents' lives, and finds lighter moments amid dark family secrets.Growing up Hindu in suburban New Jersey, debut author Deb learned that Indian weddings were multiday events, "a slightly tamer version of Burning Man." When his best friend decided to get married in India, the author decided to make his first visit to the country to which his father had returned after his parents' divorce. Deb hoped to find answers to long-simmering questions: Why was his mother so unhappy? What made his parents' arranged marriage a disaster when an aunt and uncle's had thrived? Why had his father abruptly gone back to India, without explaining why? Accompanied by his American girlfriend, Deb embarked on a five-city tour that began at his father's flat in a neighborhood he calls "the Brooklyn of Kolkata." Over the next three weeks, as he visited relatives and monuments, skeletons tumbled out of a family closet that the author breezily inventories. He chronicles his years as a "self-loathing Bengali child" in largely white suburbs, his discovery that stand-up comedy could be "cathartic," and his former work as a CBS News reporter covering the Trump campaign. In the foreword, Hasan Minhaj rightly says that Deb "goes well beyond the typical, ‘Hey, my parents wanted me to get straight A's' model minority narrative." As the author discusses his travel from Kolkata to Agra and beyond, the book often resembles a rougher-around-the-edges version of a Bill Bryson travelogue, featuring a wisecracking tone that sometimes turns sophomoric. (Deb's first reaction to the Taj Mahal: "Holy shit. It's right there. Holy shit. It's right there. IT'S RIGHT THERE.") Memoirs by children of immigrants often fault clueless parents; this one is refreshing for Deb's realization that—whatever his elders' missteps—he needed "to take some responsibility for my part in our family's disconnect" for things to change.

A sympathetic portrait of South Asians who are neither crazy and rich nor humorless nerds.

Kirkus Reviews

I was moved by the ways in which Sopan Deb taps into both the darkness and light that permeate a story about love, family, and understanding. He’s a masterful storyteller, and I’m thankful for his bravery and willingness to share the kind of human story that we too often prefer to keep to ourselves.

Kal Penn

"While his topic is serious, Deb’s writing is breezy and witty, and his earnestness will sweep readers up into this charmer of a memoir."

Booklist

"While his topic is serious, Deb’s writing is breezy and witty, and his earnestness will sweep readers up into this charmer of a memoir."

Booklist

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