I arrived in the U.S. for graduate study in literature in the fall of 1986. I was twenty-three. After a year, I began to paint, even though I had come to the U.S. intending to become a writer.

I haven't reported in grand detail on rituals of American life, road journeys or malls or the death of steel-manufacturing towns. I think this is because I feel a degree of alienation that I cannot combat.

In the poetry of immigrants, nostalgia is as common as confetti at parades or platitudes at political conventions.

Amitava Kumar Quotes