Caste and Outcast Book

Dhan Gopal Mukerji was the first Indian author to write for an American audience. With his popular and critically acclaimed nonfiction as well as his writing for young adults, which included a novel that won the 1928 Newbery Medal for children's literature, he sought to interpret Indian culture and spirituality for a Western Civilization he felt sorely needed these ideas. In Caste and Outcaste, his landmark 1923 autobiography, a 33-year-old Mukerji sought to explain the lessons of his Indian childhood and his first impressions of an America that simultaneously intoxicated and disappointed him. In a culture where Aziz Ansari, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Hasan Minhaj occupy such prominent places in the National dialogue, it can be easy to forget that there was a time not so long ago in which Indian-American voices were not deemed important enough to mediate their own experience to the wider world. Essential reading from a writer to whom we all owe much.