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Thursday, May 27, 2021

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS

On the first day of my 10th-grade 

American Literature class, as an 
introduction to the quintessential 
high-school-English-class 
novel 

“The Great Gatsby,” we learned 
about the ever-present American 
dream, or the belief that anyone can 
make it in the United States if they 
just work hard enough. To my then 
15-year-old self, the critique of the 
American dream was foreign; my 
parents, who emigrated from India, 
are patriots who firmly believe in this 
social ideal. Thus, I was thoroughly 
intrigued by “Gold Diggers,” a 2021 
magical realism novel written by 
Sanjena Sathian that portrays second-
generation, Indian American youth 
willing to do whatever it takes to 
become successful. Sathian mixes 
magical realism, historical fiction and 
satire to deliver a truthful critique of 
the (Indian) American dream idolized 
by many immigrants in the late 20th 
and early 21st century.

“Gold 
Diggers” 
follows 
Neil 

Narayan, a boy crushed by societal 
expectations deeply infatuated with 
his driven neighbor, Anita Dayal. The 
novel is divided into two parts. The 

first, set in Bush-era Atlanta suburbs, 
details Neil and Anita through high 
school, where Neil struggles in his 
classes until discovering Anita’s secret 
to success: alchemy. Anita and her 
mother steal gold to brew lemonade 
that “harnesses the ambition” of the 
owner. Neil, desperate to fit into his 
community’s ideals, begins to down 
the lemonade in copious quantities 
until his actions cause tragedy to 
strike. The second part is set ten years 
later in Silicon Valley, where most of 
his peers have migrated. He reunites 
with Anita to pull off “one last heist.”

I made the mistake of starting 

(and finishing) the book during 
finals, reading it in a single sitting. 
The book bends literary conventions. 
It’s difficult to find books that can 
be incredibly entertaining while 
seriously pondering deep questions. 
It’s difficult to find books that capture 
the ambition taught from a young age 
within Indian American communities 
without 
dehumanizing 
Indian 

Americans into literal manifestations 
of the model minority myth as socially 
inept, clout-chasing side characters 
that lack inner worlds. It’s difficult 
to find books that bend genres like 
magical realism, historical fiction 
and satire in a way that is complex in 
its undertaking yet is still accessible. 

The deeply talented and witty Sathian 
effortlessly pulls it off, creating a 
masterpiece of a novel that questions 
the ambition of Indian Americans and 
their place in American history.

Sathian details the life of a 

community 
just 
outside 
“the 

perimeter” of Atlanta and American 
society. The community, like so many 
others, believes that if they keep their 
heads down and work, success is 
inevitable. They’re often berated for 
fooling around — in Neil’s mother’s 
view, this might “include anything 
from neglecting to take up AP Biology 
to shooting up hard drugs.” Children, 
pushed by their parents, try to uphold 
cultural expectations while surviving 
in a society they feel unaccustomed 
to. Some with seemingly effortless 
abilities, like Anita, breeze through 
high school, while others like Neil 
struggle. Neil, initially annoyed with 
his “lack of intellect,” realizes that the 
success around him isn’t effortless, 
and is in fact just the opposite: Aside 
from working ample amounts, Anita 
has resources, like her lemonade. 
Similarly, the American dream is 
never solely based on hard work 
or merit because often those who 
succeed already have the upper hand.

Sathian also focuses on the place 

of Indian Americans in American 

history; Neil, as a high school student, 
discovers the story of an Indian man 
in the California Gold Rush. As a 
graduate student studying history at 
the University of California, Berkeley, 
he becomes obsessed with finding 
the man, his “Bombayan gold digger,” 
who was ostracized and later lynched. 
The book focuses on how many 
Indian Americans weren’t viewed as 
American despite their ambition and 
participation within communities. 
No matter how hard the characters 
strive for the American dream, they 
continually 
struggle 
financially, 

emotionally 
and, 
eventually, 

physically. Their Indian American 
community constantly pushes the 
narrative of the dream, and Neil and 
Anita work like hell for it, hopped up 
on lemonade (and, sometimes, coke). 
Still, their solidified place “within 
the perimeter” of the American 
dream always seems just out of reach. 
Sathian uses Neil’s “everyman” 
character to indicate how stifling the 
myth of the American dream can be.

That’s not to say Neil is devoid 

of personality — the lengths that 
Neil goes to maintain the illusion of 
the community ideal of success are 
frightening. Neil is selfish, oblivious 
and 
insecure. 
Academically, 
by 

his community’s standards, he’s 

considered 
shockingly 
mediocre 

(which is an experience that I am 
not unfamiliar with). He’s a jerk 
and also one of the most realistic 
characters I’ve encountered in fiction. 
He constantly compares himself to 
Shruti, a girl who he ridicules but is 
jealous of, calling her “discomfiting” 
and “embarrassing.” Her refusal to 
adhere to the American social, beauty 
and femininity standards of the early 
2000s annoy others, especially Neil, 
and thus, he uses her as a scapegoat 
to vent his frustrations with Indian 
culture. In order to pursue the dream, 
Neil engages in petty, selfish high 
school drama with Shruti, which leads 
to an extremely devastating calamity 
when mixed with supernatural forces. 
Sathian details horrors and truths too 
often swept under the rug in pursuing 
the American dream, indicating just 
how much of a toll the ideal can exert.

Many were deeply impressed 

with the novel; Ann Arbor’s local 
Literati Bookstore hosted an event 
with Sathian, which was organized 
by 
Sarah 
Thankam 
Matthews. 

Additionally, the book is being 
adapted into television by Mindy 
Kaling’s production company, Kaling 
International. 

Taylor Swift’s re-recordings: reflection, nostalgia and deja-vu

I was only eight years old when 

Taylor Swift first released Fearless. 
At the time, Swift and her songs about 
heartbreak were too mature for my 
childhood self who still adamantly 
believed that boys had cooties. 
As some of my childhood heroes 
outgrew their roles — Miley Cyrus 
hanging up Hannah Montana and 
the devastating breakup of the Jonas 
Brothers — I found myself gravitating 
toward Swift and her lovable country 
sweetheart persona. Even though I 
didn’t know what love was or what 
it was like to have my heart broken, 
I clung to Swift and vicariously lived 
my perception of high school through 
her music. Fourteen years later, 
Swift’s re-release of Fearless has 
taken on an entirely new meaning, 
now that I’ve lived through many of 
the triumphant and tragic love stories 
that were completely unrelatable for 
me as a kid. 

Listening to the re-release of 

“Fifteen” has shown me how much 
I’ve grown since the album’s first 
version. The song was one of my 
favorites at 8 years old, allowing me 
to imagine what it would be like to 
date “the boy on the football team.” 
Now at 21, I know what it’s like to fall 
in love with the captain of a sports 
team and have my heart broken. 
As an adult, I wish I could tell my 
younger self that yes, the magic in 
“Fifteen” is real, but the line “Wish 
you could go back / And tell yourself 
what you know now” is the backbone 
of this story. While my younger self 
clung to the excitement of love and 
the anticipation of school dances and 
dating in high school, as an adult I 
cling to the hard truth that young love 
is fleeting. I see now that, as you age, 
you discover that it’s more important 
to develop yourself than to rest all of 
your hope in one person. 

While songs like “Fifteen” remind 

me of how much older I am and 
how much life I’ve lived since the 
first release of Fearless, other tracks 

like “You Belong With Me” are still 
timeless classics that transport me 
back to my childhood. Since the 
re-release of Fearless, my sister and 
I have spent many car rides blasting 
the album, belting the lyrics we’ve 
known by heart for over a decade. It’s 
when I’m singing “You Belong with 
Me” with my sister or hearing “The 
Way I Loved You” at the store that 
I experience a strange familiarity 
to when we were kids singing 
tracks from Fearless on our karaoke 
machine, pretending we knew what 
Swift meant when she says that love 
is “a roller coaster kind of rush.”

Perhaps this is one of the strangest 

phenomena of Swift’s re-recordings: 
their suspension of time. My first 
time listening to the re-recordings 
felt a lot like the first time I listened to 
the original album, and even though I 
knew what songs to expect, there was 
still a familiar sense of excitement and 
wonder as each track faded into the 
next. In fact, the way Swift mimics 
nearly all elements of the original 
recordings preserves a sacred time of 

my life. In many ways, the album is a 
space to reflect and recognize where 
I’ve been and how far I’ve come.

While many of the conversations 

surrounding Fearless are centered 
on the question of artists’ rights 
and fairness in the music industry, 
there’s much more at play here 
than Swift reclaiming the rights to 

her work. Like her fans, I’m sure 
Swift experienced the same sort of 
nostalgia as she recreated the music 
that defined her as a teenager; this 
album has undoubtedly taken on an 
entirely new meaning for her as an 
artist. 

 KAITLYN FOX
Daily Arts Writer

“Gold Diggers” brews dazzling satire of the American dream 

MEERA KUMAR 

Daily Arts Writer

Design by Yassmine El-Rewini

Read more at michigandaily.com

Read more at michigandaily.com

