Chapter 1
Ashima thinks it's strange that her child will be born in a place most people enter either to suffer or to die […] In India, she thinks to herself, women go home to their parents to give birth, a...
Chapter 2
Gogol frowns, and his lower lip trembles. Only then, forced at six months to confront his destiny, does he begin to cry. (2.71)
Chapter 3
He is afraid to be Nikhil, someone he doesn't know. Who doesn't know him […] It's a part of growing up, they tell him, of being a Bengali. (3.19)
Chapter 4
But Gogol sounds ludicrous to his ears, lacking dignity or gravity. What dismays him most is the irrelevance of it all. (4.10)
Chapter 5
In history class, Gogol has learned that European immigrants had their names changed at Ellis Island, that slaves renamed themselves once they were emancipated. Though Gogol doesn't know it, even N...
Chapter 6
He didn't want to go home on the weekends, to go with them to pujos and Bengali parties, to remain unquestionably in their world. (6.2)
Chapter 7
He knows now the guilt that his parents carried inside, at being able to do nothing when their parents had died in India, of arriving weeks, sometimes months later, when there was nothing left to d...
Chapter 8
Moushumi has kept her last name. She doesn't adopt Ganguli, not even with a hyphen. Her own last name, Mazoomdar, is already a mouthful. With a hyphenated surname, she would no longer fit into a wi...
Chapter 9
"Don't get me wrong, Graham's a great guy. But they were too alike somehow, too intense together." (9.85)
Chapter 10
"There's no such thing as a perfect name. I think that human beings should be allowed to name themselves when they turn eighteen," he adds. "Until then, pronouns." (10.113)
Chapter 11
She accused him of nothing, but more and more he sensed her distance, her dissatisfaction, her distraction […] "Are you happy you married me?" he would ask. But the fact that he is even thinking...