GOLD DIGGERS Book Club Kit by PRH Library

book club guide

Dear readers, When I moved to San Francisco at twenty-one, I knew hardly anyone. On a whim, a new friend and I started a women’s book club, which soon gave me relationships and a sense of comfort. So it brings me great joy to imagine other book clubs gathering to read, think, and tend to friendships. Thank you for choosing to read Gold Diggers together. I only found my way into this novel when I “met” my narrator, Neil—a floundering, Indian American, second-generation teenager growing up in the Bush-era Atlanta suburbs. Like so many others of my generation, Neil struggles to bear his parents’ expectations, and the very burden of the American dream. But in getting closer to his longtime crush, Anita, and tasting her mother’s magical lemonade made from stolen gold that harnesses the ambition of the jewelry’s original owner, Neil gains admission to the ranks of the American meritocracy. He also becomes culpable for the damage that system wreaks, and as he grows up over the course of the novel, he becomes haunted by the costs of the very world his parents fought for him to belong to. My parents, like Neil’s, arrived in the United States in the 1980s, and I came of age in suburban Atlanta in the 2000s. Being desi in Georgia in the Bush era had an effect of both doubling and splitting you. I spent high school researching the “war on terror” with my debate team full of liberal Indian Americans, much like Neil, and then walking into a hallway full of white Republicans, much like Anita. The world never felt like it belonged to my family and me—we were always translating it. America was our second language. Achievement was our way of laying claim to a new place. And then, one day, suddenly, I looked up in adulthood and found that Indian Americans like me—Hindu, dominant caste, upper-middle class—were starting to belong. We were running tech companies, on television screens, and in Congress. The “model minority” had made good on its promise. But I worried about what had been lost in our rush to achieve. Ambition, which is essential both to get to and make it in America, has its costs. And many of us, myself included, hadn’t yet reflected on our collective past—how we’d come here, and why. I started to read about Asian American history, and to reconsider the political and moral implications of that “model minority” narrative. I wrote this book with love for my community. But, without explicitly intending to, I also ended up critiquing the values of that community—values I’ve held dear myself. I hope that tension is a useful starting point for a wide and rich conversation. Thank you for reading,

Sanjena Sathian

A Conversation with

Q: How did you come up with the gold conceit? A:

I remember gold thefts happening in the Atlanta suburbs. I think they occurred in New Jersey and California, too. It’s sort of an obvious crime if you know anything about Indian households—a lot of people just keep loads of gold in the house, and in consistent locations. (Please don’t go steal it now, dear reader.) A few non-Indian gangs were held responsible for the crimes, but my mom always said she thought Indians had to be involved, as collaborators or something else, because these gangs seemed to know how to get exactly what they needed. I had that idea in my head for a while, and I wondered about writing an unlikely Indian American gold thief. Anjali and Anita came about first—a mother and daughter on the fringe of the mainstream suburbs seemed promising. But writing from their point of views was both a little too close to the crime—I wasn’t having fun writing a ton of scenes of the thefts themselves, which were heavy on logistics—and not that enjoyable. They’re great characters to write with some distance but I just didn’t like being in their heads. When I “met” Neil, I realized I could live in his head forever, and he could be just adjacent enough that I’d have narrative distance, which would let me comment on the implications of the crimes rather than the thefts themselves. The idea became magical at some point early on. I was writing all speculative fiction at the time I started this book, so my brain just turned every idea I had into magic. It was fun. I wanted the gold to be something other than just money. (Again, I didn’t want to write a big procedural-crime story.) So for a few months I was wondering: What do they do with it? I was at a movie when I saw a splash of some character’s golden drink and I realized: yes, that. They drink it. And it all fell into place after that.

Q: Who do you feel you’re speaking for in this book? There’s a sense of a “we” at play here, and it is the story of a community as much as it is the story of an individual or a few families. A: Some of the novelists who have most influenced me, like Zadie Smith and Philip Roth, seem to speak to a kind of “we,” chronicling individual human experiences in a way that accesses a wider story. I did have a desire to

represent a collective experience of second-generation Indian Americans, and I’ve heard from other desis like me that this story resonates with their life stories—that’s so edifying and moving. I do think that it’s important to note that I never intended to speak for one monolithic experience, however. There are Indian Americans who didn’t grow up in the suburbs—I think of my friends from Queens—whose life experiences are so different. The story in Gold Diggers also features predominantly upper-middle-class and dominant-caste Hindus and Jains, along with some upper middle class Muslims. That’s an accurate representation of the bubble I grew up in, but it’s not the experience of everyone. There are Indians who are undocumented, who are Dalit (historically oppressed castes), biracial, et cetera. Because there’s been insufficient representation of our community, I think a lot of folks enter work like mine hoping to see every kind of Indian. I didn’t attempt to do that because, in that sense, even the collective I was exploring (though I wouldn’t say speaking for) is limited. I place a lot of hope, though, in the long-running literary idea that we can access a universal experience— which would transcend an Indian or Asian American experience, or even the American experience—by really sinking into a highly particular story. That’s what narrative can do, at its highest.

Q: How did you go about researching the past to piece together the historical material for the book? A:

It was kind of a trip! I began Gold Diggers with a contemporary conceit—these kids stealing and drinking gold in the Atlanta suburbs. But I have always loved novels that carry a sense of the past into the present day, especially novels with magic. I wanted a sense of a mythical ancestor to this magic. I felt I had to have one— where else could it have come from? So, I embarked on two big quests: one, to research the history of gold in India and Asia; and two, in America. The former gave me all the rich material on alchemy, and even revealed some Vedic rituals that seemed to involve drinking or ingesting gold (hence the epigraph in part one). I couldn’t believe this thing I thought I’d made up was real! The latter sent me most naturally to the gold rush, which was always an international phenomenon. I knew Aussies and Chileans and Chinese people had come to the United States seeking gold, but Indians never showed up in the texts—until I found a travelogue in the Library of Congress archives which featured a tale of “the Hindu” or “the Bombayan,” which I plonked right into the text with some modification. I then spent a lot of time trying to corroborate the Bombayan’s existence, like Neil, and I basically couldn’t. A friend of mine who is a wonderful community historian/archivist ended up finding a clipping of a “Hindostan” dead in a mining camp and I imagined that might have been our Bombayan. I was frustrated at first to not be able to find his story, but I realized my frustration would also be Neil’s, and that it said something heartbreaking about existing in the margins, and having one’s history erased. Not all of us have a sense of our genealogy. This is painful, and exactly why I felt so desperate to tell a really American story.

Q: What made you choose humor or a slight satirical tone to tell this story? A:

Honestly, I didn’t realize I was “funny” for a while. And Gold Diggers isn’t satire—it’s got so much pain in it, alongside the humor. I think the comedy helps the pain go down more easily, and that matches my personality. Therapists chide me for being snarky when we’re supposed to be talking about serious, heartache stuff. So in that sense, it’s just my worldview. I think the way I grew up was kind of comical. I could be parodically intense, like Neil’s debate partner Wendi or Anita herself. And my fights with my family could be painful but also have a kind of classic American comedy to them—there’s something inherently goofy about sneaking around, trying to be “cool” and rebellious while also being totally nerdy. Someone in my workshop in grad school who read the first chapter of the book called my characters’ pursuits “contained debauchery.” I was sort of offended—some of them are, in my mind, admirably rebellious! But I get that, when set against the American teenage experience in general, especially as represented in pop culture, it all seems tame. I think comedy can also serve as a way to level critiques, and in that sense it arose organically. When I began to see what was funny about the way I grew up, I also began to see what was wrong with the values my community treasured. Lastly, I was probably reacting to a tone that seems to dominate a lot of stories about immigrants. I do enjoy and admire a lot of lush psychological realism, but we seem to have an overrepresentation of somber depictions of nostalgic immigrants. My life was lived at a higher, more hysterical pitch. I found my aesthetic in Roth and early Smith, as I mentioned, and also in Hanif Kureishi’s first novel The Buddha of Suburbia. I read those books and thought: this is what it felt like to be me as a teenager. I wasn’t dignified.

discussion questions

How do you think the magical element here changed the way you read the novel?

Does it change your reading of the first half of the novel to have it set in the recent

Did it allow Sathian to explore themes differently?

past? How would the issues of identity that permeate the book play out differently in the world of the mid-2000s?

Why is humor so integral to Gold Diggers?

Is ambition the real currency—the real gold—of the American experience?

Is assimilation required for immigrants to “make it” in America? How does the novel

How does the tale of the Bombayan gold digger shed light on the contemporary

comment on communities beyond Indian American ones?

timelines, and vice versa? Is this in line with your understanding of the gold rush?

golden dream cocktail

Ingredients: ¾ ounce cream ¾ ounce orange juice ¾ ounce orange liqueur 3/4 ounce Galliano liqueur

Step 1: In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, pour the cream, orange juice, orange liqueur, and Galliano.

Step 2: Shake well.

Step 3: Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Enjoy!

playlist When I was in middle school, I thought of myself as a music kid being stifled by the suburbs. I wore black Chuck Taylors, dark ripped jeans, and a same rotation of band T-shirts: a pink tie-dye Led Zeppelin top, a black AC/DC shirt, and, in an indication of my total lack of discernment, a NOFX number. I requested “Stairway to Heaven” at every school dance: a very bad call, since you might get stuck slow-dancing with someone for eight minutes straight. Perhaps the suburbs should have stifled me more. My taste was even worse in high school. I took to emo pop and, because I was so often listening to music as “pump up” for debate tournaments, I regret that “Eye of the Tiger” and “Remember the Name” were in my regular rotation. Thanks to some more culturally literate friends in adulthood, I think I’m less musically insufferable now. But I returned to my not-so-cultured suburban roots when I was writing my debut novel, Gold Diggers. The playlist that pairs with my novel is, therefore, campy, pleasurable, full of throwbacks, and imbued with everything that coming of age involves. It might not impress your hipster friends, but it might make you feel some of those teenage feelings—and it does get a little cooler and deeper with age.

—Sanjena Sathian

“Charu Theme Instrumental” by Satyajit Ray:

Before we get to suburban Georgia, the novel opens with a short

prologue set in 1980s Bombay, where we meet Anita’s mother, Anjali, who discovers the stolen gold potion. I imagine this theme, from the extraordinary filmmaker Satyajit Ray, playing as Anjali skulks in her family’s living room, being seduced by the sight of simmering, magical gold.

“Yeah!” by Usher, “Crash Into Me” by Dave Matthews Band, and ”Hey Ya!” by OutKast: The first major set piece of the novel takes place at Okefenokee High School’s spring fling dance in 2006 suburban Georgia. Usher and Outkast were essential listening in Atlanta in that era, and Dave Matthew Band’s cringeworthy lyrics were impossible to escape when it came time for a slow dance.

“One Man Wrecking Machine” by Guster and “About a Girl” by Nirvana: Neil, the narrator, goes through the emo phases I lived, too. And, like me, he would happily lump 2000s emo pop in with 1990s grunge.

“Feel Good Inc.” by Gorillaz: Once Neil gets his hands on the stolen gold potion, things start going his way. His grades improve, and he gets to hang out with his longtime crush and partner in crime, Anita, more. Gorillaz’ 2005 single— one of the few from that era I’ll stand by today—is the perfect song to play in Neil’s montage, as his life improves.

“I Miss You” by Blink-182:

Without spoiling anything, I’ll say that part one of the novel closes with a real tragedy.

And though Blink-182 could be counted on through my teen years to provide upbeat, teen-friendly irreverence, this song was them doing “dark.” For Neil, lines like “Will you come home and stop this pain tonight?” would have struck the right chord.

“California” by Grimes: Part two of the novel opens in the Bay Area in 2016. Neil is studying the 1850s California gold rush and living the twenty-first-century tech-boom gold rush. He’s still not exactly happy, and is on the verge of burning out in academia, but on the long, winding drives he makes up and down the coast, he might dial up Grimes’s self-aware, poppy invocation of the state.

“Don’t Save Me” by HAIM: San Francisco sisters HAIM could form the soundtrack to the leadup to Neil’s longawaited reunion with Anita, his childhood best friend and crush. He both aches to finally be close to her, and remains inaccessible. These lines seem about right: “I want it all / Give me all your love / But if you can’t hold on, / Then baby, don’t save me now.”

“Tunnel of Love” by Dire Straits: and ”Walking on the Moon” by The Police: In the middle of part two, we get a flashback to 1980s Bombay, where Anita’s parents first met. I spent hours interviewing my uncle, who attended the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in the 1980s, where one of the highlights of every year was the college’s rock show, Mood Indigo. Heaven help you if you trotted out George Michael at Mood Indigo, but Dire Straits and The Police were everywhere. For Indians of my uncle’s generation, these bands were the gateway to the West.

“Thumka” by Zack Knight: A climax of part two is an unlikely heist set at an Indian marriage expo, a scene which let me explore the ins and outs of an essential Indian American ritual. Bollywood and bhangra music could not be more important in the twenty-first-century desi wedding. Inside the expo center, Neil and Anita would definitely be hearing some Bollywood wedding classics—”Maahi Ve,” “Ainvayi Ainvayi,” and ”Desi Girl.” But it’s Punjabi-British Knight who matches the pace of that set piece perfectly.

“Nowhere to Run” by Martha and the Vandellas and ”Done Somebody Wrong” by Elmore James: Inevitably, the heist involves some tangles, and Neil has to bolt. As Neil’s heart races, “Nowhere to Run” is just the right track for his frantic state, but as he speeds away from the scene of his crime, Neil, regretful and frazzled, would be tailed by Elmore James’s blues cries: “Everything that happens / You know I am to blame.” He might also try on Allman Brothers Band’s cover of James’s original. Lastly, I never let myself listen to “Gold Digger” by Kanye West while writing—it’s too catchy and I would never have been rid of it. But it plays in the “credits” of the book in my mind, along with “Married in a Gold Rush”

by Vampire Weekend, a duet with Danielle Haim that all too accurately summarizes Anita and Neil, who come together in a tizzy period of life.