I think my mom never expected to have to have The Talk in America. My parents’ generation was so naive. They thought they had left caste behind when they came to the United States. They were steeped in a desperate optimism, being among the first generation to benefit from affirmative action programs that enabled Dalits to access higher education and pursue professions abroad as part of a new wave of South Asian immigrants to the US in the 1970s. After all they had endured to become educated, my parents genuinely believed caste was in the rearview mirror; in truth, they...