This is why she ran away when a pregnant woman crossed her path. “I didn’t want to be near the hands that left marks on everything they touched,” writes Stambo.

“People are observing when they first get somewhere,” Sam said. “Or when they’re about to leave.” 

Inevitably the real self does come out. Maybe we put parts of ourselves that we actually don’t manifest in reality into fiction—it’s such an unconscious process.

It’s as easy as it sounds in my grandparents’ letters to live a normal life under an authoritarian regime. You love or fall out of love, you go on summer adventures, defend a dissertation. The trains keep running, cows keep giving milk.

Watching Chinese immigrants shouting curt orders to Black workers in their newly learned English was often like observing a failed game of telephone, as the workers’ faces bore quiet offense.

Members Only author Sameer Pandya talks with Yoojin Na about the ideal measure of novelistic time, India, layered moments in fiction, and the grace of tennis.