On each revision of the novel, I struggled to balance the Indian film tropes of my youth with Western tastes for reading. The questions about audience and how much marginalia and explanation to include are extremely difficult for writers of color, immigrant writers, queer writers, disabled writers, and other marginalized writers who are publishing in the U.S. We’re expected to play to a largely straight, white, able-bodied, Christian-American audience. As a young writer, I sweated over decisions about whether or not to define non-English words, or whether to italicize them. Does this or that cultural reference make sense to a white American reader? Is this passage too sentimental?
This is important because it reveals the added pressures marginalized writers face when deciding how to present their identities and cultures to a dominant audience. Acknowledging these challenges emphasizes the need for more inclusive literary expectations that allow writers to remain authentic without over-explaining or compromising their voices.