On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in bowl.

The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace.

It was important to me to become day-to-day fluent and functional in another language, and about 10 years ago, I went to Rome for the first time and felt an instant gut connection and wanted to get to know the city.

A lot of my upbringing was about denying or fretting or evading.

A lot of my personality was informed by feeling very different in the world I grew up in, feeling that I didn't fully belong, that my parents didn't belong.

The essential dilemma of my life is between my deep desire to belong and my suspicion of belonging.