11 Indian American writers in USA Today’s bestsellers list

USA Today unveiled its Best-Selling Books list late in May, and it includes 10s of AAPI writers, among them are 11 Indian Americans.

“We’ve curated a sampling of 40 AAPI authors who have appeared on our bestseller list. Authors range from debut to stalwarts and write in a variety of genres,” USA Today wrote in its report

Among the writers included are Kiran Desai, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Vice President Kamala Harris, Meena Harris, Mindy Kaling, Jhumpa Lahiri, Fatima Farheen Mirza, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Reshma Saujani and Thrity Umrigar.

Desai relocated to the U.S. as a teen with her writer mother, Anita Desai. Her first novel, “Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard,” garnered good reviews but it was her second novel, the Booker Prize-winning “The Inheritance of Loss,” that made the bestseller list.

The neurosurgeon and CNN medical correspondent  Gupta first hit the bestseller list in 2007 with his book, “Chasing Life” and returned in 2012 with novel “Monday Mornings” and in 2021 with “Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age.”

Kamala Harris was also a USA Today bestselling author with two books on the list. The first, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey,” explores her life as the daughter of immigrants. Her second bestseller, “Superheroes Are Everywhere,” is a children’s book that tells kids heroes can be found anywhere and they too can be one.

A lawyer, entrepreneur and author, Meena Harris, niece of Kamala Harris, hit the list recently with two children’s books: “Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea,” inspired by a true story of sisters Kamala and Maya Harris as children working with their community to effect change; and “Ambitious Girl,” about a young girl who sees the challenges faced by women when she sees a strong woman labeled as “too assertive” and “too ambitious,” USA Today wrote.

Actress, humorist and writer Kaling wrote two bestselling collections of essays: “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)” and “Why Not Me?” Both books include her observations on life, romance, friendship and Hollywood, the blurb said.

After many notable books, Jhumpa Lahiri  has published this year, “Whereabouts,” an English translation of a story she originally wrote and published in Italian.

Mirza’s debut novel, “A Place for Us,” hit the bestseller list in 2018. Readers follow the story of an Indian Muslim family in California on the eve of their eldest daughter’s wedding.

Mukherjee is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia and a cancer researcher who won the Pulitzer Prize for his bestselling nonfiction work, “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer” in 2010.  He followed it with another USA Today bestseller, 2016’s “The Gene: An Intimate History”.

The daughter of a Filipina mother and South Indian father, the prize-winning poet and Guggenheim Fellow Nezhukumatathil published her nonfiction debut “World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks and Other Astonishment” in 2020. The collection of essays about the natural world was a Kirkus Prize finalist and named 2020’s Barnes & Noble’s book of the year, the report noted.

An attorney, founder of Girls Who Code who made a bid for US Congress, Saujani published “Brave, Not Perfect: Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder,” which landed on the bestsellers list in 2019.

Umrigar’s “The Space Between Us” was released in 2006 and hit the list in 2018. In the novel, two women discover an emotional rapport as they struggle against the confines of a rigid caste system in modern-day India. Her next novel, “Honor,” is set for publication in 2022.

Images courtesy of Forbes,, Brown Girl and BBC

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