Tara Westover’s Passage to India

In today’s newsletter, a new essay about seeking family, by the best-selling author of “Educated,” from this week’s 100th Anniversary Issue. Plus:

My friend Sukrit invited me to India.

His mother lived in Delhi. He said I should get out of England and give my eyes something new to look at. He wouldn’t be there—he was trapped in a biology lab at Stanford—but his mother would look after me. I could stay as long as I liked.

The invitation confused me. I could not imagine why I would go to a country that was not my country, to live with a mother who was not my mother. I pawed at the idea, then dismissed it. I did not want to go east; I wanted to go west. I was waiting for my family to reclaim me.

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P.S. David Remnick joined Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” on Monday night to talk about the 100th Anniversary Issue (or, as Stewart called it, the “swimsuit issue”), as well as Trump, political opposition, and the role of a free press in this American moment. (“Sack up,” one of the two instructed the Democrats.) 📺