Prachi Gupta, Author of “They Called Us Exceptional”

Prachi Gupta’s family embodied the American Dream: a doctor father and nurturing mother who raised two high-achieving children with one foot in the Indian American community, and the other in Pennsylvania’s white suburbia. In “They Called Us Exceptional,” Gupta articulates the dissonance, shame, and isolation of being upheld as an American success story while privately navigating traumas invisible to the outside world.

By charting her family’s slow unraveling and her determination to break the cycle, Gupta shows how traditional notions of success keep us disconnected from ourselves and one another—and passionately argues why we must orient ourselves toward compassion over belonging.