Missed Translations

Come and sit at another family's dinner table.

It is a common analogy applied to books that they all either fall into the category of windows, or mirrors. This one book is very firmly a window.
For other readers it may be less firmly so, but what is so wonderful about Missed Translations is the pure specific uniqueness of a family in all (or at least many) of its moving pieces. A fairly deep look into a family influenced by a host of different forces and personalities, vastly different from your family in the way that every family is vastly different. Author Sopan Deb provides a sketch, for the reader and, it seems, for themself, of an estranged family full of damaged people who are all at different points in the pain-staking process of stitching themselves back together. The book does not pretend to represent a culture, or the experience of any group of people other than that of the Deb family. It is personal, well organized, and entirely fascinating.
I encourage anyone to experience this window, or another like it. Find an experience other than your own, find a book that does not function as a mirror-- it was such a valuable experience to me. I think Missed Translations would be most interesting to readers of high school age or older