Tell My Mother I Like Boys By Suvir Saran

Widely recognized as a “trailblazer extraordinaire,” Saran transformed the world’s palate and its perception of Indian cuisine. His iconic restaurant Devi became the first non-Northern European restaurant in North America to earn a Michelin star — an achievement that shifted the flavour of culinary history itself. Dish by dish, he reshaped India’s cultural presence in New York, building bridges of taste, challenging conventions, and opening doors for a new generation of South Asian chefs and creators.

Yet behind these extraordinary accolades lay a vastly different story. Tell My Mother I Like Boys peels back the layers of Saran’s public brilliance to reveal the tender, bruised core beneath. With remarkable candour, he writes of the fractures and private battles that even the brightest spotlight could not burn away.

Spanning Delhi, Bombay, and New York, the memoir follows Saran’s journey from a boy “too afraid to live his truth” to a chef who redefined India’s presence in Manhattan’s culinary landscape. It is a coming-out story that becomes a coming-home. In its pages, Saran reckons with family, culture, success, and the suffocating pressure of living a double life—each chapter a knife’s-edge balance of memory and confession.

Reading Highlights

• A deeply personal exploration of identity, queerness, shame, and self-acceptance.
• A story that travels from the scented lanes of Delhi to the charged streets of New York, capturing the emotional and cultural landscapes that shaped him.
• A testament to how brokenness can become beginning, and how living “without apology” becomes the only true dignity.
• A chronicle of a creative life where food becomes salvation and self-expression, allowing the author to rebuild and connect worlds.

For readers of memoir, culture, LGBTQIA writing, and contemporary Indian non-fiction, Tell My Mother I Like Boys offers a bold and transformative account of a life lived in contradiction and, finally, in truth

Advance Praise

“A memoir at once tantalizing and enlightening… reminiscent of Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis.”

—Geetanjali Shree, International Booker Prize Winner

“It reminds us the most powerful ingredient in any life is authenticity.”

—Shashi Tharoor

“Moving, adept and intense… as colourful and creative as his cuisine.”

—Frances Mayes

“A testament to resilience, courage and authenticity.”

—Vikas Khanna

About The Author

SUVIR SARAN made history with Devi, the first Indian restaurant in North America to earn a Michelin star. One of the world’s first openly gay chefs—out since age twenty—he has shaped iconic restaurants such as One8 Commune, Neuma, Bastian, Qora, Murphies and The House of Celeste. A lifelong student of Indian classical music, Saran also paints, stitches, knits, prints, embroiders and gardens. His memoir, Tell My Mother I Like Boys, spans pinnacles of success and depths of illness, exile and homecoming, offering readers an unflinching gift: the courage to break, heal and begin again.