At once a traveller's tale, a memoir, and a mouthwatering cookbook, Biting through the Skin offers a first-generation immigrant's perspective on growing up in America's heartland. Nina Mukerjee Furstenau's parents brought her from Bengal in northern India to the small town of Pittsburg, Kansas, in 1964. Embracing American culture, the Mukerjee family ate hamburgers and softserve ice cream, took a visiting guru out on the lake in their motorboat, and joined the Shriners.