Disgraced Themes

In Disgraced, Amir Kapoor (who’s South Asian and was raised Muslim but has renounced Islam) and his wife Emily (who’s white) seem to have a progressive interracial marriage and worldly, liberal-minded friends from different backgrounds. Emily celebrates Amir’s Muslim culture much more than Amir himself does, and the couple’s friends Jory (who’s Black) and Isaac (who’s Jewish) see themselves as well-traveled and open-minded. Nonetheless, Emily often says unintentionally offensive things to Amir about his…

In Disgraced, Emily is a young white artist whose painting career takes off when she starts using Islamic patterns in her work. Emily’s use of Islamic imagery is problematic because she’s appropriating (borrowing from) and profiting off a culture that doesn’t belong to her. She also paints a portrait of her husband, Amir (a wealthy South Asian lawyer), as a former slave who’s become rich—suggesting that she sees him as an outsider to affluent…

Disgraced explores how shame about core aspects of one’s identity can create lasting traumas. Amir Kapoor is a wealthy lawyer of Pakistani descent, and he lives in an upscale New York apartment with his beautiful wife Emily (who’s white). On the surface, it looks like Amir’s affluent lifestyle give him all he needs to be happy. The reader soon learns, however, that Amir feels pressured to suppress his cultural heritage, leading to frequent angry outbursts…