The Namesake and being named by someone else

A boy grows up in America with a name he hates, chosen for a reason he doesn't learn till much later. That's the whole story, really, and Lahiri tells it so quietly that you don't notice how much it's getting to you.

My own cousins grew up in New Jersey and I think of them whenever I reread it. The mother, Ashima, is the one who breaks my heart, more than Gogol himself: all those years of being a foreigner and never once making a fuss about it.