Bharati Mukherjee was an Indian American-Canadian writer and professor emerita in the department of English at the University of California, Berkeley. She was the author of a number of novels and short story collections, as well as works of nonfiction.

The Tortilla Curtain is a 1995 novel by American author T.C. Boyle. It is about middle-class values, illegal immigration, xenophobia, poverty, and environmental destruction. In 1997, it was awarded the French Prix Médicis Étranger prize for best foreign novel.