This book has two inspirations. In 1979, Blair Peach, a teacher from New Zealand, was killed by English police while protesting against a neo-fascist movement. In 2012, in Delhi, Jyoti Singh (known as Nirbhaya) was gang raped and murdered, and thrown from a bus. Drawing in part on these two deaths, and in part on her experience as the child of Indian immigrants and as a woman with brown skin, Bhanu Kapil conceived the character of Ban, a young brown girl, who hears the beginnings of a race riot, lies down on the side of a road, and gradually dissolves into her environment.