{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-article-tsx","path":"/ashaniindianamerican","result":{"data":{"primeArticle":{"slug":"ashani.indianamerican","excerpt":"Being a child of immigrants brings multiple challenges and multiple gifts. And American culture only amplifies them.","headline":"A stale American ideal","author":"Ashani Sharma","authorbio":"","authoremail":"","authortwitter":"","coverimg":"https://assets3.dailybruin.com/images/ashani.indianamerican/ashani_coverpain-a5fed57258f8c7640f482d5ec07f5577.png","covercred":"Firyal Bawab","coveralt":"Illustration by Firyal Bawab.","articleType":"article","updated":null,"content":[{"type":"text","value":"“It’s easy being an American! Just lose your culture.”"},{"type":"text","value":"My dad would sometimes recall this old joke to himself when I was growing up, saying he heard it once from Jay Leno. He’d repeat it, louder now, for my brother and me to hear."},{"type":"text","value":"The joke never retained its intended humor, and no one laughed. But Dad wasn’t trying to be funny. The words held a certain gravitas before melting in the air. They exuded a wistful wisdom, and they were honest. They represented a stale American ideal, and they echoed in my mind."},{"type":"text","value":"I was Dallas born and Atlanta bred, American through and through. It was my pesky Indian culture that was always getting in the way."},{"type":"text","value":"At times I wanted little to do with it, yet I couldn’t imagine my life without it. But recalling the joke made me fear being seen as a foreigner in my own country."},{"type":"text","value":"I grew up speaking Hindi, eating daal roti and going to my parents’ home state of Madhya Pradesh for the summers. Since I’d mostly stay inside, either because of the blistering June heat or the pounding monsoon rains, I was only ever aware of India through the lenses of family, the windows of cars or the screen of a TV."},{"type":"text","value":"But India still held a bearing over my life through the foods, language and cultural differences that came with being Indian American."},{"type":"text","value":"I’d happily bring Desi snacks like mathri, a flaky fried biscuit, and panjeeri, a buttery, sweet dish, to share with kids on the bus. I’d seamlessly switch between English and Hindi at home. And I understood that sleepovers and shorts just weren’t allowed."},{"type":"image","value":"{\"alt\":\"Illustration by Firyal Bawab.\",\"url\":\"https://assets3.dailybruin.com/images/ashani.indianamerican/indian foodpain-2ad0edb4723796e91bcf96c481ecf9fa.png\",\"credit\":\"Firyal Bawab\",\"caption\":\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"Now looking back, I realize that even when I was a young child, people were making assumptions about me in relation to my race. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it was something that stuck with me nonetheless."},{"type":"text","value":"I remember once telling my first grade class work partner, Wesley, that my favorite food was porridge. He subsequently, and I believe genuinely, asked if this was an Indian food."},{"type":"text","value":"I think I realized at that moment that any minuscule difference or unknown fact about me would first be attributed to my race, my presumed culture. I meant oatmeal, which I still love by the way, but porridge was the British English word I learned for the Hindi “daliya” at home."},{"type":"text","value":"I had a feeling that I should remain aware of people viewing me through the lens of my ethnicity."},{"type":"text","value":"That feeling was solidified a few years down the road when a friend and I were jokingly insulting each other. You know, the classics. Stupid head, funky foot, stinky breath and the like, when my skin color was suddenly thrown into the mix. I became “brown body,” and it wasn’t a good thing. The spotlight was now on the racial difference between us, and one race was implied to be better than the other."},{"type":"text","value":"I immediately became more curious about how people viewed my skin color and how I could try my best not to be viewed negatively because of it."},{"type":"text","value":"The first – and probably not the best – place I started looking was TV."},{"type":"text","value":"There weren’t many Indian characters in the shows I watched. I’d nervously scan Disney Channel and Nickelodeon hoping for the sight of something different each year."},{"type":"text","value":"One character. One role. One normal Indian person."},{"type":"text","value":"Rocky Blue from “Shake It Up,” Tori Vega from “Victorious” and, of course, delinquent wizard Alex Russo from “Wizards of Waverly Place” all seemed like promising prospects. But alas, none held up to the test of a quick Google search."},{"type":"pull","value":"{\"caption\":\"I immediately became more curious about how people viewed my skin color and how I could try my best not to be viewed negatively because of it.\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"The dream of seeing an Indian girl like myself on the big screen didn’t cease to excite me. But the few places I did see South Asian characters, I didn’t see myself at all."},{"type":"text","value":"I saw Barney from “How I Met Your Mother” imply that all Bangladeshi women were as unappealing as the “fresh off the boat” taxi driver’s wife, of whom he wished he had never seen a photo. I saw Ravi from “Jessie” being ridiculed for his Indian accent and traditional sherwani and making religious interjections that people don’t actually use."},{"type":"image","value":"{\"alt\":\"Illustration by Firyal Bawab.\",\"url\":\"https://assets3.dailybruin.com/images/ashani.indianamerican/Picture1pain-23760bb826e32a1f292ca4b303a14b27.png\",\"credit\":\"Firyal Bawab\",\"caption\":\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"I saw Hindi words, Hindu beliefs and South Asian culture being taken out of context for the creation of this Hollywood caricature. Socially inept, undesirable and sorely unfit for American culture. But smart, of course, to make up for the rest."},{"type":"text","value":"As a kid, it was hard not to see these things as the supreme projection of my place in American society."},{"type":"text","value":"The issue was that I didn’t want to be any of these things."},{"type":"text","value":"It would be one thing if there were a variety of normal, human characters who happened to be South Asian and of them, these social outcasts were a few. Instead, there were only a select few to begin with, and they were always pigeonholed into these roles."},{"type":"text","value":"It was either accept your culture and fit into this stereotyped mold or forsake your culture and become a Kelly Kapoor who doesn’t know or care about the origins of Diwali."},{"type":"text","value":"Maybe Jay Leno was right after all."},{"type":"text","value":"It seemed like there was no middle ground. No way to be both Indian and American without doing a disservice to either."},{"type":"pull","value":"{\"caption\":\"It was a balancing act in my mind: How much of my culture would I have to trade in for my status as American?\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"I simply didn’t want my Indian-ness to be the first and only thing that people saw about me. But I couldn’t change my notably Indian name, my curly black hair or my obviously brown skin."},{"type":"text","value":"Around 13 years old at this point, I went to the internet seeking solace, searching to see what results “Indian girl” would garner. Maybe there, I would find someone else like me, another person experiencing something similar."},{"type":"text","value":"I clicked on the first result and within a matter of minutes, I had just read a list of reasons never to date an Indian girl. “Ugly,” “hairy” and “prudish” I remember being among the chief concerns."},{"type":"text","value":"If this was what it meant to be an Indian woman in America, I decided I’d rather not."},{"type":"text","value":"I was certain I wanted to rid myself of this identity marker and all that came with it. I thought that for any white American to see me as Indian would mean for them to see me as a combination of all of these inaccurate and negative attributes, whether drawn from the media or some lone racist behind a computer screen."},{"type":"text","value":"The quest to combat my Indian-ness began."},{"type":"text","value":"I made sure I played up my American patriotism and my Southern “y’all.” I always shaved and wore makeup, doing what I could to prevent being perceived as the aforementioned “ugly” Indian girl. I spoke English, even though it felt so unnatural, on the phone with my mom if I was in public. And I swore I would never date another Indian person."},{"type":"text","value":"I became hyperaware of the races of the people I was around. In ninth grade, I stopped sitting with my mostly Indian lunch group. I didn’t want to be around other Indians because I thought after all my efforts to remove myself from my culture, my sheer proximity to them would “out” me to white America. I thought it would out me as “it,” the stereotype, Indian."},{"type":"text","value":"Not a great thought to be having, I know."},{"type":"text","value":"The way I was taught about my own culture at school didn’t help either. I recall being taught about the worst possible aspects of Asian cultures during a middle school social studies class."},{"type":"text","value":"So much for not being ethnocentric, Mrs. B."},{"type":"text","value":"It was foot binding for China and female infanticide for India, with an emphasis on how the British came and heroically put an end to these savageries."},{"type":"text","value":"Learning about my own culture became a source of embarrassment. It was one thing to see it misrepresented on the screen but another to be tested on how well I could memorize it. I felt like I, alone, had to answer for the Indian Ganga River’s pollution or the caste system’s existence."},{"type":"text","value":"It wasn’t so much that these aspects of India were untrue as much as that they painted India through a very narrow, very biased lens."},{"type":"pull","value":"{\"caption\":\"I saw Hindi words, Hindu beliefs and South Asian culture being taken out of context for the creation of this Hollywood caricature.\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"Concepts that never defined the beliefs of Hinduism in a real Hindu household somehow become its most prominent features in the classroom: 300 million gods, a figure as unheard of as it was irrelevant; polytheistic, an overemphasized reminder of being unlike our country’s Judeo-Christian foundations; idol worship, like the kind that’s not allowed in Abrahamic religion."},{"type":"text","value":"I found them all to be new, more elaborate ways of othering. Where were the more culturally significant heroes and villains, Yudhishthira and Duryodhana? What about Shankar Bhagwan and Parvati Mata? Why did we have to focus on how many arms they had instead of what they represented? Why was the “Mahabharata” never mentioned alongside the “Odyssey” and “Iliad” as an important epic poem?"},{"type":"text","value":"It was a lasting internal struggle. I didn’t have the answers then, and I don’t have them now. But my reactions were more than an overabsorption or taking to heart of media representation, what someone said at school or something I read on the internet."},{"type":"text","value":"Really, I was dancing around the larger issue of assimilation. It was a balancing act in my mind: How much of my culture would I have to trade in for my status as American?"},{"type":"text","value":"But, at the end of the day, it didn’t matter what I thought I was or what I thought I wanted to be – Indian, American, neither or both."},{"type":"text","value":"Despite my efforts, I was still mistaken for a foreigner, still called pretty with the kicker of “for an Indian girl” and still had Indian friends. A delay in finding the perfect Jim Croce song for the aux cord begged the question, “What? You only know Indian music?” Describing how I had tried poppy leaf curry in India meant being asked if it was “a sacrifice to your Lord Vishnu.”"},{"type":"text","value":"I felt this overwhelming need to prove that I was something other than the collective group Indian-ness projected onto me, that I was an individual not defined by my skin color or ancestry. But it didn’t matter. People already had an identity and a narrative constructed for me whether I was faithful to it or not."},{"type":"text","value":"My parents are from India, and that has played a defining role in my upbringing, but I wished others understood that it doesn’t make me any less American."},{"type":"text","value":"Much of what I did was a concerted effort to prove that I belonged – making sure I said the right word and never took too long choosing a song. I never wanted to make the same mistake twice. I never wanted to give someone the opportunity to question my right to be here or to reinforce, by the mere fact of my being Indian, what they saw in a movie or learned in the classroom. In the process, I intentionally tried to lose my culture because I so badly wanted to be accepted as American."},{"type":"text","value":"But it wasn’t easy at all. And more importantly, it was a misguided journey altogether."},{"type":"text","value":"I feel embarrassed about the great lengths I went to in order to shun my Indian-ness, as though that would somehow purify my American identity to others. Maybe it would, but I realized that losing my cultural heritage wasn’t what I really wanted."},{"type":"pull","value":"{\"caption\":\"It’s precisely because of this background that I’ve been able to speak another language and access the soul of another country.\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Unaccustomed Earth” for a high school English class meant that, for the first time, I saw my own experiences staring back at me, sometimes word for word. It felt like any given page could have been taken out of a chapter of my own life. It was finally an authentic representation of my background, and just like that, I was no longer so alone."},{"type":"text","value":"Around this time, I started regularly talking with my Spanish teacher about her passion for yoga and her journey converting to Judaism. It was one of my first experiences talking to a non-Indian person who seemed to truly value my culture, and it was validating."},{"type":"text","value":"I was also excited to see how the lead singer of Greta Van Fleet, one of my favorite rock bands, proudly flaunted Indian clothing and a rudraksha necklace too."},{"type":"text","value":"If others could be proud of and appreciate my culture, why couldn’t I?"},{"type":"text","value":"All this time, I realized, I had been focusing on all the wrong things. There was so much to appreciate and so much to love."},{"type":"text","value":"To stand on the shoulders of women who inspire me every day, to learn about Indian tradition and philosophy, to navigate difference and culture, even if it can be confusing sometimes – these should be sources of pride not shame."},{"type":"text","value":"I’m not even sure who I would be if it weren’t for my experiences as an Indian American. It’s precisely because of this background that I’ve been able to speak another language and access the soul of another country."},{"type":"text","value":"No longer embarrassed of speaking Hindi in public, I want my future kids to speak it too. No longer so insecure in who I am, I want my past self to know there was nothing to disguise."},{"type":"text","value":"There is no one way to be Indian, American or anything else."},{"type":"text","value":"My will to hold on to my culture might mean I’m still not American by some people’s standards."},{"type":"text","value":"But so what?"}]}},"pageContext":{"term":"winter21","slug":"ashani.indianamerican"}},"staticQueryHashes":[]}