I took a long break from reading full-length fiction. Well, other than the summer time reading, that is. Factual reportage and analysis triumphed over my interests in fiction in the world of teaching and learning in which I was fully involved. Now, when I have returned to reading fiction, I am blown away with the tremendous transformation in the authors who tell fascinating stories about the human condition.
(At this point, regular readers need no reminders about Orhan Pamuk's observation. Should they or the occasional wanderer to this blog be reminded about what Pamuk said, click here.)
Sanjena Sathian's Gold Diggers is the latest addition to my list. Yet another female writer. Yet another non-white. Yet another story about brown people. Yet another book that delves deep into race in America.
I suppose this was bound to happen. Soon after passing the historic voting rights legislation, the US Congress voted in 1965 to reform the country's immigration law. Brown people were no longer excluded and were now allowed to immigrate. Though, at the time the legislation was passed, neither President Johnson nor the law's architects imagined that people would line up to come to America from far away countries in Asia and Africa. But, come we did by the millions.
The parents--the immigrants--worked hard so that their children and grandchildren could do what makes them happy in life. If writing books is what made the later generations happy, instead of becoming doctors and scientists as their immigrant parents were, then so be it. This is not a new American concept. John Adams wrote about this in 1780 in one of his letters to his wife, Abigail:
I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History and Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.
John Adams wished that his grandchildren ought to be able to pursue painting and poetry if that is what they wanted to do. The American dream is less about owning a home with white picket fences, and more about providing opportunities for the next generation for them to be whatever they want to be--a writer, a poet, a scientist, a programmer, whatever!
The children of the early immigrants since 1965 are grown up. Some of them have ventured into politics too--some have done that by changing their names and identities under a false notion that coming across as white is better than being an Indian-American. Some have become comedians and comedic actors. Some have gotten into the world of writing. It is no surprise that brown Americans of various backgrounds are telling remarkable stories of brown people in America.
The stories of brown people in America are invariably statements on how we have moved from the fringes towards the center. From being invisible to becoming visible to becoming like anybody else. While Gold Diggers and Last Night at the Telegraph Club are about different kinds of non-white Americans, set in different geographies, with the stories unfolding in different time periods, I was struck by this: Beauty pageants feature in both. Miss Chinatown. Miss India USA. The contestants are not merely presenting themselves as beautiful girls and women, but--and this is key--they make statements on what it means to be Chinese and American, what it means to be Indian and American.
The academic in me hasn't died despite having been forced off the campus. I wanted to know more about these ethnic pageants. The internet delivers through this Washington Post report from 2005:
The contests, which are growing in popularity even as traditional beauty contests are losing their allure, are patterned after the Miss America pageant, yet include colorful twists that recall tradition. Young, often brainy contestants wear an Ethiopian Absha Kamise or similar culture-specific outfits that their mothers and great-grandmothers would have worn.
At immigrant pageants, beauty has a browner, more worldly tinge. Noses are wider and eyes are a gooey chocolate brown, framed in various almond-like contours. Hips sway more in talent segments, such as an adaptation of a Bollywood performance at Miss India or a belly dance at Miss Liberia.
And this:
But the pageants also bring intense debates within these ethnic communities -- discussions that reflect the age-old split among immigrants over assimilation and retaining cultural mores.
How much and how well do we assimilate? What from the old country do, should, we retain?
Every immigrant family, every immigrant group has lived through these challenging questions of identity. While I didn't contest in beauty pageants--you're welcome--these questions have always nagged me. Straddling two completely different worlds is not an easy task. I know that these questions will not go away either. As challenging as it is, I don't think it is a problem. It is a wonderful opportunity that I have to create an identity for myself as opposed to living a life that was dictated by the accident of birth to a couple in one part of the world. There is beauty in such a life.
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