South Asian American Culture

After reading Lisa Lowe’s article, “Immigration, Citizenship, Racialization: Asian American Critique,” it was clear that her thesis and main idea was about the Asian immigrants cultural politics. She tries to situate the legal, political, and economic meaning as a formation of the Asian American emergence within a “United States national and international comprehension.” Lowe also looks at how the asian citizen is defined against the Asian immigrant, “legally, economically, and culturally.” Throughout my essay, I will discuss the political restrictions against Asian immigrants through the help of Lowe’s text and the class presentations.

The popularization of South Asian culture through its use by mainly white female celebrities alludes to the idea that white women exotify South Asian culture, as it makes them feel as though they are more “ethnic.” Similarly, as it is mainly white women, even celebrities, who are those adorned with bindis and other symbols of South Asian culture in American media, it alludes to the idea that white women are seen as more desirable and are more praised in society than those who do not fit that standard. Maira had noticed that many of the people who were ready to adopt these cultural elements were mainly white women, speaking to the idea of white imperialism and white supremacy. Through a testimonial from Madonna regarding her MTV appearance

Despite their similar appearances, Asian Americans a diverse group people. The stories are different for each ethnic group from culture, immigration history, religion, and more. Asians are a rapidly growing population in America that it could reach ten million. “Immigrants are coming in plane loads that is raising the number of ethnic Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Korean, Vietnamese, as well as Cambodian citizens.”3 Half of the legal immigrants coming to the United States in 1980 were from Asia and were easily outnumbering the percentage of Latin and Europeans. 3

In his book "The Ethnic Myth," author Stephen Steinberg describes how many ethnic groups faced prejudice, oppression and discrimination. At the same time, however, these ethnic groups never lost faith in the dream that compelled them to immigrate to the United

Bharathi Mukherjee’s later novels Jasmine(1989), The Holder of the World(1993) and Leave It to Me(1997) comprised her last creative phase conveniently termed here as the phase of immigration. By now she has travelled a long distance in terms of thematic perception and character portrayal. Beginning with an expatriate’s uprooted identity in the early 70’s, her creative faculty explored the transitional dilemma of characters in early 80’s, whose acculturation bids were occasionally thwarted by the complexity of cultural plurality in the adopted land. However, after the publication of The Middleman(1998), the process of cultural acclimatization appears to be complete and the characters betray the confidence of an immigrant, almost a naturalized citizen, in facing the challenges of human life.

Asian-Americans differ by immigration history, ethnic origin, assimilation path, socioeconomic standing, community involvement, and family characteristics. Over time, the experiences of Asian-Americans have changed. Today, Asian-Americans are creating imaginative and complex self-portraits within the United States media, armed with powerful education and information about Asian-Americans. Representation in media is best understood within social, historical, political and cultural contexts, and foresees a more active role in media for Asian-Americans in the future.

“Daljeet Singh, who is from the Punjab region of India, had been traveling by Greyhound from Phoenix, Arizona, to Indianapolis, Indiana, on February 21, when another passenger reported he was 'acting weird,’”(Rahman). This man’s situation can be grouped into three of Suzanne Pharr’s terms regarding oppression. One term being “The Other” or those who are not apart of the defined norm. Another term that this story is grouped in is “Stereotyping” which is the defining of a person or group through beliefs. The final term is “Distortion” which can be defined as the selective presentation and false representation of the lives and histories of particular group of people.

There are close to 18 million Asian Americans living in the United States to this day, making up 5.8% of the total U.S population. A Pew Research survey finds that most Asian Americans “identify themselves by country of origin and only 1 in 5 describe themselves most often as Asian or Asian American,” (Pew Research Center).

It is important to understand the term “South Asian”, which refers to men and women who come from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and many other South Asian countries (Das Gupta, 1994). However, “South Asian women in Canada belong to a larger category of immigrant women of colour a term that is a social construction” (George & Ramkissoon, 1998, p.103). The term South Asian is a social construction, which means it has been created by society. This is because the term South Asian or race does not have any scientific or biological validity to it. Elliot (1996) discussed how race, ethnicity and gender are socially constructed, however their meaning differ in historical and contemporary discourses (as cited in George & Ramkissoon,

Mukherjee would like to ask those parents who express rage or despair to some aspects of and towards the Indian culture this, “What is it we have lost if our children are acculturating into the culture in which we are living? Is it so terrible that our children are discovering or are inventing homelands for themselves?” Mukherjee notices and acknowledges that the American culture is beginning to change her but she claims that “it will not end until she can show that she along with the hundreds of thousands of immigrants just like her, are minute by minute transforming and changing America just by simply voting and becoming US citizens.” To Mukherjee this is change is considered as a two-way process that affects both the individual and the nation cultural identity.

There has been an archaic existing fear of anything different from the norm becoming present, however having something different may bring about positive change, diversity, and new knowledge. Yet people are reluctant to accept something different and instead make efforts to change the differences to match the way things normally and dominantly are. This fear and reaction is the reason for why efforts of assimilation occur, so that the dominant can integrate the minority and to conform to the dominant culture. Writer Sarah Ahmed discusses the issues of migration, assimilation, and what it really means to be happy in her chapter “Melancholic Migrant.” She traces the links between white culture and happiness; the idea of the whiter you are the happier you are. Ahmed presents arguments of other scholars, like Trevor Phillips, that present the notion of migration being the root of unhappiness in communities with people of different racial backgrounds living together and running into conflicts (122). She goes on to explore how the British government tries to resolve these diversity conflicts among their British citizens and Asian immigrant population. The British Empire promoted civilized kind of pleasure that they assumed could not be found in the Indian culture, but only in the British culture. Based on the excuse of Indians being uncivilized the British made attempts to colonize them. The British held the belief that India does not have culture and thus the

Thomas King’s story, “‘You’ll Never Believe What Happened’ Is Always a Great Way To Start”, " Race, Class and Gender in Asian America" by Yen Le Espiritu and " Zebra: Growing up Black and White in Canada" by Lawrence Hill all illustrate how people of minority deal with their intersectionality of gender, race and ethnicity and their limitations that the dominant ideology of the west puts on them.

Sudipta Das is a professor at the Southern University at New Orleans and in their academic journal “Loss and Gain? A Saga of Asian Indian Immigration” Das goes in depth on the South Asian immigration trends. While immigration has always occurred in the United States, different groups of people immigrated in mass amounts at different times. The majority of the first phase of Southern Asian immigration occurred during 1904 to 1917, and thousands of Southern Asians entered the United States from Canada. This was due to there being anti-Indian sentiments in Canada at the time, and soon after most immigrants arrived through San Francisco. This phase ended when the United States passed an immigration act in 1917, that only allowed

Culture plays an important role in many of the addictions that people succumb to. As clinicians, it is important for us to be aware of the implication that culture has on diagnosing addictions and treating the addiction. In order to treat clients more effectively we should have some knowledge about specific cultures and their relation to some compulsive behaviors or addictions. For this assignment, I decided to explore the Asian culture in relation to gambling. Many studies have shown that the Asian culture account for a significant population seen in casinos and the gambling world. In this paper I will explore how cultural factors might impact specific behaviors. In addition, I will examine how a culture may impact the treatment process in order to gain more information for future work with this population.

In a world which is only now beginning to emerge from the shackles of colonialism, both former empires and the nations once subdued by their hegemony have entered a transitional period defined by uncertainty and the loss of collective identity. Compounding matters is the delicate balance that expatriates from former colonies turned independent countries, such as Pakistan, India, and Hong Kong, must seek to achieve while residing in the former motherland of Great Britain. For the most ambitious and hopeful immigrants, the arduous process of assimilation from pre-colonial society to the very seat of imperial power which once exercised dominion over your homeland from afar can be a jarring metamorphosis. Two exquisitely written short stories published during the tumultuous postcolonial period of the late 1980s' and early 1990's, Hanif Kureishi's My Son the Fanatic and Amy Tan's Two Kinds, harness the provocative power of prose to explore the quintessentially modern cultural theme of dual and transitional identity. By juxtaposing the paternal expectation of father Parvez with the harsh reality his militarized, extremist son Ali, Kureishi exposes the fallacious notion of the "British dream" offered to immigrants from former colonies around the world. Through her wrenching tale of the divisions sewn between Chinese mothers, who lived through the Communist Cultural Revolution, and their Americanized daughters struggling to bear the burden of competing customs, Tan examines the