The Indian Diaspora By Vijay Mishra

Even so, Mukherjee was “opting for fluidity, self-invention, blue jeans, and Tshirts, and renouncing 3,000 years of cate-observant, ‘pure culture’ marriage in the Mukherjee family” (273). She embraces the American culture because she acquires conformity from it. Mukherjee’s love for America makes her more susceptible to adjust into America to the point where she does not even follow her own Indian tradition. This changes her identity negatively because the more she embraces the American lifestyle, the more she surrenders her Indian heritage. If she did allow herself to gain citizenship while maintaining her Indian culture, perhaps her identity would not be jeopardized, however it is. Mukherjee loses her identity as a traditional Indian since chose the American lifestyle over her own, and hence this reveals the trauma of self-transformation that results from sacrificing one’s identity.

Immigrants’ refusal to appreciate a fused culture promotes division. Mukherjee questions the idea of immigrants losing their culture for American ideals: “Parents express rage or despair at their U.S.-born children's forgetting of, or indifference to, some aspects of Indian culture,” to that Mukherjee asks, “Is it so terrible that our children are discovering or are inventing homelands for themselves?” (Mukherjee, 1997, para. 28). Many immigrants experience anger when their children no longer hold the ideals of their home country. This tension produced within the household hinders the unity within a resident country’s culture and encourages division within families. Using herself as an example, Mukherjee provides another instance of anger directed at her from her own subculture: “They direct their rage at me because, by becoming a U.S.

A young Aboriginal boy by the name of Arnold throws a textbook at a teachers face at his residential school… After that event his life changes he decides to transfer to Reardan High an all white school in a farm town outside his reservation. This courageous act from an “Indian boy” on Arnold’s reservation has never been seen or done before, Arnold is trying to break the mold. The book “The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie explores the life of Arnold an Aboriginal boy whose whole life has been lived in poverty on a reservation. Which is then thrown into the polar opposite environment, Reardan High in hopes of getting a higher education and escaping the alcoholism and unemployment that most adults that grew up

She explains her thesis by stating “Others who write stories of migration often talk of arrival at a new place as a loss of communal memory and the erosion of an original culture. I want to talk of arrival as a gain,” (360). The key points of the text include Mukherjee describing her transition between Calcutta and the United States, and what it means to be and American and how culture influences that aspect. The information in the text is significant; the people of America are a part of a melting pot, sometimes it is hard for them to find the distinction between American culture and their own. The information in Mukherjee’s story is clear and specific, unbiased, and is relevant to the purpose of the story. I believe Mukherjee has achieved her purpose of informing her audience about cultural differences; she presents certain strengths and weaknesses within the text.

The next idea that Sherman Alexie answers is what is like to be an Indian Man in the short story “An Indian Education” it seems as if to be an Indian man is to be caught between two worlds and sometimes picking one over the other. For example, the passage on page 176 states the following: “But on the day I leaned through the basement window of the HUD house and kissed the white girl, I felt the good-byes I was saying to my entire tribe” (176). For the narrator of that section he felt like had to give up the Indian part of him because of kissing the white. He felt he disappointed his people and they would never for give him for it. He felt as if his tribe would see him as ‘sell out’. There is also a question of did he view himself the same way. The narrator continues state “After that, no one spoke to me for another five hundred years” (177). Sherman Alexie allow the narrator to end that section with a Hyperbole for added meaning. While we know the narrator was not alive for five hundred years, but it could have felt that way for him. He could have thought that everyone hated him or saw him in a negative light. “Amusement” has great examples of how the main character thinks what is like to be an Indian Man.

At its most fundamental, diaspora focuses on the physical movement of people. However, comprehensive scholarship elevates “diaspora” beyond

No diasporic community manifests all of these characteristics or shares with the same intensity an identity with its scattered ancestral kin. In many respects, diasporas are not actual but imaginary and symbolic communities and political constructs; it is we who often call them into being.” (Palmer)

Many of us think that racism is a problem from the past, a problem during the era of Abraham Lincoln. Well if you think that, you are wrong because racism is still a big problem today and it still affects many people. Racism is something that has been disputed since the Civil war, and even many years later into the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther king did so much trying to change this ideation of the United States, but we can see that this problem still exists. In the book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Arnold Spirit has been a victim of racism in his school. Arnold wants to get a better education and in order to do that, he would have to go to a white school where he would face discrimination.

Bharati married an American-Canadian fellow that would live in every part of North America with her over a span of thirty-three years. She became “opting to fluidity, self-invention, blue jeans, and T-shirts, and renouncing three thousand years of caste-observant, ‘pure culture’ marriage in the Mukherjee family.” Despite their differences, the sisters knew they were the only blood relatives they had on the continent, so they had regular Sunday morning calls where they were carelessly affectionate. During these conversations the sisters would have small talk rather than speak what was truly on their mind, yet they pity one another: Mira “for the lack of structure in [Bharati’s] life, the erasure of Indianness, the absence of an unvarying daily core.” Bharati “for the narrowness of [Mira’s] perspective, her uninvolvement with the mythic depths or the superficial pop culture of the American society.” It is clear that the two differ, however, in the ways in which they hope to interact with the country

A person’s heritage and cultural identity may be lost when moving to a new country where the culture is different and other cultures are not easily accepted. In the short story “Hindus”, Bharati Mukherjee uses setting, characters and the plot to discuss what it is like to lose your cultural identity while being a visible minority in America. Mukherjee uses the plot to describe the events that take place in the main characters life that lead her to realize how different the culture and life is in the America’s. She also uses the characters as a way of demonstrating how moving away from one’s culture and heritage can change a person’s perspective and ways of thinking. Mukerjee also uses setting in her story to identity the physical differences in culture between living in India and America. Alike the setting and characters, the plot helps describe the loss of culture with a sequence of events.

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.

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

When adapting to a new culture, many find it hard to assimilate into their new world while still holding on to their past life. Finding yourself in a new place with a new language and unfamiliar faces is challenging for immigrants. Jhumpa Lahiri, an immigrant herself, sheds some light on the Indian culture in her book, Interpreter of Maladies. She conveys many challenges that immigrants face when moving away from their homeland in a myriad of short stories. These short stories introduce similar themes of immigration and adaptation through different experiences. Two of Lahiri’s short stories, “A Temporary Matter” and “Mrs. Sens”, do a great job in showing similar challenges of cultural differences in two different ways. They introduce characters

Immigrating to a new country is often emotionally taxing. Each country possesses a unique culture, and its citizens reflect the values that are respected in that state. Keeping this in mind, moving to a foreign place and having to embrace a distant set of ideals is a difficult task. Naturally, an inner conflict arises within a person as to whether they should discard the old values in favour of the new ones and become a member of the new country, or to retain the old values and therefore remain estranged from the new citizens. To cope with this struggle, a person might manufacture two identities: one of the old country and one of the new country. In the essays “Life in a New Language” and “An Invisible Woman”, writers Eva Hoffman and Bharati Mukherjee create a new identity to cope with the hardships of immigrating to a foreign country. However, while Hoffman reluctantly accepts her English persona, Mukherjee cannot balance her Indian side with her Canadian one and therefore leaves the country. The two essays explore the strains of changing oneself to acclimatize to a new environment and exemplify the two possible outcomes of creating a second persona in an unfamiliar place: accepting the new identity and staying, or rejecting the foreign values and leaving.

Through her tasteful selection of contemporary Indian influenced prose pieces, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the unique journey of Indian families established in America. Focusing on the intergenerational aspect of traditional households, Lahiri conveys the emotional rollercoaster that accompanies a person who is branded as a foreigner. In America, there exists a common misconception that immigrants who arrive in this country fully assimilate or seek to assimilate as time progresses. The category I chose was "The Dot of true Happiness." The dot which signifies the bindi, a traditional red mark worn by Indian people, is the source of true happiness among these immigrants.