UNITED STATES, September 22, 2011 (by Padma Kuppa): At the beginning of the school year, another immigrant mom and I compared notes on how our middle school sons had spent their summers: with their grandparents, in the lands of their forefathers, the neighboring countries of Pakistan and India. She narrated how her daughter speaks their mother tongue, and her two sons, like my son, can eke out a few sentences.
I realized that navigating the hyphenated immigrant identity is a balancing act, a realization that took root as I started the journey of parenting, and is continually reinforced by what has been happening since 9/11.
In Becoming American? The Forging of Arab and Muslim Identity in Pluralist America, Georgetown University professor Yvonne Haddad questions what it means to be truly American. While she is addressing the issues that Arabs and Muslims face, much of what she said about the immigrant experience resonated with me: I could trade the word Arab or Muslim for Indian or Hindu, respectively and the sentences below would still have meaning.
“Those who emigrated in the second half of the twentieth century brought with them diverse national identities… For immigrants, their attachments to these national identities are continually tested by events in their home countries and by American foreign policy towards their countries.” This especially applies to Hindus, who have linguistic and socio-economic divisions, just as the Jewish community did centuries ago; think of German Jews, Polish Jews, Russian Jews, and the varying reasons they immigrated to the United States over the centuries.
“Not all Arabs living in the United States are immigrants. Temporary residents appear to have some influence on immigrants, as they interact with them in cultural, social, religious, and political affairs.” This is my daily experience as an IT Analyst, working not only side by side with temporary workers from India, but also in daily interaction with colleagues in India over the internet.
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