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Acknowledgments
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Acknowledgments We acknowledge those who have helped bring this volume to fruition. First, we thank our contributors whose patience and intellectual efforts are demonstrated on the subsequent pages. Our gratitude to you for having faith in the volume and us; we have enjoyed the journey together and learned much along the way from all of you. We thank Derek Krissoff for thinking this project worthwhile from the onset. Our gratitude also extends to the anonymous reviewers whose lively and insightful comments have improved this manuscript immeasurably. We are further indebted to vibrant Vijay Shah for his enthusiasm, ideas, and support. We would also like to thank the production staff (Dustin Hubbart and Jennifer Clark) at the University of Illinois Press and copy editor Nancy Albright and indexer Sheila Bodell for their professionalism, helpfulness, and diligence. It brings us great joy to have the book be a part of the Asian American Experience book series. Thank you to our programs, departments, and colleges at the University of Minnesota and Fairleigh Dickinson University, which have provided the support that has permitted us to complete this manuscript. Thank you to our chairs Regina Kunzel and Vicki Cohen for recognizing this scholarship as critical to our intellectual endeavors and contributions. Our gratitude to our Asian American Studies colleagues Leslie Bow, Floyd Cheung, Elena Creef, Shilpa Dave, Pawan Dhingra, Jennifer Ho, Karen Ho, Jane Iwamura, Ann Kalayil, Erika Lee, Jo Lee, Madhavi Mallapragada, Anita Mannur , Sharmila Rudrappa, Tom Sarmiento, Jaideep Singh, Cathy Schlund-Vials, Eric Tang, Pam Thoma, and the many others who always create an intellectual community within the Association for Asian American Studies for the myriad of conversations that sustain us. From Jigna: You can take the girl out of the South, but not the South out of the girl. Thank you to Khyati for her ebullience, fortitude, and organization in confronting edited volumes. Without her vision and zeal, this collection would not exist. Though I deeply resented my family in the seventh grade for moving me from the ethnic enclaves of New Jersey to the freshly paved suburbs of Atlanta, I marvel, now, at how Asian American my Atlanta has become and appreciate how it has become home for so many of us. The heavy and humid nights, the chirping of crickets, the ever-present sight of kudzu, and the spaghetti of highways are all x acknowledgments familiar landmarks in a journey home. To my father and mother who have spent more years in Gwinnett County than in Gujarat, my gratitude for their migrations filled with hope, adjustments, and resilience; I also thank them for their unshaking belief that I can do anything. No matter to which regions my feet wandered, my brother Rakesh and sister Seema always made me leave my heart with them in the South; in addition to their loving support, they have graciously shared their extensive understandings of what it has meant to grow up brown-skinned below the Mason-Dixon line. My appreciation to Ruskin who helps brings the South into our Minnesota home, sharing a penchant for collards and cornbread, as well as conversations about the color line. He helps me process the enthusiasm and disappointments of everyday life into thoughtful optimism for the coming day. His support, love, and labor have greatly enriched this book. And, finally, I thank Rohan and Khayaal for tasting new and fresh experiences of the South with such fervor and excitement that I get to experience things anew. From Khyati: Unlike Jigna, I knew nothing but the South—and India—until graduate school. I was five when my father and mother, then pregnant with my younger sister, moved us to Atlanta. Thanks to my parents, my sister Hetal, and the rest of my “family”—the Sanghvi, Desai, Shroff, Bhargave, Manocha, Razdan, and Vijay families—I had a place where I felt I could just be me. My parents and those families devoted thousands of hours of loving labor to building Atlanta’s Indian American community physically, socially, and spiritually. Today, that community is thriving and growing in ways that few families in the early 1970s could ever have imagined. It, like this book and the professional and personal successes of my second-generation peers from that community, is a testament to what they built, and I am eternally grateful. After leaving Atlanta, I have lived predominantly in the Northeast, where I often identify myself to others as a proud southerner. That’s not what most people are expecting, any more...