How to Be South Asian in America: Narratives of Ambivalence and Belonging

Index

Alexander, Meena, 72, 132, 146–55; and activism, 139, 182; and Bharati Mukherjee, 156, 158, 168, 244n5; and “dark femaleness,” 28, 134–35; and the Draupadi myth, 245n20; and fault lines, 127; and hybridity, 144; and palimpsests, 236n21 Ali, Zainab, 236n21 Allen, Diane S., 176 ambivalence, 24–27, 230–31, 236–37n31; of the American Dream, 71, 73–74; of assimilation, 46, 55, 130, 136, 158, 228; and authenticity, 13, 190; of diasporization, 38; immigrant, 20, 148, 181; narratives of, 13, 24–26, 34, 47–48, 67, 134, 136 America: conflation with the United States, 234n4; narratives of 1–10, 41–42, 44, 46–51, 53–54, 77–78, 153; as new empire, 6; and race, 55; symbols of 2–3, 47, 173, 218–19, 222 American Chai (Anurag Mehta), 29, 188, 196, 204, 208, 211, 217, 222, 224 American Desi (Piyush Dinker Pandya), 29, 188, 192, 195–96, 203, 211, 212–13, 216, 218–19, 223 American Dream, The, 65–78; and the pursuit of happiness, 51, 66–67, 75, 130, 175, 179 Americanization, 19–20, 187, 208; and ABCD (Krutin Patel), 29, 188, 194, 196, 203, 211–12, 213–15, 223–24 ABCD: acronym for American-Born Confused Desi, 194–95, 201, 202–4, 208, 212, 215–16, 226 Abel, Elizabeth: The Voyage In, 151 accented cinema, 199, 201. See also Naficy, Hamid accommodation: alternative to normative assimilation, 20, 74, 236n24; in Bapsi Sidhwa’s fiction, 170–71, 173–74, 181; in Bharati Mukherjee’s fiction, 159, 168–69; in film texts, 223; in Meena Alexander’s fiction, 147, 149, 153 Achebe, Chinua, 209 activism, 21, 206; feminist, 175; and Meena Alexander, 146, 147, 152, 154; and South Asians, 34, 138 Adams, James T.: and the American Dream, 68–69, 71, 73–74, 77, 122, 136, 155, 231, 239n32, 244n10 Afzal-Khan, Fawzia, 172 agency, 15, 154, 198, 220, 230; and ambivalence, 237n31; and the American Dream, 71; and hybridity, 142, 206; immigrant, 62, 151, 169; limits to, 74–75, 179, 206, 235n13; and Virginia Woolf’s “angel in the house,” 246n33 Alba, Richard D., 42–43 Index 272 / index 108–16; reappraising, 1–3, 10, 20–21, 31, 79, 82; variability of, 6, 14, 46, 55. See also accommodation; Americanization authenticity: anxieties of, 10, 48, 204–10; and belonging, 227; and drag, 215–17, 219; and gender, 211–15; and invention, 29, 188, 190, 215–17; narratives of, 12–13, 189–91, 205, 208 Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, The, 50 Bahri, Deepika, 26, 61–62 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 26, 51 Bales, Kent, 158 Balgopal, Pallassana, 233–34n3, 239n27 Bambara, Toni Cade, 72 Bammer, Angelika, 163 Banerjee, Debjani, 246n24 Banerjee, Ranee Kaur, 157–58, 248n42 Bascara, Victor, 250n17 Bauman, Zygmunt, 235n18 Beauvoir, Simone de, 198 belonging: and assimilation, 8, 9, 42, 202; defined, 3, 28, 71, 228–29; and loyalty, 12, 210; narratives of, 10–11, 14, 30, 33, 35, 43, 55, 60, 69, 77, 81, 87–88, 138, 149, 209; processes of, 2, 42, 75, 137 Bend It Like Beckham (Gurinder Chadha), 200 Benjamin, Joel, 80, 91 Berger, John, 212 Berger, Joseph, 243n32 Bhabha, Homi, 25, 47, 140, 142–43, 169, 206, 236n29 Bhaji on the Beach (Gurinder Chadha), 200, 201 Bhattacharjee, Anannya, 34, 237n4 black, 55, 64, 92, 111, 113–14, 120, 200, 211, 223–24, 243n25; blackness, 55, 135, 197. See also color; ethnicity; race Bloom, Harold, 250n15 Bollywood. See cinema Bose, Brenda, 246n24 Bow, Leslie, 210, 213–14, 215 Braendlin, Bonnie Hoover, 164–65, 247n40 Brah, Avtar, 23 Braziel, Jana Evans, 89, 140, 234n8, 237n2, 238n9 Breckenridge, Carol, 234n7 Brennan, Timothy, 25 Bride and Prejudice (Gurinder Chadha), 200 ambivalence, 13–14, 30, 47, 73, 164, 223, 230; and the American Dream, 68–69, 74–77, 130, 164; defined, 20, 42, 46–47, 123–24, 133, 147, 155–56, 229, 230–31, 238n11; and family, 165–66, 222; and gender, 135–37, 139, 159, 214; narratives of, 4, 6, 7, 9, 12–13, 31, 47–50, 64–65, 72–73, 77–78, 133, 147, 186, 194; as process, 3–4, 12, 14, 63, 77, 79, 87, 190, 226; programs for, 4, 42–46, 80–81, 84, 94–103, 115–17, 121, 127–30, 230, 242n19; and race, 55–56, 57–58, 62, 64–65, 115, 135, 214; and transnationalism, 11, 22, 46, 174–75, 226. See also accommodation; assimilation Anderson, Benedict, 13, 21–22, 32, 50–51, 59, 197, 233n1, 235n9 Aneja, Anu, 157 Angel Island, 57–58 anthropology: and code–switching, 250n19; and cultural studies...