In this Book
- Making Ethnic Choices: California's Punjabi Mexican Americans
- Book
- 2010
- Published by: Temple University Press
- Series: Asian American History and Culture (AAHC)
summary
"[A] thoroughly original study that greatly expands our knowledge of how ethnic identities are formed. Leonard writes clearly and her inclusion of the voices of the Punjabi-Mexicans lends humor and depth to the history. This insightful study will be of interest to all scholars concerned with immigration and ethnicity and the history of California."
--The Journal of Asian Studies
This is a study of the flexibility of ethnic identity. In the early twentieth century, men from India's Punjab province came to California to work on the land. The new immigrants had few chances to marry. There were very few marriageable Indian women, and miscegenation laws and racial prejudice limited their ability to find white Americans. Discovering an unexpected compatibility, Punjabis married women of Mexican descent and these alliances inspired others as the men introduced their bachelor friends to the sisters and friends of their wives. These biethnic families developed an identity as "Hindus" but also as Americans. Karen Leonard has related theories linking state policies and ethnicity to those applied at the level of marriage and family life. Using written sources and numerous interviews, she invokes gender, generation, class, religion, language, and the dramatic political changes of the 1940s in South Asia and the United States to show how individual and group perceptions of ethnic identity have changed among Punjabi Mexican Americans in rural California.
"This is an extraordinary work. It is simultaneously an ethnography of early South Asian immigrant life in California, a model of fine-grained historical research using all manner of documents to reconstruct and interpret the migration flows, social structure, and family cycles of Punjabi men and their Mexican spouses, and a sophisticated examination of the complex role of 'identity' in their perceptions of themselves and their descendants.... In the midst of contemporary discussions about multi-culturalism, politically correctly positions, and valuing diversity, this book would be a fine place to begin a thoughtful consideration of the potential multiplicity of meanings ethnicity may have for human begins."
--Journal of American Ethnic History
"No other book has the scope or the vision of Karen Leonard's work. I expect this book to be consulted as a model of historical research for many years to come."
--James Freeman, San Jose State University
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Part I: Introduction
- 1. Exploring Ethnicity
- pp. 3-14
- Part II: The World of the Pioneers
- 3. Early Days in the Imperial Valley
- pp. 37-61
- 4. Marriages and Children
- pp. 62-78
- 5. Male and Female Networks
- pp. 79-100
- 6. Conflict and Love in the Marriages
- pp. 101-120
- Part III: The Construction of Ethnic Identity
- 7. Childhood in Rural California
- pp. 123-143
- 8. The Second Generation Comes of Age
- pp. 144-162
- 9. Political Change and Ethnic Identity
- pp. 163-184
- 10. Encounters with the Other
- pp. 185-202
- 11. Contending Voices
- pp. 203-219
- Appendixes
- pp. 223-225
- Bibliography
- pp. 293-319
Additional Information
ISBN
9781439903643
Related ISBN(s)
9780877228905, 9781566392020
MARC Record
OCLC
646817025
Pages
362
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No
Copyright
1994