Fitting in: The Joys and Challenges of Being an Indian Woman in America

Abstract

This paper attempts to explore the joys and challenges of a diasporic Indian women who chose to live in the US after marriage. It also engages the research done by Avtar Brah who shows how political contexts in the adopted countries shape South Asian women’s struggles when they try to fit in. This paper would also bring in this dialogue the issue of subjectivity formation explored in the research of Deleuze and Guattari which often shape the way Indian women in the US try to assimilate in the American society. Finally it also complicates the idea of ‘home’ that women settling down in the US feel about their homeland, India. This idea is akin to what Minnie Pratt calls a place of ‘forced subservience’ that hides forms of repression, exploitation, and violence which one may not be conscious of till it comes flooding in when contexts change in a diasporic situation. Much of this paper will be autobiographical but would also include the results of a survey that was done on about fifteen women spanning three generations of Indian diasporic women living in and near Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania.

‘मैं तो संग जाउं बंवास’

(‘I would like to go to your exile with you’)

(Bhupen Hazarika’s lyrics for the Hindi film ‘Ek Pal’)