Category Archive

I’m behind on my writing - adjusting to a job like the one I have is difficult because while I’m learning a lot, the routine is suffocating me. What an idiotic thing to complain about, I know. I’m feeling overwhelmed about the fact that I have no plans for August, and am torn between desperately searching for a job, and running away to somewhere. I’m not really the running away kind, in the way that I’ve been daydreaming about, but I’m starting to wonder if that’s just because it’s always what I’ve told myself. I’m feeling stuck, and tired, so writing hasn’t been on top of my to-do list these days. My apologies.

In any case, behind on my writing means I didn’t get around to writing about Loving Day, which was last week. A belated Happy Loving Day to you all. The Washington Post featured a great article - “What Mildred Knew” - that is definitely worth reading if you haven’t yet.

The other day I got asked a question from one of my best friends, an Indian American living in Texas, a friend whose life is a stark contrast from my own.

“So have you just given up on finding an Indian guy?”

Where could I begin? I couldn’t explain to her, someone who grew up in a context where there were only two kinds of appropriate men to date (Indian-Hindu; White), that it wasn’t that I’d given up on anything, that I’d been struggling with the guilt of dating white men for over three years now. And I couldn’t find the right words to tell her that it had both nothing and everything to do with race.

I hadn’t sworn off white men exactly - more like men altogether - but I had definitely decided that the problems of my past relationships could have been attributed to ignorance about white supremacy, white privilege, and the loaded histories and contexts behind relationships between white men and women of color. The risk of being exoticized and fetishized, of feeling colonized as a body, as an individual, could be avoided if I avoided relationships, specifically relationships with white men.

Well I think we all know what happened then, so I won’t bother reflecting on that again (moving on is hard. but that’s an entirely separate, and probably password protected post for another day).

I went to a wedding on Saturday night, tagged along with some family to this big North Indian Bollywood-esque wedding. There were probably four hundred people there, all dressed up, and at the head of the reception hall, the bride and groom sat like awkward cake-toppers on a throne that resembled a prom-photo backdrop. I was the only young woman with short hair, and the only woman who wore black (which, at a Hindu wedding is perfectly acceptable, though apparently not as appropriate as Barbie pink or Vegas teal).

As one of the groomsmen prepared to make a toast, he turned to the groom and began: “Dude, I always thought you would do something stupid, like marry a Chinese girl, and have to learn to use chopsticks or something. But at the end of the day you did the family right, you did us all proud, by marrying within the community.”

I was seething. is that the right word? It was seething mixed with stinging tears mixed with having the wind knocked out of you. I was all of those things, but managed to maintain my own plastic expression as half the audience clapped ferociously over the notion of “doing the family right.”

My parents did not “do their families right”. They married out of communities. They married out of religions. They married out of region. My mother was a triple threat to my father’s community and vice versa. The women in my father’s community felt they had been done wrong, that my mother had “stolen away one of the good ones.” My mother’s parents were progressive enough at the time to be supportive of the marriage, but they both dealt with the consequences of their daughter’s choices from their families. And while they were legally allowed to get married in India, I don’t doubt that they paid in other ways for their “betrayal to their own kind.”

My friend has dated exclusively Indian men. She is a perfect candidate for the kind of narrative her community strives to fulfill - a beautiful, intelligent woman who is looking forward to a life in the suburbs with children and maybe a dog. She and her husband will play boardgames on the weekends with other North Indian couples, and their social life will revolve around Indian functions, poojas, and weddings.

This just isn’t the way I grew up. I feel no real connection to South Asian culture - my own parents never drove culture into me because they too couldn’t handle the other aspects that come with it - the moderate politics, the gender divided functions, the classism, and prejudices.

So I told her the truth in the best way I knew how. No, I hadn’t “given up” on Indian men - the ethnicity of my partner just doesn’t matter as much as his politics - his racial and gender politics, his ability to negotiate through the dynamics that are bound to arise in being with a woman of color. Meeting straight men like that isn’t like shooting fish in a barrel, it turns out. More like standing blindfolded in a lake trying to stab at fish with a fork. So I’m in a privileged position not to have to limit myself to “Indian Men,” I’m not going to. There is a part two to this, about my failure as a candidate for the seemingly prototypical Indian man, but that’s really another issue altogether…

Until next time.

Note: This is an excerpt actually, from a speech I gave at an API Student Commencement Dinner at graduation - I had always had fantasies of speaking during graduation weekend so it was a real thrill - the content is important to me so I thought it was worth putting here.

Second Note: This prequel-my-post-with-a-note thing is not going to become a habit.

~*~

I think one of the hardest things about graduating is saying goodbye to the people we have grown to care about over the last few years. Being at a college like this has not been the easiest experience. It’s been difficult for some of us to get through four years of college. Being here has sometimes meant feeling lonely or disappointed or angry or scared or unsafe. But being here has also meant meeting some of the brightest and most competent and loving people ever…

Community need not be completely unified – it need not be made up of people who have the same shared experiences. It is made of voices that must learn to speak and listen to one another, and negotiate with one another. Participating in and working in and being in a community is a process – and it’s ok that our community here in this room has sometimes felt fragmented and disunified. It’s really ok – we all learned from each other and we found support with individuals here. I feel very lucky to have found the people here in this room when I did because these people helped me feel less scared, and less alone and less angry and less disappointed. These people helped me find a voice to speak clearly and articulately in spaces where I was afraid to speak. These people asked me to think about how best to serve my community, how best to live a liveable life, how best to take care of myself while also taking care of others. The people in this room are leaders. They helped make a difference here. They will continue to make a difference wherever they go. I’m so proud of the people here, of the students here. Given all of this, I will reiterate – saying goodbye is difficult.

But this is what I realized in the last few weeks – I’m ashamed to admit how late in my college years I truly came to understand this. I come from a history built on goodbyes – goodbyes that were much much more difficult than the ones I will have to say in the next two days. Let me expand on this a little.

In 1947, my grandmother, her siblings and her mother said goodbye to their home in what is now Pakistan. Her father would remain there to tie up loose ends while his family went on to start a new life in India. They did not know how he was doing for three years. It is called partition for a reason – it tore communities away from their homes and separated families from one another, sometimes for years and sometimes forever. I can still see the trauma in my grandmother’s eyes when she discusses this time in her life. I cannot imagine what it must have been for her to say goodbye to the people she loved, to the home she grew up in. I cannot imagine what it was like for her to say goodbye to her parents and move with her new husband to a new city, when she was only 21. How does one recover from these kinds of goodbyes?

My parents immigrated to the United States in 1982. My father and mother said goodbye to their families and arrived in a new place halfway around the world, with what they had. They did it, I think, for a life that would be better than the one they had left behind. They did it so they could live a life that wasn’t their parents’ lives. To do this meant saying goodbye to family and friends – it meant being separated from an entire history, it meant giving up a homeland, one that would never seem the same once they had left. What was it like to feel this kind of isolation? To feel so overwhelmed by homesickness at a time where one could not simply email or call regularly.

The point of my recollecting familial history is this: for most of us, myself included, we come from immigrant histories that our founded on goodbyes. We, or our parents or a parent or grandparents or great grandparents or great-great-grandparents left homes and families –risked heartbreak and homesickness so that we could eventually be here. That’s really astounding. That’s really something we need to consider when we leave college because it is a testament to the kind of love that exists amidst fear and anger and pain. I really believe that we have to stay committed to remembering and writing our own histories, of uncovering our own pasts, because there are many many people in the world that have tried to take this opportunity away from us. It’s important to realize that it isn’t just about making a difference through our work and our decisions on a political level, it isn’t just about looking towards the future, it is about remembering the people we’ve said goodbye to in order to create new opportunities for other people’s lives. The goodbyes we say today will give way to a better life for ourselves, and hopefully for our families, present and future.

Oooh it’s so hard to write about self-care. But not harder than actually doing it.

The thing is over the last month, that is, the last four weeks of the semester, I’ve done a lot of taking care of others. And that’s fine. Because I love my friends, and I care about them, and because that’s what it means to be a friend.

But the problem is, that I use taking care of others as an excuse to not take care of myself.

When I should have been looking for a job, I looked for jobs for other people.

When I should have been writing cover letters, papers, and studying for econ., I was having semi-fake heart-to-hearts with people, asking them for advice about things I already knew the answer to, in an effort to feel like I was paying attention to myself.

When I should have taken the time to think about my own life, to figure out what I want from the next two years, I was doing….well…not that. I was performing…let’s call it “self-care procrastination” - mixing up the difference between actual self-care and things that seem like self-care.

Self-care varies. Self-care is a process. And you know what else? Self-care can’t happen all the time. Because if I spent all my time taking care of myself, I’d probably have to take a semester off from school to recover. Survival and self-care are not always synonymous. But they do dovetail.

Here’s another thing I am remembering again and again: Self-care is hard. It has never been easy for most of the women of color I love and admire. It’s usually the first thing we are willing to sacrifice, because it doesn’t hurt the people around us. And when we meet other people who don’t practice self-care, and even more people who don’t even have to think about practicing self-care because it’s normalized into their daily lives, self-care starts to seem more like a privilege we can’t afford. I do have the privilege of being able to think about self-care. I have the privilege to think about practicing it, and then practicing it. So here I go.

I used to think it was just about sleeping a reasonable number of hours a night, about eating three meals a day. But it’s about doing things that make my body feel good, and getting those chores done that I put off in exchange because that little subconscious voice is telling me it’s ok that I’m living in clutter. But I deserve better for myself - I would tell a friend that, wouldn’t I? Why is it so hard to take the advice we give others?

So over the next few weeks, I’m going to do those things I’ve been dreading, that scare me, that make my stomach flip: like thinking actively about my life after graduation, like looking for a job, and like taking space from people and their relationships, and figuring out what I want from my own life and my own relationships. It means writing again - being creative while I have time.

Once again, I’ve written so much and never got around to the island metaphor. But I will - because it’s hard to write about and because I’ve been putting it off.

Until tomorrow.

I’ve been struggling a little to write this on account of how it makes me sad to think about it - but this is memory I suppose - it’s something I desperately want to hold on to but I also don’t want it to make my emotions go haywire every time. It is written as a possible contribution for Apples and Thyme, an event going on at one of my favorite blogs, Vanielje Kitchen.

My Nani (my mother’s mother) practically raised me. My mother stayed at home to raise me for my entire childhood but my nani - she really developed a particular part of my identity in such a way that I can’t tell whether it was a nurturing process or a naturally inherited one. Probably a bit of both.

In December, I went to India and Nani made those foods that make my mouth water and my eyes well up - she insisted on making only my favorites because I haven’t seen her in years and suddenly all the energy seemed to surge through her body once again and she bounded into the kitchen every morning to set aside dough for chapatis.

Chapatis - how to describe them, truly describe them? When they are homemade, when they are handmade, by a woman you respect and love so much, when they are perfectly round because of years of practice and patience as a wife and mother; when they are perfectly oiled and never burnt and when they are eaten with rice and with that favorite dhaal that she doesn’t like but that she makes for you. When they are accompanied by story after story, about the ‘47 partition, about learning to cook for a stranger you must spend the rest of your life with, about raising two daughters, about raising a granddaughter.

She says “they only taste this good because they are made by your nani” - and that’s true to some extent. I’ve eaten naan and chapatis and parathas from the best of women and the best of restaurants and it just isn’t the same.

When I think of chapatis - the time it takes to prepare and yet how quickly they can be made after years of practice - I think of her. I think of her sacrificing everything because it was what you did and I feel guilty when I think of the times I mistook this selflessness for weakness. I think of the patience she puts into every task and that kind of love that resonates in every gesture. In every chapati is a part of that woman, a part of that woman’s trauma and grace that I so desperately wish I was able to understand.

When I was younger and I watched her in the kitchen as she turned the last remains of the dough into a small heart which she would let me play with before it was put on the pan, I used to imagine her giving a part of her secret life to me - that part of her life that she never talked about but I knew existed long before my life even began. I loved pressing my fingers into the very same spots of the dough that she had, until the heart became an uneven slab of mangled prints.

Now thinking back on it, I still feel this way - this sense of wholeness that comes only when I am with her, or with my mother or with my aunt. Where the fragmented parts come together to make one complete heart.

My nani has affected the way I think about food because I see it now as a metaphor for intimacy and for colonial trauma, as a mode through which we pass down our stories and histories, and through which we receive both painful and pleasurable inheritances. But she has affected the way I view and pursue strength as a woman also; she moves me to want better and to love despite everything else.

One day I will learn to make chapatis as perfectly round and flat as she does, and it will probably be the day I learn to love the way that she does.

I am plagued, dear readers, by three large and loaded words that have haunted me in college for nearly four years. Two terms that are plagued themselves by overuse and misunderstanding. And I’m going to try to get to my issue with both terms, though it could very well happen that I get stuck on one and have to finish up at another time.

I’ve been called oversensitive many times, in many different contexts. I remember having to do assignments in middle school where you have to describe yourself for some reason, and I often picked the term “really sensitive.” Hell, that’s what I was, really - sensitive about things, about what people say to me, about what people say to other people, about people’s actions. I still feel this way; of course now I don’t connote these traits with oversensitivity. I don’t believe sensitivity towards certain actions and hegemonies keeps me from developing the thick skin I need to survive. And I don’t believe there is anything “over” about my sensitivity.

There is a line drawn, it seems, that divides the normal or appropriate amount of concern from all other amounts. If normalcy dictates what is an appropriate amount of sensitivity (which varies based on race, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, etc.) to have about a given circumstance, then oversensitivity perhaps implies sensitivity in some sort of marginal space.

I think maybe using examples is a better way to explain myself. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this in the past (long ago, when this blog was in its first weeks) that there was an ex- who was filled with good intentions who told me that I was emotionally high maintenance and didn’t I think I was being a little bit too sensitive about certain things? This was in response to my bringing up the way our time was divided and whose schedules we worked around in the relationship (if you guessed “his,” you would be correct). At the time, my response to this criticism was to hold my tongue whenever I felt compelled to ask why aspects of the relationship were going the way they were.

I won’t suggest that my response now to claims of oversensitivity is to look those claims in the eye and spit on them. There are moments when the doubt creeps in, that perhaps I’ve searched too far through my progressive lens and have started to split hairs, have felt emotionally charged or impacted by something that doesn’t matter, that signifies nothing about larger institutional systems of oppression. The little voice says to me…maybe women need to buck up.

This is a part of self-loathing, though, isn’t it? It appears in it’s ghostly form and haunts us from the inside, telling us we are not as good as the beautiful people around us. It makes us doubt, makes us drained of our thick-skin-reserves so that we must take the time to exhale, exhale, exhale away the comments we have heard all our lives that rise to the surface again.

Sigh - those comments. They really are like a little plague that doesn’t seem to be an ailment until you are having a conversation with a male peer and you find yourself wondering why he looks slightly disengaged when you bring up the political and you think, “I talk too much. I’m talking too much. He’s looking at me like I’m oversensitive.”

And then you return to your room and you call those women of color who support you through your thick skin and thin and they help you ward off those ghosts for a little while longer.

need to read something like the following:

as soon as we thought of marrying, our first few conversations included gender politics. included domestic violence. included cheating in marriages, and our views on divorce. we have both resolved to test for hiv before getting married. “romantic”? no. but sure as hell reassuring, and realistic.

we’ve worked our way through several issues to keep our wedding as in line with our politics as possible. we’ve had long talks about what rituals we’ll have, how we’ll organise our house, our personal comfort levels in conforming to gender dictates - and those talks haven’t just been between us, we’ve obviously had to talk to everyone else involved. a lot of hard work, but well worth the investment

The whole post can be found here at Scribble Pad.

I’ve waited a while to read something like this, and in the midst of dealing with many appearance/future related demons in the last month (which I am just beginning to write about - and blog about), this was what I needed to put a tear in my eye and reignite my faith in what m. so rightly describes as the “happily and political ever after”.

I wrote the entire post - it took me two hours. I was so looking forward to putting it all up.

And then wordpress did not save the draft even though it said it had and it is lost forever. It was such a good post. It was such a well written post and it simply cannot be replicated. Nothing you’re about to read will be as good as what are now mere ashes floating in cyberspace.

It’s one of those days where this kind of thing makes me get so mad and then I just cry for 10 minutes and then it’s over.

So instead of finishing up my work at home this afternoon, I will be attempting to rewrite the post as well as trying not to mumble profanities while doing so.

I have spent nearly a month going back and forth between commenting on the New York Times article that was published regarding skin lightening creams in India. As a U.S. citizen and inhabitant of the First World/Global North, I find myself so weary of commenting on trends or situations of this kind that are taking place in the Global South/Third World/developing countries (from here on out I will be using the term developing countries). It’s very easy to get caught in the mindset that somehow, one’s education or upbringing or condition or geography grants the person some kind of right or privilege to decide what is best or appropriate for another community of people. It’s easy to get swept into the postmodern missionary system, where phrases like “helping” and “saving” become ways of further removing agency from those communities. Language is an important and influential thing. So I’m going to try very hard not to get caught up in deciding what is right or wrong about skin lightening in India, and focus on the argument that is being made about the companies that are making these creams. This is a complicated issue because it speaks volumes about the larger issues that are at play here - the media and advertising, sexism in the workplace, long histories of patriarchy, and globalization.

I will be referring to this article here - entitled “Telling India’s modern women they have power, even over their skin tone” - it is an archived article so I’m not sure if there will be full access to it. Maybe someone will find a link to the article on another website. For now I will be putting up small excerpts from the article in order to talk about a few things that I thought were a big problem.

“The modern Indian woman is independent, in charge — and does not have to live with her dark skin.

That is the message from a growing number of global cosmetics and skin care companies, which are expanding their product lines and advertising budgets in India to capitalize on growth in women’s disposable income. A common thread involves creams and soaps that are said to lighten skin tone. Often they are peddled with a ”power” message about taking charge or getting ahead.

Avon, L’Oréal, Ponds, Garnier, the Body Shop and Jolen are selling lightening products and all of them face stiff competition from a local giant, Fair and Lovely, a Unilever product that has dominated the market for decades.

Fair and Lovely, with packaging that shows a dark-skinned unhappy woman morphing into a light-skinned smiling one, once focused its advertising on the problems a dark-skinned woman might face finding romance. In a sign of the times, the company’s ads now show lighter skin conferring a different advantage: helping a woman land a job normally held by men, like announcer at cricket matches. ”Fair and Lovely: The Power of Beauty,” is the tagline on the company’s newest ad”

Fair and Lovely’s advertising has always been targeted to dark skinned and often working class women who should lighten their skin if they want that promotion, or a job, or respect, or a husband. You might YouTube some advertisements of the company - they often depict women who are shunned by some high power executive or modeling agency or studio run by Western-clothes-wearing-light-skinned-Indian folk. Then they go back to their homes and use the cream and transform into similar looking W.c.w.l.s.I.f and everyone is so taken aback at how good they look and then they look so happy and youthful now that they have new skin. The problem goes beyond the issue of telling women that they can obtain lighter skin and invoke more opportunities - the problem is that this company is reflecting companies and workplaces that do in fact discriminate against women who have darker skin, or are not from global cities like Bombay or Delhi. Before I go on, I will say that this is not an exclusive characteristic of developing countries - the U.S. still, albeit not necessarily as overtly, privileges certain women over others in the job market and in everyday situations and discriminate based on gender (how much do you look like a woman), color, race, age, sexuality and class (where did you go to school, what kind of education have you pursued, etc.). The advertising for products like Fair and Lovely (and for newer lightening creams made by L’oreal - called White Perfect - big sirens going off in my head about that) continues to enforce certain color and regional and class related prejudices in communities.

Here’s the thing that I really want to get into though.

“‘Half of the skin care market in India is fairness creams,” said Didier Villanueva, country manager for L’Oréal India, and 60 to 65 percent of Indian women use these products daily. L’Oréal entered this specific market four years ago with Garnier and L’Oréal products, but so far has a small market share, he said.

The idea of ”glowing fairness” has nothing to do with colonialism, or idealization of European looks, Mr. Villanueva said. ”It’s as old as India,” he said, and ”deeply rooted in the culture.”

There’s no denying that the notion of ”fairness,” as light skin is known in India, is heavily ingrained in the culture. Nearly all of Bollywood’s top actresses have quite pale skin, despite the range of skin tones in India’s population of more than a billion people.”

Fairness has nothing to do with colonialism or the idealization of European looks?? Oh Mr. Villanueva, what a silly man you are. Because what you should have reminded the large population of people who read the New York Times and use quotes from authentic Indians as facts about the entire Indian population is that while fairness, i.e. light skin, has indeed been privileged in Indian culture for years before British colonization, it doesn’t mean colonialism didn’t reinforce the power of white skin.

I remember extended family members always reminding me of the many things that can apparently make you dark - don’t be out in the sun too long. Don’t drink so much tea (did anybody get that one?) it will make your skin dark. I had the feeling that everything that young girls weren’t supposed to do was rooted to dark skin. Dark skin, at least for North Indian communities, meant you worked in the sun. Maybe you couldn’t afford servants. It meant you were poor or working class. But if anybody thinks that privileging white skin didn’t get reinforced by white folk coming to India and taking over the entire nation, then I’m going to go as far as to say maybe they’re in a bit of denial. Because with the white skin of Britain came whiteness and white privilege and those things become very tied together. So while fairness doesn’t have everything to do with colonialism or whiteness, it sure as hell as something to do with it.

I read some comments floating around the internet, and on the Sephora blog, that compares skin lightening in India to tanning in the U.S. This is a very interesting comparison to me, because from the outside it appears to be a valid one. But I’m going to argue that it isn’t and here’s why in a nutshell: when white people tan, they aren’t stripping themselves of any kind of white privilege that they have - I understand that there is a stigma about white people being considered “pasty and unattractive” but tanning does not strip white people from the privileges that they benefit from because of their race. In fact, tanning is a way of benefiting from the exotic-ness and trendy appeal that comes from dark skin without the racism and colorism that many if not most people of color face in their day to day lives. Lightening one’s skin strips brown folk of oppressions that they will encounter based on the way they look. Tanning is a luxury. Skin lightening is a process that is created out of the institutions that tell women (and men) that it is a product of survival. Big. Difference.

I’m going to end on this final reinforcement - this is a complex issue. Not because skin lightening creams are a big issue - education is an issue. Poverty is an issue. Patriarchy is an issue. And they are issues everywhere. Skin lightening creams, and that NY Times article, is an issue because it is a testament to these larger issues. It is a lens through which issues of race and color and gender need to be challenged and talked about. It is a portal through which whiteness and patriarchy and media can be discussed.

Now I am going to save this post in three different programs and proofread and publish it.

Crossposted at feministe 

It’s really difficult for me to write these days. I’ve just come back from a 3 day wedding - a wedding filled with firsts: the first Indian wedding (this was a North Indian wedding), the first family wedding I’ve attended (my cousin), and the first event where I have had to be around family, fully decked out in North Indian clothes and seen as an adult.

A lot of life is about performance, I’ve come to realize. It’s all about those little details that keep family from getting caught in arguments - what I refer to as “family politics” - a fake laugh, keeping your mouth shut when your elders tell you that you’ve gained weight, learning not to correct “art college” from “liberal arts college” when they attempt to belittle your choice in humanities. At a certain point, whether I intend to or not, I find my eyes move slightly down, my walk becomes a little slower and my voice is heard considerably less when I’m at family events (hereby referred to as “functions”). These things all come down to the gender roles that have been assigned to me through a variety of things - little comments that were made to me as a child by extended family, the media. And the particularities of these gender roles are dictated by my family’s culture.

I have a long history with battling culture. I was sitting at the henna-ceremony, looking around at the one of 40 women that had attended the event who was around my age. The first was 23. And married. Her hair was perfectly straight and her outfit was perfectly tailored and her husband was an attractive and wealthy South Asian man. She looked like an Indian Barbie doll. She looked domesticated and manicured and feminine - and to be honest, it doesn’t matter whether she is reading Sister Outsider under her covers with a flashlight while her husband is asleep or not. What matters is her performance - her ability to fit a model that is dictated by a culture that I cannot relate to.

My claim is this: I don’t know if I ever will feel connected to my identity as an Indian-American because of culture. Culture is not the thing that dictates my struggle for social justice. The reality is, the aspects of “Indianness” that make me feel like an Indian-American is the solidarity I share with other Indian-Americans regarding racism, sexism and homophobia in the community. It is often shared experience my family has with other South Asian families that immigrate to the United States. It is the brown color of my skin that I have grown to love that helps me to identify as Indian-American. It is my parents. My grandparents. My aunt.

There is more to say, but it will have to wait.

Cross-posted at Feministe

I am, contrary to possible common belief, in the process of writing a post. It’s taken me a while to adjust to my internship and to sort out my thoughts coherently enough to write. But the posts will begin to flow soon enough - for there are many things to say.

In the meantime I wanted to tell my small little audience of readers about this movie that is releasing in Los Angeles on June 15th and in select U.S. cities over the summer - I am not sure about possible release dates beyond North America. The film is called Amu, the site is here, the description of the film is below (taken from the website):

The year 1984 has a dreaded historical significance for India’s Sikhs, and one oddly buried deep within the collective memory
of that country, and for that matter the world. Indian-American director Shonali Bose resurrects that period marking the brutal
ethnic government abetted massacre of thousands of Sikhs by Hindus in her film, “Amu”.
Between three thousand and twenty thousand Sikhs were the victims of indiscriminate slaughter over three days, following the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her two Sikh bodyguards acting on their culture’s separatist sentiments. The ensuing horrific sectarian violence against the Sikhs brought such shame and indeed guilt to the perpetrators, that the incident is absent from any national dialogue. In addition, the failure to bring the perpetrators to justice, among them police and the politicians, meant that Writer/Director/Producer Bose was subjected to censorship of the parts of the movie exposing this massive cover-up, while filming in India.
“Amu” crafts the horror of that period as a dramatic story with historical components. Kaju (Konkona Sensharma) is a recent college graduate and aspiring filmmaker who returns to her homeland to visit with relatives in New Delhi. Adopted when she was a baby and taken to the United States by an Indian family, Kaju (once called Amu by her real mother) is shocked to learn back in India that her adoptive parents’ version of how she became an orphan, is untrue. Rather than her parents perishing in an apparently nonexistent malaria epidemic, Amu discovers that they along with her baby brother perished in the 1984 massacre, of which she was the sole survivor in her family.

I have had the pleasure of meeting the director and encourage anyone with the opportunity to see the film to do so. I think it is going to be amazing - I’m going to see it this Saturday and will be sure to post my thoughts about the movie.

I am very liberal with the term ‘home’. When I am living on campus during the academic year, I refer to my parents’ residency as ‘home’ - but as soon as I return to northern California, my tiny campus becomes ‘home’.

Most of my childhood was actually spent in Texan suburbia. I remember the house fairly well - the way the outside looked. I keep in touch with a couple of people who still live there so I remember random details about the small suburb of the large city I grew up in. But do I feel attached to Texas in any way? Do I consider it home in any way? Nope.

I was born in San Francisco and went to high school in the Bay Area. And although my heart feels very warm when I think about the bay area, I feel very removed from it. I commuted to school so I never had the chance to explore the town my parents now reside in very well - there isn’t much to know and I like the feeling of familiarity but I don’t feel an overwhelming attachment to this place.

I thought this is the way everybody felt. And now I realize more and more that people are very attached to their homes - the locations they consider home. They feel “at home” in certain spaces - it isn’t just a temporary space where they move their things.

But this is how I feel. After I moved out of Texas I have metaphorically lived out of a suitcase. Locations are fluid. They have sentimental value - there are stores and restaurants I miss seeing and I love my parents’ home. And there was a brief time where my parents’ home was home. I feel comfortable here. But it feels like I’m visiting whenever I’m here. Maybe it’s because I don’t have siblings that live here. I didn’t build a life anywhere. I just lived my life in a few select places, in a couple of lovely little houses.

Then I went back to India. Even using the phrase “back to India” should say something about my relationship to the land. I wasn’t born there - I’ve been there 3 times. I was 1 yrs. old, 12 yrs. old and then I went last December. I’m not fluent in Hindi, the language the community where my grandparents live uses, I don’t feel connected to most of South Asian and North Indian culture. I don’t identify as Indian-American because of culture or religion. I am very unread on the history of the country.

But it feels like a home. There is a sense of belonging that I feel in the air, and in the community. I’m fully aware of my outsider status there - I’m not trying to give up my U.S. citizenship privileges and problematics by proclaiming my connection to the so-called motherland (I feel uncomfortable using this term - does anyone have an alternative? Maybe just ‘homeland’). But I do feel connected to that location in a way that felt new.

Salman Rushdie has a collection of articled and essays entitled Imaginary Homelands and he explains this term so wonderfully:

It may be that writers in my position, exiles or emigrants or expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars of salt. But if we do look back, we must also do so in the knowledge — which gives rise to profound uncertainties — that our physical alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind…

While I think Rushdie refers more to the immigrant community that looks back at their home, and more specifically people who are exiled from the homeland, I feel very strongly about this statement. Home for me, is just a narrative. An important narrative, yes, but ultimately, just a story, just a series of memories that makes up a blend of overwhelming nostalgia and trauma.

Only recently have I stopped feeling so unsettled about this. I felt so thrilled at being able to “diagnose” my relationship to this sense of home and homeland that most people around me seem to have. And then I just felt scared.

Now I realize that I still have many things to learn and that part of growing is building one’s own home. And it’s fine to have many homes and a nearly-fairytale vision of one’s homeland. We should hold on to these things if it is what makes us feel safe.

Home is about the people. I can’t help feeling like as communities become further linked and connected, and national boundaries become more blurred, home will only grow as an imaginary concept and we will have to start thinking of home as the multiple spaces where our heart may reside.

That said, I will be writing. My academic writing is my first priority these days and I don’t have to time to write papers and keep a blog consistently. I used to be able to before. But it seems I only have the capacity these days for one or the other.

I have however continue to read blogs daily and there are so many posts I always want to link to. Here are a few - not all are very recent, but they are all worth reading.

1. Bollywood and the Oscars. Ok there are two reasons why I love this post. One, I completely agree. India can never be allowed to submit “universal” films. It always has to be specific to Indianness or Indian culture (whatever that means). Two, I found out the author is a friend of one of my professors whom I respect a lot.

2. Tyra Tyra Tyra… Racialicious continues to be the blog I read most frequently (can you blame me? how can one resist the daily stories that appear about race in the media), and this post on Tyra Banks and her talk about body image are… I don’t know if I can find the words. Her sports illustrated cover makes her look even more stretched out than she does on the show. How many women of color do I know have the curves (or lack thereof) that she does? Yeah. Thought so.

3. Male privilege! Ah, Andrea, I’m so glad you continue to write for shrub.com - it makes me so happy. This is a great overview of how male privilege is seen in discussions about sexism, that comes down to the reality that being a pro-feminist man means stepping up.

4. ” Is it okay to work this damn much for the desire of trying to create change?” I’ve read this post so many times because I realized in the last week that I am probably going to go into academia and pursue a career as a professor. And there are too many questions and fears related to this question of work, and whether or not it is great work, and whether or not it is worth it, especially in thinking about “future things” such as children, and family (in fact so many questions, that this is what my next blog post is about). I really love the blog in general too, particularly the new look - it’s one of the few blogs that keeps me inspired to write!

Until next time.

Well I’m settling into classes and all of that so it’s time to write about something (no, unfortunately not India this time - the posts will begin soon - it’s still too personal to reveal without some serious emotional drainage) that has been on my mind a lot in the last few days.

My friend Sarah said something along the lines of this the other day:

“It’s taken me 21 years to get to a point where I know that the things I say are smart. That I am smart. There isn’t going to be anything I say in class or wherever that is completely stupid. I know what I’m saying. So I’m going to say it.”

Many if not most women of color I know undermine their intelligence. Not out loud or very explicitly but there it is. I am one of these women. I sit in a literature class or history class, sometimes even a gender studies class, with something to say formulating in my mouth even before I sit down. And then as quickly as I’ve formulated the thought, doubt slips in,

“I’m probably wrong. I don’t know what anybody in the class is talking about. What I have to say is probably not related. I feel stupid. I am stupid. What am I doing here? I don’t belong here. People are going to look at me and will be able to tell that I don’t belong here. I’m forgetting what I wanted to say. I’ll probably jumble all my words if I open my mouth…”

I become intimidated by professors, white men, white women, vocabulary. And this is something that hasn’t, until recently, gotten better over time. In fact quite the opposite. I have become more introverted and terrified in academic spaces as each semester passes (with the exception of gender studies classes - those classes have tended to be my ’soap box’ classes, where I rant, aggravate, educate, and occasionally storm out).

Until recently. Something happened (hm, I guess this is a bit of an India post) in becoming further absorbed in the concept of “doing one’s work”. And that is not wasting one’s voice. This means staying quiet when it is necessary to stay quiet. And speaking up when there are things to say. Because nothing at this educational institution should encourage me to maintain silence and convince myself that I have nothing valuable to say.

I made a goal for myself last semester, after being reprimanded by a professor for not “participating in class”, to speak up in every class, at least once. It was so difficult - I’m almost ashamed to admit it. But finally it becomes easier more possible every day.

It hasn’t fully settled into my head that I am intelligent enough to speak up without hesitation - I don’t think that will change for a long time. But it is about remembering everytime that I have the ability to make my voice a stronger one every time it gets used. And that it has the power to start dialogue, to encourage other ‘underminers’ to speak up, to shout, to sing, to rant, to yell, to whisper and to laugh. The privilege of those things is too useful and filled with possibility to be smothered while I’m sitting at my desk.

“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid” -Audre Lorde

I have this fond memory of being at the Embarcadero with a great friend - she made this joke about staying in touch with friends based on what they could do for you in the future. A friend to help with your accounts. A friend who can get you into publishing. A friend who paints. A friend who provides free childcare because they love babies so much. Etc.

I extend this joke into my personal mindset about friendship. Friendship is a pie-chart for me. Each “pie slice” is something that I look for in a friendship. Friendship qualifications, if you will. For example, the ability to listen well. To speak about privilege, power, marginalization, and everything in between, both academically and personally. To have shared/similar personal experiences. To be reliable and consistent. To respect themselves and me. To love sipping tea at midnight over long conversations. To love going out and laughing for hours. Etc.

There was a time where I secretly wanted every friend to cover the entire pie-chart. And this is not to say that my friendship standards have decreased - I think they have just become more realistic, as circumstances changed. Friends that I kept in touch with since middle school, for example, have not necessarily been able to handle my transition through college very well. We avoid talk of race, feminism, and class, at all costs. Or maybe only I do. I don’t quite know. At some point I came to a crossroads where I had to choose between pie slices: do I filter my rants about white privilege and patriarchy in order to maintain a friendship that I have had for almost a decade? Yes. For as long as I can without it becoming overwhelming and unfair, yes.

I arrived at another crossroads recently, in regards to the pie-chart-friendship-reevaluation. And it happened this fall, when I was forced to ask myself “Is it possible for me to be friends with and maintain friendships with men?”

The women in my life are strong support systems. Most of them are self identified women of color. They are friends, family members, co-workers, pseudo-sisters. They have seen me at my best and worst and have helped me feel the most protected when I feel incredibly unsafe.

But the men in my life…are few and far between. I wish I could say that I put in the effort to stay friends with the few men who are somewhat reliable, and do not write me off as a far-too-vocal-maneater, because they are wonderful people who care about me. And they are and they do. But the real reason I feel so attached to those few-and-far-between men is because the voice of socialization tells me that if I lose the men in my life…then the myths about the angry-brown-woman are true. The maneater cannot curb her appetite for anyone - she cannot reconcile her beliefs about patriarchy and gender and still have male friends.

I’ve been lucky to have found friends who cover multiple sections of the pie. And I’ve even been blessed to know someone who can fluidly move between all the sections. But perhaps the most important thing is that the pie-chart works for me. It enables me to be honest and loving while still knowing the limitations of each friendship. It keeps me from having expectations that cannot possibly be met and politely informs me of when someone has faded out of the chart altogether…be it because of circumstances or timing.

Perhaps one day I will write about the ground I may cover in other people’s charts.

Over thanksgiving, I had the opportunity to watch way too much television. I’m in the middle of an episode when I caught a commercial for Crayola - one of their “use your imagination” advertisements that is supposed to be very sentimental and endearing, possibly nostalgic.Well this commercial was a little bit more than all of that - let me try to describe it as best as I can. I wasn’t able to find a copy of the commercial online, but maybe someone will and can add the link - because it really should be seen.

Young white girl is drawing - she draws a lion. The lion jumps off the page and the girl is transported into a jungle - trees, elephants, and other animals (all animated to look like they are made of cutout paper or markers, etc.). The ywg is riding an elephant and is now wearing a purple and pink outfit that can only be described as a cross between Princess Jasmine’s clothes and a problematic halloween costume. (Strike one)

She turns around to wave a young white boy - who is also drawing. He’s dressed in (deep breath) and outfit that strongly resembles a British colonial officer’s clothes.

Actually he looks just like those little miniatures above - sans gun/facial hair. (Strike two)

And just when you believe that it’s over - the boy removes what he’s been drawing off the paper - turns out it’s a bridge - and places it in the jungle, over a waterfall. I’m pretty sure there are little stick figures walking across after he puts it up. (Oh yes. Definitely strike three.)

I just don’t understand the thought process involved when this commercial was being produced. Someone thought “I want to encourage children to use their imagination - so I’ll put them in a jungle dressed as colonizers and appropriaters and have the women explore culture while the men build bridges and show the natives how it’s done”?

They thought “in our post 9-11 world, the historical nostalgia we want to bring up and echo is one of colonization, of remembering that our place is to help the less fortunate. the earlier we begin to imagine this, the better”?

Oh wait. They didn’t think.

I understand, it’s one advertisement. But - it’s always one advertisement, one statement, one instance - until these instances and moments become the instituional norm, the foundation that our foreign (and domestic) policy begins to echo, and continues to perpetuate.

I wish I could be more articulate about how frustrated I was about the depiction of the White West exploiting the Other. But I can’t right now. Rest assured, I will be writing about this again.

I don’t know how I feel about writing a post on body image, but I’ll keep it personal and refrain from speaking of it generally. My whole life I’ve always been described as “skinny”, “really thin” - who “eats like a bird”, who is asked about my eating habits and health. Doctors have referred to my body in one particular way: “slightly above average in height and slightly below average in weight”.

Let me sidebar here and say a couple of things. Talking about my body, about thinness, about health — those are all privileges that I have - things I can think about pretty frequently, even amidst other issues. I spent a little too much time looking at Indian Barbie dolls and got too disappointed when I was unable to find an abundance of body image or disordered eating sites for women of color, let alone South Asian women. This post isn’t about fixing that, of course. It’s just…here.

I’ve gained some weight in the last 4 months. More and more I find myself studying or sitting in class and habitually poking my waist. I can go minutes at a time before I realize why my other hand isn’t free to do anything else. It isn’t that I never talked or thought about weight before - I grew up with my mother’s stories about constantly being heckled by everyone in her family because she was a “chubby tomboy” - how was she going to find a husband, how was she going to settle down, what would she look like at the wedding. I watch her struggling to pursue a healthy body versus a seemingly healthy image. My mother is an amazing woman. But that is entirely another post.

I went shopping today and I thought of this binary that is being created in mainstream body image discourse for women (white women actually because who the hell is talking about women of color - yeah that’s right. no one.) - either it’s what I’m used to seeing on television or in movies: really thin really white women or ambiguously ethnic but still fair women and the occasional thin black woman who is super feminine, etc. etc. And then on the other hand there’s this “love your body for what it is”-Dove campaignesque-clothes for all sizes attempt to counteridentify.

So I stopped in the size of the store that I am used to stopping in and suddenly realized - I hate this. I hate shopping by number and feeling like I’m somehow “losing” if the jeans I try on don’t fit. I just want comfortable jeans made for long legs that don’t let my full ass hang out of the top of them! So I did. Ok, no it wasn’t the most accomplished thing I’ve done, no it wasn’t world peace. But dammit, I put on those jeans that were 3 sizes larger than what I’d been wearing 4 months ago and I felt great - I could breathe I could start going from victim to system blame and tell myself that I’m ok. And just because no one is validating this brown skin and this large butt and these small breasts and these thick thighs and thin ankles and awkward shaped nose, nothing is going to keep me from feeling inadequate anymore. And that. felt. awesome.

I’ve only written one postcard to postsecret, despite my many secrets. And it said: I got over you because I was tired of feeling ugly.

Finally I can start feeling good about myself without being driven by someone else.

So I bought 2 pairs of jeans that accommodated this working-class pocket and decided that even though it isn’t a new year, it doesn’t mean I can’t resolve to take care of myself, and remember that self-affirmation is so much a part of feeling loved.

So, my last post on Oriental Barbie was wonderfully expanded upon by tekanji over at shrub.com.
For my feminist theory class, we were reading a passage from Grewal and Kaplan’s “Scattered Hegemonies” that problematized the binary of “global” and “local”. Using Barbie as an example, questions were posed as to why Barbie is sold in India but not Cabbage Patch dolls - why only North Indian clothes are put on Barbies, not South Indian. Why Barbie is dressed in “traditional” clothes, but Ken remains in Western clothing. Clearly, I have to read the full essay that answers these questions. And when I find time, I will.

What more is there to say? I’ve become slightly obsessed over the way Barbie is represented in India. Let’s make a bit of a comparison, shall we?

“This Collector Edition Barbie^® doll wears a traditional costume from far away India. Her modern, Indian sari is a rich, fuchsia color, accented with a beautiful shawl. Her accessories include delicate golden sandals, long drop earrings and a simple hand ring. From her thick, braided hair to her distinctive make-up, she’s a classic Indian beauty.” - Dolls of the World website

This particular Indian Barbie was released in 1996 in the U.S. Isn’t that interesting? Look at her. She looks pretty brown to me. Yes, she still is not representative of the majority of Indian women, but what Barbie is representative of any woman? She’s actually wearing a sari, and it isn’t showing off every part of her body. Granted, the little Taj Mahel in the back is just tacky, but look at it compared to the Diwali Barbie.

Wow. Look at that close up. She kind of resembles Aishwarya Rai.

I’m going to go to worse before I go to somewhat better. Sirindia.com posted this up - apparently there is a series of Barbies released in India called “Barbie in India”. The description on a couple of sites that sells the doll reads (are you ready?): “Barbie dressed in traditional Indian attire. Barbie comes to India & falls in love with the Indian way of dressing.” Try to picture what that means and then let’s take a look at the doll itself:

Wow Barbie - You sure loved more than the clothes! You even managed to find someone to dye your hair black!

I will say this. The relationship between local and global, and what is the global and local in each context is, hell, I’ll say it: fascinating. The Diwali Barbie sells the exotic to a Western society eager to be a part of the foreign mystery that is India and the Indian woman. It sells Barbie as the United States has understood it with an “ethnic twist”. And I’m not denying that there are Indian families who are so happy to have a Diwali Barbie to buy their young girl - disidentification is part of the process. Barbie as an entity is able to sell purely on this idea of disidentification. I owned a couple of Barbies when I was young - I cut their hair, I put them in toilet-paper saris. I couldn’t identify but I couldn’t not identify - I tailored the norm out of desperation in wanting to be normal. To be the socialized ideal.

I don’t know when there will be a time where Barbie’s representation of South Asia will stop being problematic, and that’s because Barbie is a problem, period.

photos from: www.zilltech.com/, lildolly.bloxode.com, and www.alltimegifts.com

Just writing a little note to you to say a few things. I know I’ve mentioned you in previous posts regarding the language used to describe you as well as how they seem to have made a mini-Ash version of you in the new Diwali Barbie. But in the last 48 hours your name is the reason why my blog has suddenly received so many visitors. According to my blog stat search results, it seems everyone is dying to know if you’re going to marry your celebrity friend Abhishek Bachchan, now that you’ve recently made a new bollywood film with him. I have to say, it’s a good thing you’re considered one of the most (if not the) most beautiful women in the world - I should be grateful, considering you’re Indian.

Let’s talk about that for a second though shall we? Umrao Jaan, eh? You went all out thinking you could remake such a classic film and I’m sure everyone was so happy you had the opportunity to replace Rekha. It’s funny because I just saw this movie for a class recently - the original version that is. Seems like a couple of men try to sell her off to a family before a brothel, but you know why they can’t? She’s too dark. They’re more interested in her friend, because she’s fairer.

That’s an interesting dynamic isn’t it? That part of her fate rests in the fact that whiteness is privileged in this context? It sure is a good thing it isn’t now! Oh wait - that’s right, I’m sorry. Your green eyes and white skin probably restricted that theme from coming up in the new movie huh. At least you are vocal about being ashamed that Indian women continue to lighten their skin - hell, you said it on Oprah!

I’m not blaming you, in all honesty. Lord knows you did a great job in Devdas - even your cameo in Bunty Aur Bubli made me hold my breath a little. I’m just resentful about the way you have been manipulated as an icon of foreign and exotic beauty - you are an(other) commodity for the West to exploit and ravish over. You don’t look very Indian, I’m just going to say it. When was the last time a South Indian or a dark-skinned North Indian woman was considered beautiful in Europe or the states? Maybe that woman from America’s next top model. I wonder if she lost the blue contacts (maybe she was influenced by you!), especially after voicing how proud she was to be a dark skinned Indian.

I wish we could sit down, have a nice cup of chai, and talk about where you really stand in all of this. I know your celebrity status and everyone’s obsession with the pale-exotic isn’t your fault - you’re just a good Indian girl on your way to international success. No one can blame you there.

Just remember who you represent, please?Maybe ask an interviewer or two to stop asking you how you feel about beauty and sensuality and the Kama Sutra and switch to..I dont’ know…politics. art. something. The challenges you had to face in becoming Miss World even.

Take care of yourself - I think of you everytime I hear someone talk about how sexy mysterious Indian women are and when I see that Indian barbie with green eyes.

-obw

Yup. We all know that if I’ve started my day thinking I have time to post on a topic entitled “Diwali Barbie”, it’s not going to be good.
Sk sent me this, and I can’t decide whether the actual doll or the blurb alongside it is more disgusting.
I think, being a full believer that it isn’t what you say (or in this case, sell) but how you do it, the text is what put my heart into figurative cardiac arrest.

Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

The most important and magical festival celebrated in India is Diwali. Homes are decorated with marigolds and mango leaves, thousands of oil diyas or lamps are lit as auspicious symbols of good luck, and everyone enjoys sweets to the sound of firecrackers and revelers. Diwali Barbie doll wears a traditional teal sari with golden detailing, a lovely pink shawl wrap, and exotic jewelry. The final detail is a bindi on the forehead - a jewel or a mark worn by Hindu women to indicate that they are married. Doll cannot stand alone.

I know, I know. “But this is to diversify for all the brown children who need a Barbie to look up to!”. Actually, if we wanted little Indian children running around and worshipping a disproportionatly tall woman whose skin is unnaturally white and lives up to the standards of exotic in the West, we would point them all to Aishwarya Rai. At least she does something. Where is the President of the US Indian Barbie? Where the hell is Prime Minister Barbie?
I think the thing that kills me is how white looking she is. Her skin is white and Lord knows she’s letting her buyers feel like they can never live up to true Indian beauty standards.

What’s most ironic to me is the line “Doll cannot stand alone”. Thank you Barbie for reminding us that at the end of the day, no woman should really be able to stand alone. Especially not the exotic ones.

Happy Wednesday.

Thank you Dora, for this post - (courtesy of Shrub.com) I too, never wanted to be a white girl. I just wanted to be exactly like a white girl.
And yes. We need to keep talking about this…

I have more to say but it will have to wait.

Actually the most frustrating thing ever - Orientalism meets globalization - the only comfort to me is that at least they are women of color. I saw this and laughed to save from crying or breaking something.

Oh and just by the way, the thing that angers me about this isn’t even the attempt-at-fusion dance itself. It is the fact that a company like Nike is benefitting from it - it is the colonizer using the other, the colonized, to gain economic strength and respectability…

Due to time constraints, this will be an entry that will most likely be revealed in parts. Now that this disclaimer has been put out there, I have no regrets about starting and ending wherever I please.
I shall start at the beginning.
I never cared about hair before - and by that I mean, not to the point of being able to empathize with other women of color about their hair. Hair to me has always been about expression, and style, and femininity, but it has never been, until recently, about my identity as a South Asian American woman.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have posted this just for you. I am in the middle of facilitating a workshop - race and racism - to my mentors. There is a great video playing, that is keeping their attention off of me updating my blog.
I am doing well. Although it is only the second day of training, so I’m bound to feel even more exhausted. The group is learning, and I realize that is my real goal for them. To what extent they learn will all depend on where they are already at when they begin.
My thought for the day is…
It makes me sad when women don’t consider themselves feminists even though they are. It makes me angry at White feminism, who have taken over the term and used their racial privilege to take over a marginalized label. So women of color don’t have a term, and must fight to reclaim feminism, and even then, only if they choose to pursue that fight.
Why is it so important for me to have that term? Feminism. I don’t know. Maybe because I want to belong with the feminist community. I want the norm of feminism to not be White upper middle class straight women’s feminism. I want to reconcile my role as Indian and American, and feminism seems to help me do that.
So many reasons…
This is what a feminist looks like.

This is about language people! Language!

Aishwarya Rai is one of those women that I give a lot of credit to for paving some way for Indian women to be maintstreamed somehow but Lord Knows she could easily pass for exotic white and isn’t really helping by remaining passive about the language used about her. Then again, my victim-to-system blame lens reminds me that this is really about the public being eager to pounce upon any chance to objectify the other…

“My response to racism is anger. I have lived with that anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I did it in silence, afraid of the weight. My fear of anger taught me nothing. You fear of that anger will teach you nothing, also.
Women responding to racism means women responding to anger; the anger of exclusion, of unquestioned privilege, of racial destortions, of silence, ill-use, stereotyping, defensiveness, misnaming, betrayal, and co-optation.” -Audre Lorde, The uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism

“I’m not telling you that women are weak. Women are strong. Women can do everything as well as men. Women can do much more. But a woman has to seek that vein of strength in herself.” -Nair

I hate this feeling of being tired but having postponed writing that now the need to write has outweighed the fact the my bed is beckoning a mere yard away. So, I shall try my best to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time, and if I don’t make it past a couple of points, well I’ll just continue tomorrow.

> First, the many quotes I’ve been meaning to put down for others to read - I’m reading my last summer book, Ladies Coupe by Anita Nair, which is in a word, stunning. I haven’t begun my paper but now I realize Nair’s book will be the center of my writing. The quotes don’t need any sort of introduction - those who understand will wince and those who don’t…are lucky?

“I’m not who everyone thinks I am”…
“I know that now. But you hide behind such a stiff armour of control that most people must be in awe of you,”…
“…I wasn’t always like this; so stiff and restrained. I had to grow a shell around myself. To protect myself. To deflect hurt and pain. If I hadn’t, I would have gone insane.”

“Sometimes when friends came calling and there would be a little girl whose father beamed proudly at his daughter’s quick answers, Sheela would want to butt in and plead, ‘Don’t do this to her. My father was the same. He thought it funny when I was cheeky. Only now he calls it back chat and it makes him furious. Please, don’t do this to your daughter. She is going to grow up thinking this is the way to be. Instead, teach her to swallow her words, make her mouth nice and pleasant, innocuous things. Kill her spirit and tame her tongue. So that when she grows up, she won’t be like me, wondering what it is I said wrong and what blunder I am going to commit next by opening my mouth”

“…She thought, all these women….are trying to make some sense of their own existence by talking about it to anyone who will listen. I am the same, she thought. I’m trying to define the reality of my life, justify my failures and my own sense of hopelessness by preying on the fabric of their lives, seeking in it a similar thread that in some way will connect their lives with mine, make me feel less guilty for who I am and what I have let myself become.”

The whole book could be a quote, really. But ya know.

>I wanted so much to talk about how lovely yesterday was, but maybe I will save that for another day.

> For the first time in so long I actually miss the feeling of being interested in someone. Of classic teen-movie romance. Something I should have experienced at the generalized age of 14? 15? In reading Ladies Coupe, I wonder if it’s even possible for me to feel that kind of butterfly/first date/getting to know you love. That feeling of fascination and excitement - the last time I felt that way was…when I met P. Almost two years ago now. Before and after that…there was just… Struggle.
It makes me angry that the most female-sensitive/forward thinking/cream of the crop males are still intimidated by women in power, women who are smarter and louder and more opinionated than the normalized idealized woman. Why are the few who can handle it praised so highly for being exceptions?

> I need a new name for this blog because I realized that my fatalistic title has done just that - provided an easy out clause for my writing, so that I never feel obligated to process in text once college starts up again. But in wanting to make the effort, I have decided the first and easiest method of commitment is to change the title from seasonal to defining.
Of course the question that arises is, what to name this blog of genre-less deconstruction? Will I even need it when the year begins? It became so useful in providing a means of communicating with people and continue my habits as an antisocial, hibernating introvert. Maybe someone can throw out a suggestion.

11:49! It was an early morning so I don’t feel guilty about sleeping so early. Especially after discovering my new love for sleeping in bed diagonally.
Till tomorrow.

“But why is it that India arrives only when the West says it does? Our movies have nourished half the world for a century, as every Russian cabdriver in Manhattan will tell you. And if the West is now waking up to our energy and confidence, will we be tempted to change? Will Oscar fever mean we temper our spice to suit Western palates? Will the few Indian actors and directors cherry-picked by Hollywood shove the khadi and brocade under the carpet and make chick flicks on Fifth Avenue?”– Mira Nair, Hooray for Bollywood

Read the entire article (especially if you’re a bollywood movie/future Namesake watcher) here

“Mom, Dad, Let me find my own husband”

read it.

There have been a lot of quotes I’ve been wanting to write down - people I know have been on a roll with saying brilliant things. But of course I can’t remember any of them. So there’s that.

Someone sent me the most beautiful message in the world, in regards to being able to relate to my posts. This made me feel so overwhelmed with hope. I love that woman so much. She is a fighter and is so inspiring. I hope she reads this and knows how I think of her everytime I write now.

Why do so many women crave to shed their skin? We’re constantly in need of validation about who we are, and as much as self affirmation becomes important, where else do we get it? It doesn’t seem to be the media and it doesn’t seem to be so many of the institutionalized programs and schools and systems and people around us. Where do we learn to affirm ourselves? Where do we learn to love ourselves without needing to be completed by someone else?

The skin I’ve wanted to shed is the remains of the skin that was built around me years ago. The one that depended on relationships and still felt awkward and inadequate around everybody. A part of that skin is never going to go away. Maybe it’s because I’m brown. Maybe it’s because I’m innately insecure. Who knows.

How does one shed that skin of insecurity to leave a new reclaimed one?

Wait! I remembered a quote. I’ll make it my title.

I hit a real low today, for some reason. I got so overwhelmed by all these little things that have been making me upset and have culiminated into one big thing. I feel better now, although exhausted. I feel very disconnected from people, with the exception of 3 or 4. I think a part of it is loneliness, a lot of it is the last spurts of anxiety that were created towards the end of the semester.

I just wanted to say I read your blog a little today, and I’m proud of you for keeping one and getting all there is to be said out in the open for others to see. It takes guts. And self possession. Things, of course, I’ve known you’ve had all along… -Kel

That was the highlight of my day. It is the only reason I’m doing better now.
I’m in that sunken place where I’m going through the motions of my day and relaxing as well as getting things done. But my mind is somewhere else every minute of it. I keep trying to steer it back onto a steady plane but it hasn’t yet.

What happened to me? I feel like I was more in control of my life during the school year than I am now. All the things I brushed aside with “I don’t have time for this” has resurfaced in the last 48 hours and I can’t seem to think about anything else except those questions that are too big to deconstruct. Am I really making a difference. What am I doing. What kind of career or job do I want after school. What do I really enjoy.

I’m thinking of this time when Rhodessa Jones came to speak and read through some of the questions she asks the incarcerated women that become involved in the Medea project. The questions are broken off into groups and one of them was love. I only remember two questions in the whole series but it was “Who do you love? Who loves you?”
It used to be very difficult to answer the latter question. Aside from my parents and family, and a few good friends, I have never been assured of the people who love me. Suddenly it seems far more difficult to answer the first — or rather, the long list of people I assumed I had has become the same insecure list I had in response to the latter question: my parents and family, and a few good friends. I don’t know why this matters except that it reassures me of something I have always been afraid to admit has changed about me. I don’t trust people like I used to. And I don’t trust people like I used to because I know what it looks like to have trust abused. I see it all the time and it has and will happen to me. It isn’t that I’ve stopped trusting people entirely - the process of trusting has just slowed down considerably. And I don’t know why that matters either.

Someone once told me that I was bad at dealing with change. Looking back, the thing that hurt me the most was I knew it was true.

I want this to be a time for me to reclaim. Reclaim myself, my identity, my voice, my strength. I thought I had created that second semester but in reality, I had built a just-useable shell of that person to help me get through my months at Pomona. And now that I’m at home I want that shell to stop being hollow, because its wearing away and leaving only the panic and anxiety that was my first semester reality/identity slap.

I want to reclaim my anger and my passions.

You know I suddenly realized that in my plans this summer - art and reading and writing a paper and planning training and general processing my life and whatnot - it completely slipped my mind to do any writing.
Sometimes I worry that I’ve stopped writing because I’m not as angry as I was in the beginning of the year. It isn’t that I want to be angry in the way I was, because it was exhausting and painful — I think maybe I just have this urge to channel anger differently in regards to creative output — that I want to do it with painting.
I get to go art supply shopping tomorrow! I didn’t go as planned on Thursday. I hope I can find materials so I can stretch my own canvas — I think that might get expensive though so I’ll have to see.
I’m really tired of women being called too sensitive or emotionally high maintenance simply because they have standards. I remember when Pete once, very matter of factly, told me I was emotionally high maintenance — I remember trying so hard to not be vocal about things I was annoyed by, times I felt disrespected. I kind of chuckle about that now. Because Lord knows if someone told me that..it would be the end.
On a completely different note, I found a site today that eases my worry that children of color won’t have dolls/toys that look like them.

Like this one!

It reminded me that the baby doll I had when I was little was brown.

I promised myself I would go to bed earlier but it isn’t happening. I’m halfway through the Crooked Line. I like it a lot so far, and some obvious things going on in it, in regards to symbolism and feminism and all the -isms. I’ll talk about it way more when I’m finished.

ahh female South Asian philanthropists…

I thought I’d come home and I’d start sleeping off this exhaustion but it isn’t happening. I’m sleeping less than I did during the year and I’m still tired –
It isn’t even tired, it’s restless. I feel like I should be doing something all the time but I’m too tired to start anything. Between reading books and writing this paper and planning AAMP training, I could be doing work full time..I just still feel tired so I can’t start. I think I’ll start Monday.
I started The Crooked Line a couple days ago - it was written in 1945 and is only being released translated in the USA in June. It’s pretty “progressive” from what little I’ve read and heard about Ismat Chughtai — Sheri had mentioned her during the year and then my grandmother raved about her when my mom was buying the book in India, which made me happy because I forget that my grandmother had the privilege of extensive reading and growing up in a context that was Westernized in regards to education, and it was a nice reminder.
I’ve been watching a lot of television — all sorts of crap. I think I’m channeling a lot of shit to