What are the effects of a first-generation Asian-Indian Americans assimilating to their new American culture? Can the act of assimilating to an American culture cause a loss of identity for them at some point in their lives or an identity crisis. Researching through articles.  showed how some Asian-Indians who are first-generation Americans do end up struggling with an identity crisis and those who don’t express feelings that are quite similar to others who claim to have an identity crisis’. When Asian-Indians come to America for a better life and have kids who then become first-generation Americans, they do come face to face with either becoming more Americanized to fit in or sticking to their culture. Sometimes deciding on either can be a huge strain on a person mentally and may indeed cause a loss of identity. 

In Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel “The Namesake” the main character Gogol or Nikil is a first-generation American with Bengali roots. The book shares the experiences with its readers about how Nikil’s parents got to The United States when he was born his childhood and some of his adulthood until he makes a huge realization. All of his life Nikil didn’t really like his pet name which ended up being his actual name by law because Ashima’s grandmother is supposed to choose the names for her kids, but that didn’t go as planned. (Lahiri 29-31). He found out he was named after someone and he did not like the connotation the name came with(Lahiri.96-97)He got around to changing his name, he started doing things that ‘normal’ teenagers do in America having to hide these things from his parents. He started dating girls, who nonetheless weren’t Bengali. But when his father died abruptly everything changed, he didn’t shave his head after his father died which was a pretty normal thing to do in his culture. Instead, he found a book written by his father for him, this book included why he was named after this writer, to begin with. He found out that the author’s book was the book that his father was holding when he had a near-death experience. He wanted to feel close to this book and go home and read it alone after abandoning it for so many years(Lahiri pg. 309). Losing his father and finally accepting the book, many would say brought him back and closer to his roots all those years of neglecting and slowly assimilating into the American culture. Changing your name is an identity crisis itself, Nikil didn’t actually have a genuine reason to change his name he just wanted to sound more American. Nikil let go if not all most of his Asian-Indian culture in a way when all of the reminders of his culture were gone, to then want to be closer to his culture again. 

Being different can sometimes take a toll on someone’s life, well it especially did for Serena Vora in the article “Indian vs. American: Dealing With a Cultural Identity Crisis”. She was growing up as a first-generation American in the ’90s when people still confused Asian-Indians with Native Americans or that all brown people were Hispanic(Vora par. 2). Vora also tried and participated in both her Asian-Indian culture as well as her American one as she stated in her article, She never really chose one culture to follow; she stayed very confident in her Asian-Indian roots, she experienced racism but she stayed confident on where she came from(Vora par. 3). After she graduated college she decided to go to Bombay, India to work where she did end up having an identity crisis(Vora par.4). “…All of a sudden I was now known as the “American girl.” Wait, what? In my 21 years of living in the U.S., I had never been referred to as an American girl, I was always the Indian-American girl. And now, in India, I’m an American girl?”. Being in America she was always known as the Indian-American girl but being in India all of a sudden she was referred to the American girl which confused her because she has never been called an American girl, and she goes to the place where she was always known to be from and she isn’t referred to as Indian in India. Along with being labeled as the American girl people assumed that she did drugs because she was in America and that she lost touch with her Indian culture and going back to America people assumed she must be more Indian now(Vora par.5). This experience caused her to lose her identity because she was either too Indian or too American, feeling like an outsider in both America and India(Vora par. 6). Although Vora did not neglect her culture completely or at all but being a first-generation American did cause her to lose her identity. 

In the article “Indian American Teen Confronts Cultural and Sexual Identity Crisis in Maulik Pancholy’s Novel, ‘The Best At It’” written by Suita Sohrabji speaks about the novel Pancholoy wrote which was about a boy who was struggling to come out. Which he wrote about based on his own experience coming out himself. He felt like “As a 12-year-old, I was having all these feelings: my sexuality felt different, my culture felt different.”(Sohrabiji par.2). This can easily be seen as the start of an identity crisis. He then expresses how he was trying to be Indian in some places but American in others which were stressful and he didn’t come out until he was in his 20s(Sohrabiji par.2). Already at 12 years old, he had an instinct that his sexuality was different but didn’t feel like his culture would be accepting so he didn’t come out until way later. He wrote his novel to help other’s who may be going through cultural or identity crisis’, meaning that he himself experienced one. He wrote a book about something he experiences to let kids know that they are not alone and inspiring them to be themselves(Sohrabiji par. 17). He experienced a sexual identity crisis along with a cultural one, he struggled to fit in because he knew he was different so he tried assimilating but it was too stressful as well. 

In the interview “Sometimes we make our kids live in two different worlds.” of Deep Gupta by Polly Sonifer. In this interview, Deep Shikha Gupta is an Asian-Indian immigrant who speaks about first generations of children struggling in America. She believes that parents of first-generation Asian-Indian Americans are too hard on their kids because they know their roots and where they came from(Sonifer par. 1). She agrees that it can cause an identity crisis being a first-generation Asian-Indian Americans because they don’t have the strong base of Indian culture to follow as their parents did, they were raised here learning in the American way, learning American things which causes a drift in the Asian-Indian culture, but when they go to India the let go of these ‘American things’ which causes an identity crisis(Sonifer par.2). Even Asian-Indian parents like Gupta, see the struggle and the identity crisis their children experience being first-generation Americans. 

Reshma Dsouza in her article “Identity Crisis: Neither Indian nor American” does not go through an identity crisis unlike all the articles researched. She does indeed assimilate but does not experience an identity crisis. Although she threw away some Indian traditions she still participated in some and took in some American traditions, “I am someone that embraces being an American AND an Indian at heart.” Throughout her life, people assumed that she didn’t know how to do a basic ‘Indian things’, that she didn’t have an Indian last name, and the assumptions when she sounded purely American and had no accent(Dsouza par. 4). Along with these assumptions she started to be confused, people assumed she was in an arranged marriage or if she spoke Hindi. She did not really have one-sided assumptions but people tried to label her as not American enough or not Indian enough. But she did not let that stop her according to herself. She believes she didn’t go through an identity crisis just because she was raised with typical Indian parents, which doesn’t mean anything. Your parents raise you but they truly have no control over the person and the adult that you become. I think hearing these comments and assumptions that people had about her does indeed take a toll on someone’s life. 

Based on the conducted research, it is quite fair to state that the act of assimilating into the American culture while being a first-generation Indian-American can cause an identity crisis, and those who do not call it an identity crisis definitely expressed feelings equal to those who did experience an identity crisis’. Having to battle with your heritage and its culture but also feeling the need to assimilate can certainly cause an identity crisis, being in a country were being not enough of something and being too much of something can be seen as bad a bad thing can be a lot and can cause an identity crisis. 

 

Work cited: 

Dsouza, Reshma. “Identity Crisis: Neither Indian nor American.” Medium, Medium, 20 Apr. 2018, medium.com/@reshmathomas/identity-crisis-neither-indian-nor-american-c45eb288f2e5. Accessed date April 17, 2020.

Gupta ,Deep. Interview by Polly Sonifer. “ Sometimes we make our kids live in two different worlds.” Minnesota Historical Society. June 23, 2005. http://education.mnhs.org/immigration/narrators/asian-indian/deep-shikha-gupta/sometimes-we-make-our-kids-live-in-two-different-worlds. Accessed on April 14, 2020. 

Jhumpa, Lahiri. “The namesake”. Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2019. Accessed February 2020. 

Sohrabji, Sunita. “Indian American Teen Confronts Cultural and Sexual Identity Crisis in Maulik Pancholy’s Novel, ‘The Best At It’”. Indian West. November 2019. https://search-proquest-com.central.ezproxy.cuny.edu/docview/2313911390?accountid=26979&rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo. Accessed date April 14, 2020

Vora, Serena. “Indian vs. American: Dealing With a Cultural Identity Crisis.” HuffPost, HuffPost, 11 Jan. 2018, www.huffpost.com/entry/indian-vs-american-dealing-with-a-cultural-identity_b_5a5794f1e4b00a8c909f7eea. Accessed date April 14, 2020