Becoming American, Being Indian: An Immigrant Community in New York City

by Madhulika S. Khandelwal

Overview

Since the 1960s the number of Indian immigrants and their descendants living in the United States has grown dramatically. During the same period, the make-up of this community has also changed—the highly educated professional elite who came to this country from the subcontinent in the 1960s has given way to a population encompassing many from the working and middle classes. In her fascinating account of Indian immigrants in New York City, Madhulika S. Khandelwal explores the ways in which their world has evolved over four decades.

How did this highly diverse ethnic group form an identity and community? Drawing on her extensive interviews with immigrants, Khandelwal examines the transplanting of Indian culture onto the Manhattan and Queens landscapes. She considers festivals and media, food and dress, religious activities of followers of different faiths, work and class, gender and generational differences, and the emergence of a variety of associations.

Khandelwal analyzes how this growing ethnic community has gradually become "more Indian," with a stronger religious focus, larger family networks, and increasingly traditional marriage patterns. She discusses as well the ways in which the American experience has altered the lives of her subjects.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801488078
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	10/30/2002
Series:	The Anthropology of Contemporary Issues
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.62(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Madhulika S. Khandelwal is Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies in the College of Public and Community Service at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

What People are Saying About This

Margaret Abraham

Becoming American, Being Indian is an important history of the Indian community in Queens. The oral narratives in Madhulika Khandelwal's book lend significant insights and enrich the overall portrait of Indian immigrants in New York.

Gary Y. Okihiro

Bursting with humanity, Becoming American, Being Indian reveals identity as wonderfully variegated and contradictory, whole and fractured, stable and in motion. In determining what it means to be 'Indian' in the U.S., these migrants have redefined what it means to be 'American.'

Editorial Reviews

In acknowledging her involvement with the immigrant communities in Queens as 'participant observation, ' Khandelwal subtly frames her position or, perhaps more directly, her level of interest in the issues significant to that portion of the Indian immigrant population in New York City area.... Khandelwal distinguishes the differences in how Indian immigrants occupying different socio-economic positions in the United States transplant their cultural practices.... The suggestion here is that the cultural activities of upper-class Indians, coupled with their absence from Queens neighborhoods where the concentration of Indian immigrants is the highest in the country, functionally set them apart from a growing and perhaps more vibrant culturally 'real' experiences of being Indian American.

--Cara N. Cilano, University of North Caroline at Wilmington "South Asian Review"

Madhulika S. Khandewal's book offers an informative addition to the growing literature emerging from the US about Indian immigrants and their settlement trajectories.... Khandelwal clearly sees the formation of American Indian identity as a process, a process that relies on internal and external qualities and events.... What is particularly appealing about the book is the exploration of class and race as influences on the emergence of a distinct ethnicity.

--Hasmita Ramji, City University "Ethnic and Racial Studies"

From the Publisher

"Bursting with humanity, Becoming American, Being Indian reveals identity as wonderfully variegated and contradictory, whole and fractured, stable and in motion. In determining what it means to be 'Indian' in the U.S., these migrants have redefined what it means to be 'American.'"

Gary Y. Okihiro

"Becoming American, Being Indian is an important history of the Indian community in Queens. The oral narratives in Madhulika Khandelwal's book lend significant insights and enrich the overall portrait of Indian immigrants in New York."

Margaret Abraham

Madhulika S. Khandewal's book offers an informative addition to the growing literature emerging from the US about Indian immigrants and their settlement trajectories.... Khandelwal clearly sees the formation of American Indian identity as a process, a process that relies on internal and external qualities and events.... What is particularly appealing about the book is the exploration of class and race as influences on the emergence of a distinct ethnicity.

Ethnic and Racial Studies - Hasmita Ramji

In acknowledging her involvement with the immigrant communities in Queens as 'participant observation,' Khandelwal subtly frames her position or, perhaps more directly, her level of interest in the issues significant to that portion of the Indian immigrant population in New York City area.... Khandelwal distinguishes the differences in how Indian immigrants occupying different socio-economic positions in the United States transplant their cultural practices.... The suggestion here is that the cultural activities of upper-class Indians, coupled with their absence from Queens neighborhoods where the concentration of Indian immigrants is the highest in the country, functionally set them apart from a growing and perhaps more vibrant culturally 'real' experiences of being Indian American.

South Asian Review - Cara N. Cilano