What's in a Home?: The Liminal Culture of Asian Indian Americans

Last Modified

Creator

Gharpure, Renu
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Communication

Abstract

Jhumpa Lahiri’s writing speaks to this world and gives voice to this generation. Her stories are raw and honest; they bring to life the dual cultural lifestyle the second generation lives. She mixes the American landscape—both cultural and physical—with the Indian. For example, while her stories are almost always located in New England, they most often take place in suburban or urban neighborhoods that could be anywhere. The overarching idea is that these cultural dilemmas happen everywhere, within these common houses and families in the U.S. I chose to use her narratives as a way to investigate my own—as a way to answer some of the questions I have about growing up in this generation. Crafting a performance enabled me to engage with Jhumpa Lahiri’s text while keeping the focus on my personal experiences. I would be the one on stage, breaking apart what I knew of Indian immigration and Lahiri’s stories and filtering it through my own experiences in order to better understand my history and my identity as an Indian American. I hoped to recognize how second generation Indian Americans reckon with the stereotypes and misrepresentations that come with growing up in a primarily white- American society as well as form a better understanding of my cultural identity, with particular regard to the history of Indian immigration in the U.S. and the cultural community of second generations that practice a dual Indian American culture.

Date of publication

Keyword

DOI

Resource type

Rights statement

Note

Advisor

Degree

Honors level

Degree granting institution

Extent

Relations

Thumbnail	Title	Date Uploaded	Visibility	Actions
	Thesis	2019-05-18	Public	Download