Migration was, in general terms, a liberation and improvement in status for the men, while the women tended to regard the past with nostalgia and the present American experience as an alienating one. For the first generation migrants, life in the new country frequently turned out to be one fraught with misunderstanding, discrimination, and the day-to-day business of recreating one’s culture in an unwelcoming atmosphere. The second generation migrants, or those who were taken abroad at a young age, have no difficulty in adapting to the host culture, but they are obliged to navigate between two traditions—an unenviable position—which can cause distress and feelings of guilt or disloyalty.
The Indian immigrant woman arrives in the USA with very mixed feelings. The mind frame combines the experience of displacement spurred by physical migration. Along with this, the woman remains the bearer of the culture, the preserver of the heritage, and is psychologically programmed to enact the preordained roles that have been defined for her by traditional patriarchy at home in India and by extension abroad. Thus, for the female immigrant, hope fulfills these ever submissive roles built upon the iconography of women’s passivity. The woman is also subjected to insidious racial discrimination and has to struggle against this in almost all walks of life. The discrimination affects them in different ways—from the general to the personal. In addition, the Indian-American woman is left a “hyphenated” entity, struggling to come to terms with her new life. |
