ABCD

American Born Confused Desi.

The term is pretty straightforward, and I can’t deny that it describes me. American-born? Absolutely – born in an almost stereotypical crumbling Rust Belt manufacturing town. Desi? It’s a term that refers to the whole South Asian region, encompassing India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. Being of Indian background, the term definitely applies to me.

It’s an interesting term, and I find its usage spreading to the most unlikely places. When even my parents use it, you know it’s gotten ridiculously popular (my parents being the absolute last repository of pop culture on the planet). But what does it really mean? It evokes wildly varying reactions. The typical usage of the term has been scornful. It’s been a traditional counter to the phrase “FOB”, or “fresh off the boat”, applied to new immigrants who may be a little TOO enthusiastic about the homeland. The point of the term seems to be that the angst and discontent of young American-born Desis is just a result of “confusion”. We think we are American, but we just don’t realize that we’re typical good Indians (Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, etc…), and we will just shut up and get in line when we finally grasp that fact.

But, like many derogatory names, people have begun to pick it up as an ironic self-identifier. And I’ll be honest; it’s not all that inaccurate. Am I confused? Absolutely!

India and the United States share a lot of common features. They are both democracies, they both value achievement and hard work, they both have gigantic entertainment industries. But they are also both supremely convinced about the absolute primacy of their culture. They both have histories of ethnic intolerance that affect people’s behavior in odd ways. And each looks down on the other in important ways.

The ways that the US looks down on South Asia should be obvious. The region has historically been composed of some of the poorest countries in the world, and the Western image of India in particular has been one of incredible poverty and suffering almost from the point of first contact. But Indians look down on some major elements of Western culture as well. Many see moral decline where Americans see personal freedom. They look at the divorce rate, the “lazy” unemployed people, the fluid sexual mores, and the rebellious children and they say “this would never happen at home”. The parents that are most prone to this attitude usually conveniently forget about the existence of most of these things in India – after a few years in the US, India becomes more of a myth of “Home” than a real place anyway.

Growing up caught between a culture that is supremely sure of itself and parents that are just as supremely sure of its degeneracy is a sure recipe for “confusion” at the very least. So much so that I feel that the “C” in “ABCD” probably describes me more than anything else. For much of my life, I tried very hard to be as “American” as possible. I rejected huge chunks of Indian culture, and chafed when my parents tried to impose some of their more Indo-centric values on me. I listened to weird-ass underground rock when all the other Indian kids I knew were either listening to Hindi film songs or gangsta rap (I feel weird b/c I only got into rap as an adult late in college). I didn’t do garba, raas, bhangra, or any of the other dances. I soaked up the trashiest parts of American pop culture – comic books, action movies, video games, science fiction novels. And, other than a huge interest in the mythology, I had as little to do with my parents’ Swaminaryan Hinduism as possible.

I don’t regret most of the choices I’ve made in my life. I love my friends, I like my job ok, and I think I’ve made schooling/career choices that were right for me so far. But in the last few years I have definitely felt a lack of something. I do wish I had more of a connection to the culture I grew up with. I wish I knew how to speak Hindi. I wish I knew more about South Asian film (I can tell Hrithik Roshan and Sharukh Khan apart, but that’s about it). I wish could speak more intelligently about Indian politics and culture. I wish I could make more Indian food. Most of all, I miss being around people who understand the frustrations and (sometimes) rewards of that background. Unfortunately, for most of my life I’ve had a binary choice: either be Indian or American. As a result, I was mostly unable to meet people who both understood my background, but also understood where and why I was rejecting parts of it.

However, in the past couple of years I’ve learned that there ARE some groups of young Desi-American people who share many of my non-Indian, American-influenced values. Among many others, the South Asian Progressive Action Coalition and the bloggers I’ve stumbled across at Sepia Mutiny really seem to get where I’m coming from. I’m really looking forward to seeing where all of this leads, but I’m definitely feeling a lot less “Confused” than I have in years.

Ever since I was a kid, I've loved comics. There's a lot to love about this form of media: the focus on plot, characterization, and dialogue draws from a long tradition of popular literature, but the inclusion of visual artwork lets artists do all sorts of awesome things with color, aesthetics, and style. And, since they’re relatively cheap to produce (for popular media), there’s a great diversity of choices out there.

Of course, they can often be clunky, poorly written messes with crappy dialogue and lame artwork too (sometimes part of that “cheap to produce” thing means hiring some sub-par talent). But even so, the beauty of the form is that you always have a chance to make amends.

I know Marvel and DC always get a lot of crap from the blogs and the indie comic critics for being hackneyed and conservative. And you can’t deny that they ARE the “Big Corporate” players in this game, meaning they have to worry about stuff like brand identity, public opinion, and all that other lame Big Content Industry stuff. But when you encounter something like this timeline of the Marvel Universe, you start to get a feeling for the incredible weight of pop culture integration these companies have provided.

A quick look over that timeline gets you references to: ancient mythology, HP Lovecraft’s “weird” horror/fantasy, vampire myths (both pre and post Stoker), Robert E. Howard’s barbarian pulp, medieval European folktales, World War II propaganda, William Gaines’ pulp horror, Hugo Gernsback-style technological utopianism, classic Westerns, post-war neo-mythological “Big” sci-fi, Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, Victorian gothic fantasy, Raymond Chandler’s noir crime fiction, Atlantis myths, Phillip K. Dick or Harlan Ellison-style socially conscious SF, and of course mutants. Taken together, this represents a huge, living document that gathers together nearly every trend in pop culture from World War II onwards (at least -- many of these references go back to the whole first wave of “pop culture” in the Victorian Era) and turns it into a single, still-living, still-evolving dramatic arc.

Not a bad achievement for a Big Corporation marketing the lowest of low culture to us witless fanboys!