Book review in News-India Times, October 15, 2004
sangam.org/articles/view2/604.html
Rudrappa points out the inherent contradiction in Indian Americans having to use ethnicity as a base as a sort of authenticating factor, which, at the same time, limits their operating space within the national mainstream.
Ethnic Routes to Becoming American by Sharmila Rudrappa, Published by Rutgers University Press, N.J. 238 pages, 2004
In Ethnic Routes to Becoming American Sharmila Rudrappa, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas, Austin, raises some fundamental questions about the distinction between becoming an American citizen and developing a sense of belonging.
Among the questions that go to the very heart of the debate are what cultural practices South Asian immigrants need to follow in order to become part of ‘the imagined national community’ or whether celebration of ethnicity from the perspective of multiculturalism prevents assimilation.
The book is a result of Rudrappa’s year-long work in Chicago in the 1990s. She uses two Indian-American organizations in Chicago, Apna Ghat, a community for survivors of domestic abuse, and Indo-American Center, a cultural center, as case studies to drive her larger thesis. At a time when many anti-immigrantion groups worry at the changing demographics in the U.S., where, they apprehend, non-White immigrants would eventually convert America into an ‘alien’ nation, the book is an interesting study of the politics of ethnicity and multiculturalism. Rudrappa points out the inherent contradiction in Indian Americans having to use ethnicity as a base as a sort of authenticating factor, which, at the same time, limits their operating space within the national mainstream.
This Indian-ness, she writes, “is a space that these particular non-Whites believe is uncolonized by mianstream United States.
From this uncolonized space, they can author themselves into being and launch themselves as participating members in their new nation.”