desi

Hip Hop Desis: South Asian Americans, Blackness, and a Global Race Consciousness

mandy — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

If the Asian American contribution to hip-hop has been largely invisible, South Asian American rap artists, here including those whose families came from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Fiji, have received a surprising amount of critical attention focused on re-conceptualizing race and the increasingly universal appeal of contemporary Black popular culture. On the heels of Ajay Nair and Murali Balaji’s 2009 study Desi Rap: Hip Hop and South Asian America comes Hip Hop Desis , an ethnographic analysis of a group of South Asian American rappers and the shared experience of those living in “racially marked bodies.”

The artists Nitasha Tamar Sharma studies “craft new ways of being desi, or alternative desiness, by drawing upon the concept of Blackness.” She follows David Palumbo-Liu and others in pointing out the dangers of the “model minority myth,” in this case the stereotypical “Asian traits” of respect for authority, cultural assimilation, and advocating education as a means to achieving the “American dream.” The stereotypical young South Asian American presumably is apolitical, white-identified, and non-agitating. Obviously, this conception denies the heterogeneity of desi experience, and these artists have rebelled against the expectations placed upon them and from which they were supposed to negotiate an identity.

Often lacking an ethnic network, many of these young people found a surrogate in African American communities and their artistic expression. Applying a rap technique known as sampling, the artists draw on the cultural currency of hip-hop to construct new, self-chosen identities. “Desiness,” here, signifies political activism, racial consciousness, and a diasporic sense of identity that appropriates the aesthetics and rebelliousness of African American hip-hop. In contrast to cultural expectation, desi emcees openly articulate their experiences with racism, exclusion, and their unique experience of otherness. While those in Sharma’s study typically are surprised to find themselves racially marked in school, the process of claiming a racial identity is deliberate: “as people of color undergoing discrimination, they identify with Blacks and form lifelong relationships with Black people.”

The introduction Sharma provides to these artists and groups offers a sophisticated glimpse at the complex processes involved in the formation of ethnic identities within a hip-hop framework. Unfortunately, for the initiate, examples of the music and performance are relatively difficult to locate online. Two of the featured groups, Himalayan Project and Karmacy, have several appealing and illustrative songs available on YouTube and MySpace. Perhaps the most intriguing artist, D’Lo, has posted three videos on his/her Facebook page, all of which illustrate the artist’s inclusion of the politics and semiotics of gender as a part of performance, and the theme of homophobia connected to racism in his/her music.

Sharma’s broader project, which she refers to as comparative racial studies, offers new insight into the nature of inter-ethnic sampling and influences. She warns that the “increasing gaps and conflicts among communities of color in the United States,” as well as the persistence of racism and inequality, make it urgent that we listen to voices such as those of the hip-hop desis.

Written by: Rick Taylor, January 25th 2011

Desigirls

admin — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Directed by Ishita Srivastava

Sometimes you stumble upon really small, obscure films that leave such an impact that you just want as many people to see it as possible. Desigirls by Ishita Srivastava is one such film. Filmed as a graduate thesis project at New York University, this twenty-minute documentary explores a refreshingly new topic—the South Asian lesbian community in New York City. I had the opportunity to watch the film and speak to the director afterward. Even though Desigirls is a student film, Srivastava approaches the topic with maturity and a sincerity that makes it a truly engaging film.

The film follows two women—Priyanka and ‘A’—as they discuss their sexual identities and their role within the South Asian queer community in New York, represented by two key institutions – the Desilicious parties and the South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association (SALGA) meetings. Priyanka is an openly pansexual woman who embraces her sexual identity and is an active member of the community. ‘A’, on the contrary, is living a double life, afraid to come out to her parents and secretly exploring her sexual identity.

Srivastava explores the lives of the two women with sensitivity, never intruding too much on their space. While Priyanka willingly offers herself to the camera and interacts freely with it, ‘A’ turns out to be the more interesting character to follow since her anonymity allows her to be emotionally vulnerable in front of the camera. The segment where she discusses her relationship with her brother is particularly moving. Srivastava does a commendable job of letting the characters be, without forcing much upon them or from them.

At times the film becomes ambitious in its scope, trying to accomplish too much in its very short runtime. Srivastava attempts to develop the two main characters and also explore the various events centered on the community. There’s enough in there to be expanded to a longer documentary. Of the two main events, the film focuses more on the SALGA meetings even if that wasn’t the original intention. Srivastava has the ability to make the viewer feel comfortable with what’s going on in front of the camera. The presence in the SALGA support meetings doesn’t seem intrusive, and shadowing Priyanka's and A’s lives keep the viewer hooked.

The most fascinating elements in the film emerge from the observations and statements made by the various characters. At one point Priyanka decisively states that her friends from India are far more tolerant of her sexuality than the Indians she knows who have been raised in the U.S. Meanwhile ‘A’ exhibits certain resentment in the dichotomy of never being able to come out to her conservative parents yet witnessing her brother having much more freedom in lifestyle choices than her. Thus the film effectively presents the fractures present within this very small community. All in all, Desigirls is a low budget student film for sure, but the story it tells is very powerful nonetheless, and one that desperately needed to be told.

Read Pulkit's interview with Ishita Srivastava at The NRI

Written by: Pulkit Datta, June 10th 2010

Stealing Nasreen

admin — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:53:00 +0000

By Farzana Doctor

Inanna Publications

Stealing Nasreen is the excellent first novel written by Farzana Doctor. Not fitting into any typical genre, the work showcases a slice of desi life, and incorporates elements of mild satire and romance in telling the story of three demoralized souls, Nasreen, Shaffiq, and Salma.

Nasreen is a grieving psychologist in need of personal counseling support, having recently lost both her mother to cancer and her lover to infidelity. Shaffiq is an accountant and a recent immigrant to Canada. Having left India to escape employment discrimination, he is still underemployed and now working as a janitor in the same office building as Nasreen. Shaffiq attempts to cope with the tensions of adjustment to life in a new country by bravely keeping up a front of false optimism, having passed the honeymoon period of his early immigration to Canada with his children and his wife, Salma. In his coping, Shaffiq has also developed a new and slightly odd habit of scavenging the office garbage for clues about the bad habits and secrets of the office-dwellers, the details of which he shares with his wife.

Salma is a teacher, who is dissatisfied working in a dry-cleaning business and as a tutor providing Gujarati lessons in her home to supplement both the family income and her children’s university fund. Practical on the surface, she hides significant passion behind her motherly, scholarly demeanor. All three characters are low on spirits, but high on self expectations as they come to meet in this original story which combines familiar themes of lost loves, obligations, expectations, and opportunities in an original tale which hinges on a chance meeting, one which stirs up long-buried feelings in Salma.

Triangles form much of the structure of Stealing Nasreen. Three stories of love and loss provide much of the back story to the principal relationship in the novel, which focuses on both Salma and Shaffiq’s individual obsessions with Nasreen upon meeting her. Both Shaffiq and Salma find themselves drawn to Nasreen for very different reasons. To Shaffiq, Salma represents both attractive and unappealing elements of the North American dream. She is a member of his ethnic and religious community who has achieved career success in North America, but embodies characteristics he does not desire for his two young daughters. For Salma, Nasreen is a reminder of a former lover, with whom she had a brief closeted relationship. Both Salma and Shaffiq keep aspects of their encounters with Nasreen secret from one another, culminating in a confrontation which alters the trajectory of events for each character from the course laid out at the novel’s beginning.

Rather than opt for the clichés of a neatly happy ending, Doctor has written a sophisticated story where multiple possibilities abound for each of the characters. Though the novel as a whole is rich in details, wry observations, and sophisticated parallel themes, the style of third person omniscient story telling does not relay the depths of emotion felt by any characters in their experiences of everyday tragedies and triumphs. The author’s style of storytelling emphasizes telling over showing, placing some distance between the reader and the characters. A lot happens in the story and none of the characters or the details, either minor or major are neglected in the story. Depicting the character’s experiences of first love, heartbreak, loss and passion from afar takes away from the emotional depth of an extremely accomplished first novel, one which is quite impressive in its scope.

Written by: Ruth Cameron, July 4th 2009

Desi Land: Teen Culture, Class, and Success in Silicon Valley

admin — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:04:00 +0000

By Shalini Shankar

Duke University Press

Desi Land, Shalini Shankar’s ethnographic exploration of Desi teenagers in Silicon Valley during the late 1990s, is a fascinating look at South Asian American youth culture at a pivotal moment in modern American history.

The setting of the book makes it particularly compelling: California during the dot-com boom, when a confluence of "model minorities" are populating an increasingly profitable and technologically advanced work force. The combination of South Asian economic liberalization and American cultural capital creates a generation of Desi Land teenagers who are consumers of both traditional American pop culture and increasingly popular Bollywood and other South Asian music and movies. The teenagers deal with both pressure to be Americanized and encouragement (and desire) to express their cultural identities, with the caveat that they fit neatly into school-sponsored "Cultural Days" and do not disturb the white hegemony of their schools or communities.

The highly particular nature of this book belies its richness; Shankar delves deeply into the interplay of race, class, gender and social status. Desi Land determines its subjects' class in social and economic contexts, and defines teens as either middle class or upper middle class according to a set of criteria that includes "the type of work their parents do, whether both parents work, and their parents' level of education, English proficiency, neighborhood, home, cars, and lifestyle." The students are also defined by the terms "FOBby" (from the acronym for "fresh off the boat") or "popular," depending on their social standing at school. Gender also plays a pivotal role in the life experiences of the teens in Desi Land, and Shankar does an admirable, if understated, job of relating the additional set of conflicting expectations placed on the young women she interviews.

Shankar sympathetically recounts the teens' experiences in schools, family life, social and religious activities, and romantic relationships, as well as their hopes and dreams for the future, all with a researcher’s eye for patterns of behavior and belief, and a fellow South Asian's firsthand understanding and empathetic detail. This book’s vibrancy and immediacy, even a decade later, make it an absorbing read for anyone interested in cultural studies.

Written by: Jennifer Wedemeier, January 12th 2009