They and We: An American Story

by Mika Rao Kalapatapu


In her book, An American Marriage, author Tayari Jones says, “My story may begin the day I was born, but the story goes back further.” My American story began with my father. He immigrated to America in 1968 as part of the wave of students and professionals from India and other Asian countries after President Johnson signed the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act. This law marked a major break with previous policy by eliminating quotas based on national origins. After he married my mother four years later, she joined him here, becoming the first member of her own family to cross the ocean to the great American unknown.

Like most of their peers, my parents gravitated towards other families who had also emigrated from India and our weekends were spent mainly with them at picnics or cultural shows. Most often, we’d gather in a family friend’s house – kids playing ping pong or watching The Love Boat in someone’s basement, coming up to join the adults only when they called us for the steaming, elaborate Indian meal. You could see how the adults relaxed in each others’ company, a welcome break from the norms of American rigidity and a solid replacement for their parents and sib- lings thousands of miles away.

But my own life was marked by fitting in to my American experience. I was a chatterbox with a “terrible American accent,” as relatives remarked. I attended a Baptist pre-school and in the absence of much orientation to my family’s Hindu traditions, took to discussing the story of Baby Jesus with visitors to our home. I didn’t bring up my culture or religion with my friends and neighbors and was able to blend seamlessly into their family lives. Occasionally, par- ents or teachers would ask me questions about what a typical Indian meal was like or something about our customs. Most of the time, their reactions led me to avoid these conversations in the future. It was better to be American, not to emphasize difference. I attended bar mitzvahs, had a date to the prom, and tried to extend my curfew – just like all the other teens I knew.

But college life brought with it a shift. By now, I was attending a school with a large South Asian American popula- tion. Like my parents discovered as immigrants who sought out those who shared their background; I found myself drawn towards those whose parents had come from India and grew up American. As a freshman in college at the University of Pennsylvania, I participated in my first candlelight vigil. The vigil was organized by the campus South Asia Society in solidarity with Dr. Kaushal Sharan who was beaten by a gang known as the “dot-busters” in Jersey City, just because he was from India. I identified with this group of South Asian Americans who were asserting an emerging option for our community. You didn’t have to be Indian or American. You could be both. We were both. But – in my heart – I felt we were mainly Americans, with all the privilege, opportunity and value that held.

Over the next 20 years, I made many choices that proved that assertion. I was part of a student group that helped to found the Asian American studies program at my University. I formed a non profit organization dedicated to getting out the vote among South Asian Americans and highlighting the contributions of this community in the United States. I prioritized marrying someone American, but of Indian heritage. I continued to emphasize my American identity, believing that it was clear to others that I was not an immigrant but an established part of this nation. I bought into the false choice about the value of that distinction.

Meanwhile, around me, the demographics of the South Asian community in the US had shifted – almost without my realizing. The 1990 Immigration Act updated the 1965 law and made it possible for a new wave of immigration among highly skilled workers (mostly in the Information Technology field from India). From the late 1990s through the 2000s, communities saw a rise in new immigrants from South Asia. As I was raising my own children in subur- ban Houston, our neighborhood was experiencing an influx of immigrants and the distinctions between this group and us seemed stark. As this population grew, I found myself asserting the American side of my identity.

And then, the 2016 election took place after a season of anti-immigrant rhetoric. I can’t say I was unaware of the comments or biases about these new American communities, but the results of the election came as a shock. In 2017, three Indian Americans were shot based on their country of origin. First, Srinivas Kuchibhotla, an immigrant in Kansas City, who was spending time at a bar with a friend – was murdered by a man who thought he was Middle Eastern and told him to go back to his country. Next, Deep Rai who was shot in his own driveway by a man who reportedly also told him to go back to his country. Then, the murder of Harnish Patel, a well-loved shop owner in South Carolina – ironically in the same state that elected second-generation Indian American Nikki Haley as their Governor.

These words, “go back to your country” come as a knife in the heart to any immigrant who gave up so much and worked hard to enter and build a successful life in the American world of freedom, opportunity and democracy. But that phrase, “go back to your country” cuts differently to those of us who cannot go back to our country. Because, brown as we may look, and while we try to cook the dishes our grandmothers taught us or dress up in saris and take pictures– to my generation, we were American at our core. As the child of those who immigrated, I did not come – I started out here. American born and/ or raised, this is the only country I considered home. And then there were my children– third generation Americans by this point – for whom India is a mythical, storied place their grandpar- ents tell them about, but for whom there is no dual nationality, just pride and comfort in the American way.

As my children grew in leaps from babes to tweens and teens, the country had too. Regardless of the xenophobic sentiment we were experiencing, it seemed like South Asian Americans were forging ahead nonetheless. Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal – Indian Americans from very Southern states – were elected Governor and appointed to national cabinet roles. Sanjay Gupta was on CNN every night, and the CEOs of Microsoft and Google had hard to pronounce Indian names like we did. To top it all off, a 2020 Presidential candidate named Kamala Harris, with a mother who immigrated from India, just as mine had. Surely, my kids –growing up in the same Houston neighbor- hood their grandparents had moved to 40 years ago, could not be considered outsiders by any stretch.

And yet, to some they were. In the wake of the divisiveness and anti-immigrant mentality, distancing myself from the new Americans targeted by the President’s proposed laws and values no longer felt okay. How many years a per- son had spent building the American dream or how many generations ago the seeds were planted for their American identity were immaterial facts to perpetrators of hate crimes. Author Brene Brown wrote, “You either walk inside your story and own it, or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.” Consciously or unconscious- ly, I had been engaging in a lifetime of hustling to demonstrate my American worth.

It was time to own my story instead.

I am the daughter of immigrants. My family was among many immigrants that came here in the 1960s and 1970s and we stand in solidarity with today’s new Americans. It’s been 50 years since my father entered America. It’s been 24 years since I first stood up against hate crimes towards South Asian Americans. In the time since, I’ve mobilized, I’ve celebrated, I’ve fought, I’ve blended in, I’ve stood out, I’ve spoken up and I’ve sometimes stayed silent. I’ve championed and volunteered to support low-income communities, immigrants and refugees. I’ve learned to become proud of the pieces that make me who I am. Not just the American upbringing that’s just like everyone else, but also the deep and complex Indian identity that informed it, the scrappy immigrant mentality that echoes in the deepest portions of my mind, and that union with others who are new, and eager and hopeful.

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