Like most people, they enjoyed having privilege and disliked losing it. That the caste system is reprehensible was not something they discussed. They were now at the bottom of the totem pole. Their degrees accompanied them across the ocean, but their status did not.Ĭontrary to glorified notions of the American Dream, my parents experienced life in the States as a demotion. My mother was a physician, my father an engineer. Their upper-caste status gave them ready access to resources and security, privileges that members of other castes did not have. As Brahmins, they were treated with deference in India. They experienced a powerlessness in the States that was wholly new. More broadly, my parents feared what America might do to them.

My socializing was confined to one or two preapproved friends: an early form of the pod. I was forbidden from seeing him and told he would ruin my life. On the mildest level, they feared American culture would infect me and my brother in the virulent way culture spreads: invisibly at first, with a seemingly benign pop song or movie, and then causing rapid and full-blown alarm when, for example, I had my first boyfriend. My parents’ anxiety took different forms. It was as though we were living through our own pandemic. My parents decided we were better off staying at home.

It’s not that we never went out, but on the rare occasion we did, the experience proved so miserable that we decided it wasn’t worth it. Carefree restaurant meals, leisurely vacations, partaking in American society: These were unthinkable. They didn’t socialize with neighbors, organize birthday parties, or host play dates. They regarded the world beyond our home with suspicion. There were no after-school specials about the dynamics of my family home: the abuse, the oppressive silence, the shoddy coping mechanisms of my immigrant parents. Contrary to glorified notions of the American Dream, my parents experienced life in the States as a demotion. It was the first and last time we ever went to the movies. Two hours later, my parents were slouched over in defeat the story of slums and white saviors had no connection to the India they knew. When City of Joy came out in 1992, my family excitedly went to see it, thrilled by the prospect of a film about India. This was before yoga and turmeric were in vogue, before Alanis Morissette thanked India and Elizabeth Gilbert prayed there.

Growing up during the 1980s in a predominantly white suburb of Long Island, I felt invisible. There is no vocabulary for it, which is part of the problem. My childhood anxiety is difficult to name. Asian American hate crimes and prejudice are only just beginning to register in the national consciousness. Part of the tragedy of America is that despite our resources, we cannot create a country where everyone feels safe. This latter part is where the joke stopped being funny: when we realized a global pandemic shouldn’t recall childhood.Įven when the pandemic is behind us - a prospect less within reach for countries like India, currently in crisis - this anxiety may linger. Last spring, my Asian American friends and I joked that everyone’s household was starting to resemble those of our childhood: the strict prohibitions, the obsessive hygiene rituals, the sharp distinction between “outside” and “inside,” and an attendant anxiety about the lack of freedom. As the daughter of South Asian immigrants, this was my daily after-school routine. This is not a description of pandemic life but one of my childhood. Looking around, I wonder if I am okay, if the world will ever cease to feel perilous.

I wash my hands with surgical thoroughness, change into my “inside clothes,” and put my “outside clothes” straight into the hamper.

Growing up poor in america