{"id":24876,"date":"2012-08-19T19:48:44","date_gmt":"2012-08-19T19:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=24876"},"modified":"2012-08-19T23:13:38","modified_gmt":"2012-08-19T23:13:38","slug":"punjabi-sikh-mexican-american-community-fading-into-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=24876","title":{"rendered":"Punjabi Sikh-Mexican American community fading into history"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/national\/on-faith\/punjabi-sikh-mexican-american-community-fading-into-history\/2012\/08\/13\/cc6b7b98-e26b-11e1-98e7-89d659f9c106_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">Punjabi Sikh-Mexican American community fading into history<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\" target=\"_blank\">The Washington Post<\/a><br \/>\n2012-08-13<\/p>\n<p><strong>Benjamin Gottlieb<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Amelia Singh Netervala points to her mother\u2019s chicken curry enchiladas as the best metaphor for her childhood.<\/p>\n<p>Born to a Punjabi Sikh father and Mexican mother, her family was full of cultural contradictions: She went to church on Sundays with her mother and three siblings while her father waited outside in the family car. She would have langar \u2014 the daily Sikh communal meal \u2014 just once a year, when her father would embark on the five-hour journey from Phoenix to the nearest <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gurdwara\" target=\"_blank\">gurdwara<\/a> in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/El_Centro,_California\" target=\"_blank\">El Centro<\/a>, a Californian border town in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wiki\/Imperial_Valley_(California)\" target=\"_blank\">Imperial Valley<\/a>. Her clandestine conversations with her mother were done in Spanish, a language her father never mastered.<\/p>\n<p>All the while Netervala never had any doubts about her identity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m proud of my Mexican heritage and mixed ethnicity,\u201d said Netervala, who grew up on an alfalfa and cotton farm in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Casa_Grande,_Arizona\" target=\"_blank\">Casa Grande<\/a>, 50 miles south of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Phoenix,_Arizona\" target=\"_blank\">Phoenix<\/a>. \u201cBut if I had to choose, I would identify as being an Indian woman.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now in her mid-70s, Netervala is part of the nation\u2019s thinning <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=9073\" target=\"_blank\">Punjabi-Mexican<\/a> population, an identity forged out of historical necessity and made possible by uncanny cultural parallels&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/national\/on-faith\/punjabi-sikh-mexican-american-community-fading-into-history\/2012\/08\/13\/cc6b7b98-e26b-11e1-98e7-89d659f9c106_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Punjabi Sikh-Mexican American community fading into history The Washington Post 2012-08-13 Benjamin Gottlieb Amelia Singh Netervala points to her mother\u2019s chicken curry enchiladas as the best metaphor for her childhood. Born to a Punjabi Sikh father and Mexican mother, her family was full of cultural contradictions: She went to church on Sundays with her mother [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,8,20],"tags":[11584,11580,455,11581,2875,2581],"class_list":["post-24876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-amelia-singh-netervala","tag-benjamin-gottlieb","tag-california","tag-punjabi-mexican","tag-the-washington-post","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}