{"id":27092,"date":"2012-12-24T01:40:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-24T01:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=27092"},"modified":"2013-02-20T04:46:56","modified_gmt":"2013-02-20T04:46:56","slug":"black-mom-indian-dad-search-for-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=27092","title":{"rendered":"Black Mom + Indian Dad = Search for Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Black Mom + Indian Dad = Search for Identity<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ebony Magazine<\/a>
\n2012-12-17<\/p>\n

Sharda Sekaran<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sharda Sekaran can’t deny her East Indian roots, but she can’t find them either<\/em><\/p>\n

It was my senior year of college. I sat at the end of a long oval table in a meeting room in one of the academic buildings. Surrounding me on either side were professors from different departments. Some of them I\u2019d taken classes from, but most I had not. They were interviewing me for a fellowship for which I\u2019d been nominated. It was a very selective process, and only three other students from my school were up for it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m generally okay speaking under pressure in front of a group, but I was absolutely terrified. The professors asked my about my identity\u2014my understanding of who I am and where I came from. I felt paralyzed by fear, and stumbled like a desperate entertainer trying to keep the audience on her side.<\/p>\n

I could see the crestfallen face of a religion professor whom I knew wanted to like me. She watched helplessly as I spewed out one badly composed thought after another. I knew what I was saying was complete junk. I tried to distract them with academic buzzwords: \u201cdichotomy,\u201d \u201cparadox,\u201d \u201cequilibrium,\u201d \u201corganic…\u201d Nothing. All I conveyed about my identity was that I had no clue about it.<\/p>\n

It was my own fault. The fellowship was based on self-discovery through theme-related travel for a year. The subject was meant to be of personal significance, but maybe I\u2019d taken it too far. My topic was the gaping hole of my family grief\u2014a search for the missing half of my cultural ancestry.<\/strong><\/p>\n

My proposal was to examine my hybrid African-American\/Indian identity by studying the impact of Bollywood<\/a> on the Indian Diaspora (my personal connection being, my father\u2019s from India and my mother is African-American). I\u2019d go to countries with Creole Indian\/African mixed populations to observe how popular cinema impacted people\u2019s idea of what makes them \u201cIndian.\u201d<\/p>\n

I thought it was a good idea for a project; so did a lot of others. Thus, I found myself at the end of that table of professors. But when the panel asked me questions about Indian culture, basic things that any person with an Indian family should know, I drew blanks.<\/p>\n

I might have saved myself by admitting that I had no relationship with my Indian-born father. He abandoned our family when I was a toddler and left me without a dad or any ties to his family. All I inherited was an Indian name and physical features that could belong in South Asia. My family history had ambiguity, but also enough clues about my origins to constantly leave me answering questions and explaining a story that\u2019s sensitive as a wound whenever I\u2019m forced to recount it…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black Mom + Indian Dad = Search for Identity Ebony Magazine 2012-12-17 Sharda Sekaran Sharda Sekaran can’t deny her East Indian roots, but she can’t find them either It was my senior year of college. I sat at the end of a long oval table in a meeting room in one of the academic buildings. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,125,13743,8],"tags":[6203,1351,13172],"class_list":["post-27092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-identitydevelopment","category-interviews","category-media-archive","tag-ebony-magazine","tag-india","tag-sharda-sekaran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27092","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=27092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27092\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}