Conventional images of second-generation women are either depicted as
belonging to one or another of bipolar opposites: either the women adhere more to an Indian definition of a daughter or they lean more toward an American model.
However, although these portraits may seem like they are placed on two opposing ends of a spectrum, many second-generation women tend to combine both images within one body, gradually transforming from one to another or switching between them as they see fit, which is not unlike the hybridized identities we covered in the first chapter and the extended concept of multiple identities, a process that we will discuss in further detail within our discussion below. There is an indistinct boundary
present between conventional and unconventional, and most girls end up
inadvertently crossing the border a number of times during the course of a day or a lifetime. The second-generation women are thus a less stable group, which places them in a separate class from the other categories.
Sudha from “Only Goodness” will be our focus for this section. Sudha
corresponds as an example of multiple identities because she is the American-born daughter of two South Asian parents. Her subjectivities include her second-generation status, her female gender, and her domestic roles as a daughter, older sister, mother, and wife. As previously mentioned, multiple identities within second-generation women will be even more complicated and flexible due to their initial upbringing within a traditional South Asian household situated within American society. Within the household, they will need to demonstrate adherence to the more traditional South Asian image of a good daughter or sibling, whereas outside of the house, out of the view of their parents and other elder South Asians, they will be more liberated to act in a more American fashion to fit in within the host society. These women are cultural navigators, displaying identities that are on the whole split between the domestic and public spheres. However, this split is not a clean divide between the two spheres, as identities from either end may interfere with those from the opposite side. In other words, although a second-generation woman may act in a generally more American manner outside the house, there are still times when her South Asian identity may intervene or contradict portions of her “public” image, and vice-versa. We will utilize instances of this happening within Sudha to further describe and clarify the process in action.
Sudha is the elder of two children in her family, a responsible older sister who diligently undertakes the responsibilities expected of her. Within the domestic domain, she is first and foremost a sister and daughter. When her younger brother Rahul is
born, Sudha makes it her responsibility to ensure that he would go through the full experience of what being an American child of mainstream society should be like, because she “had slipped through the cracks” (UE 136), being born earlier in a time when their parents did not have excess money or time to spend on her. She “sought out all the right toys for him,” asked her parents for suitable books, “told her parents to set up sprinklers on the lawn,” “convinced her father to put a swing set in the yard”
(UE 136), always counseling her parents on the “correct” way to raise Rahul as a child of America. Her early participation with her brother’s upbringing, then, gradually has some bearing on the role she is expected to fill in in regards to her brother—ultimately, her parents rely too much on her advice concerning the proper way to raise Rahul and they end up habitually asking Sudha to lecture and reprimand him for his inappropriate behavior when they are too apprehensive to do so
themselves.21 She is transformed from just Rahul’s sister to Rahul’s caretaker, taking over her parents’ roles. This can be partially attributed to the fact that her parents, having settled down and raising children in a foreign country, may not be familiar with situations like these because they might not be commonplace affairs within traditional Indian society. On the other hand, Sudha, having been born and raised in America, can receive larger amounts of information or knowledge from her everyday surroundings, such as school or the workplace, where she is likely to interact with native Americans. Consequently, because of her familiarity with American society, Sudha’s parents also count on her to do a lot for them:
21Initially, Rahul is, like Sudha, a source of his parents’ pride, exceedingly exceptional regardless of his looks or his educational achievements. His family is proud to see him accepted to Cornell, but little do they know that upon his detachment from the family, things begin to go awry. He begins to nurse a craving for alcohol that seems to grow exponentially over the course of the narrative, spiraling into a full-blown addiction to alcohol. His grades plummet and he drops out. Eventually he takes up a management job at a Laundromat in town, a post that greatly embarrasses his parents, before suddenly eloping with his much-older girlfriend. The once-flaunted ideal son figure becomes the anti-role model within their Bengali community and the bane of the family. A more detailed look into his motives for change is offered within the following section.
[Her parents] relied on their children, on Sudha especially. It was she who had to explain to their father that he had to gather up the leaves in bags, not just drag them with his rake to the woods opposite the house. She, with her perfect English, who called the repair department at Lechmere to have their appliances serviced. (UE 138)
Her cultural and linguistic familiarity with the host culture fosters her parents’
inclination to cast her as more than just a daughter. She is, like the character Romi from “Unaccustomed Earth,” cast into the roles of “her father’s oldest son” and “her mother’s secondary spouse” (UE 36), undertaking several responsibilities that most South Asian first-generation parents would have trouble dealing with, but which most second-generation offspring could navigate with ease. During her visits, she “[gives]
herself fully to her parents, watching Wimbledon with her father on television, helping her mother cook and order new blinds for the bedrooms” (UE 139). This complex fusion of roles as a daughter, sister, parent, caretaker, oldest son, and secondary spouse is a result of Sudha’s upbringing as a second-generation South Asian American.
Outside of the house, Sudha does not abstain from engaging in inappropriate behavior, but she differs from her brother in that she continues to act according to her parents’ wishes and expectations in front of them:
Sudha had waited until college to disobey her parents. Before then she had lived according to their expectations, her person scholarly, her social life limited to other demure girls in her class, if only to ensure that one day she would be set free.22 Out of sight in Philadelphia she studied diligently,
22 On a somewhat off-topic yet still related note, it is interesting that many daughters act obedient in front of their parents while adopting a secondary and perhaps not so docile character out of sight of their parents. So, is this the only way that these girls can “ensure one day that [they] will be set free”?
Sons, on the other hand, like Rahul, do not seem as pressured to act in accordance with tradition, and are more free to behave as they wish—or at least, this seems the norm in Lahiri’s stories. Sudha
double-majoring in economics and math, but on weekends she learned to let loose. (UE 129)
Having finally won the trust of her parents by scrupulously suppressing her own desires, she is granted a break from the more demanding roles projected upon her by her family, finally able to engage on a search for her “real” self. During this phase of exploration, she still maintains a good scholarly persona to assure her physical freedom, which in turn allows her to seek out sexual encounters and activities her parents would frown on if they knew. Despite cultivating a second, less obedient personality, Sudha discovers that she still prefers her more obedient self to her mischievous half upon learning what her limits were and coming to understand that anything in excess did not appeal to her. In spite of letting loose outside of the supervision of her parents, she continues to make her parents proud by “contributing to the grand circle of accomplishments Bengalis were making across the country,”
making her way up to the position of a project manager in a London organization that promoted micro loans in poor countries (UE 151). Although she demonstrates her liberties on occasion, she still makes sure to keep up a good image within the South Asian community, e.g. how her parents, relatives, or close friends see her. Sudha may let her hair down and act more American, she still acts in a more traditional South Asian manner when she returns to her family. Although Sudha demonstrates both South Asian and American behavior patterns, her character is still primarily acting within values deemed acceptable by South Asian tradition. She has not taken up a specific identity belonging to either side but rather positions herself somewhere in between the two groups. We can observe in the example of Sudha that the line that
accounts her brother’s relative freedom a result of him “being a boy and being younger, and her parents being more at ease with the way things worked in America” (UE 137). However, might this be a blind spot of Lahiri’s that she is not sufficiently prepared to write about, being a second-generation South Asian female? Perhaps we may find another perspective of the situation in the writings of South Asian male authors.
divides second-generation women into “more Indian” or “more American” is actually very fine and prone to shifting abruptly. Second-generation women exhibit manners that correspond with both sides of the spectrum which is why it is hard to precisely pin down which side they belong to.
A possible reason for why this specific type of hybrid identity appears in second-generation women is because, firstly, traditional Asian societies are more demanding of women and keep them under more restrictions. The main source for this type of treatment stems from prevalent belief in male chauvinism within traditional Asian societies. Men are granted greater liberties and are permitted to pursue their desires. Women, on the other hand, are kept confined within domestic boundaries and firmly taught that a woman is only successful if she can adhere to tradition. In spite of these restrictions, second-generation South Asian women have the advantage of growing up in an American environment, so when they leave the house they can observe another country’s gender role standards at work and can choose to view these roles as a source of reference or integrate them into their own identities as they see fit.
This is why two different sets of gender roles can be observed within a singular second-generation South Asian woman.
These second-generation women are more privileged than their mothers because they are offered a chance to embrace two cultures as their own, rather than being brought up with one cultural standard and being abruptly thrust into another
completely foreign society. Therefore, their choices are broader than those offered to their mothers, most of which choose to retreat within the domestic sphere or stay limited to circles of only Bengali friends. Yet the one unchanging fact concerning these women is that there is no single definition in existence that could wholly summarize the assortment of second-generation female identities.