Lopamudra Mukherjee isn’t very different from most middle-class, urban, American women — balancing a family life with a full-time job, teaching English at a high school in Los Angeles. Yet when you see her among people from her native India, — draped in embroidered silk, her wrists radiant with golden bangles and a prominent maroon dot in the middle of her forehead — you see that there are, indeed, significant cultural differences.
Like most immigrants in the U.S., Mukherjee, 51, blends American mores with her native cultural traditions. She defines the perception of women in her community by the way she lives her life. In addition, as an immigrant mother, she helps her children find a stable identity as first generation Americans. With the number of ethnic minorities in the U.S. reaching a 100 million last year — comprising nearly a third of the population — women like Mukherjee are increasingly making their presence felt in society as professionals, pursuing their dreams at a pace unthinkable among their predecessors.
“I’m exhilarated and very hopeful that minority women today have more life options,” says Wendy Ho, associate professor of Women and Gender Studies at the University of California, Davis. “They are rethinking their personal life options and their career options. Their identities are in flux. They are trying to keep a little of the old ethnic traditions and becoming more hybrid. They are in the making, as they progress through history.”
Mini India in So-Cal
Mukherjee’s Indian friends and acquaintances in Southern California are predominantly Bengali — natives of West Bengal in eastern India. Having spent decades in their company, Mukherjee is no stranger to the two distinct facets of women in her community.
“When they’re rubbing shoulders with Americans in mainstream society, they express their ambitions, are outgoing, and hold good jobs,” Mukherjee says. “But within our Bengali community, we are more prone to gossip and a parochial mindset. We compare our kids, (discussing) who’s going to which college, who’s going to med school — the Holy Grail of our community. We bring our (immigrant) insecurities and transfer them to our next generation. It’s as if we need tangible symbols of success.”
Perhaps, it’s this quest for material success that puts Asian women ahead of their Caucasian counterparts in income. In 1999, when compared with all workers in America, the median earnings of Asian women were 14 percent higher, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The next year, Asian Indian, Chinese and Japanese women had the highest median earnings among all Asian women, besides making $4,000 to $8,000 more annually than all women make.
Children of Indian immigrants usually follow their parents’ footsteps and “try to do well,” Mukherjee says. “They are very well-adjusted (to the American lifestyle).”
Mukherjee’s eldest daughter, 23-year-old Aditi Mukherjee, is a recent graduate of the University of California in Santa Barbara with a major in English, like her mother. Born in San Diego and raised in Irvine, Aditi Mukherjee has a perfect American accent, unlike her mother who still speaks British English, like most East Indians.
Though she’s passing through a “post graduate existential crisis,” Aditi Mukherjee says she’s considering studying law “somewhere near New York.”
“In America …parents usually encourage their children to be financially independent at an earlier age, but in the Indian community, it’s more about academic responsibility,” Aditi Mukherjee says. “You focus on your studies.”
Aditi Mukherjee says her parents “always encouraged us to speak up about what we feel and to voice our opinion.”
Though she’s reached an age when most Indian women settle down, Aditi Mukherjee says, “I won’t be considered a failure if I don’t get married. I’ve been raised to be my own person before getting into any kind of relationship.”
In addition, Aditi Mukherjee won’t have to conform to the usual Indian custom of arranged marriage where parents choose a groom for their daughter, she says.
“In some ways, our household is different from other (Indian) households … (where) parents are more invasive,” she added.
Aditi Mukherjee, nevertheless, expressed her admiration for traditional Indian values like respect for seniors and “the cyclic concept of care.”
“My siblings and I have grown up hearing the struggles (our parents) had to overcome en route to a suburban life,” she says. “After hearing all that, I want to give back to them. I don’t feel it’s a debt. It’s a way of saying, ‘thank you.’”
Preserving China, absorbing America
East Indian women aren’t the only Asian Americans fulfilling their ambitions. Chinese women like Yan Yang, a 27-year-old doctoral student in Gainesville, Fla., also live their lives on their own terms — quickly assimilating American ways.
Yang came to the U.S. from Hefei in central China five years ago for higher education. Today, as she earns a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of Florida in Gainesville, she plans to become a professor.
“The perceptions (of women among the Chinese) are becoming more accepting and diverse,” Yang says. “One can choose to be a hard-working doctoral student or a housewife. There are no criteria that women should do this or that. If the person is happy with her decision, other people are respectful and supportive.”
Among Chinese students in Gainesville, women are treated at par with men, she says.
“The majority of students here got their scholarships by themselves,” she says. “So we don’t feel inferior to our male peers.”
The spouses of Chinese students “are also happy as housewives,” Yang says. “They cook and go shopping and are enjoying themselves.”
Yang observed the irony that while Chinese immigrants try becoming more like Americans, their children often go the extra mile to learn about their native culture.
“I know some (first generation American) Chinese who want to learn the language,” Yang says. “They get trained in traditional ethnic dances and musical instruments, while many of us who come to study (in the U.S.) watch stand-up comedy shows and do American things.”
“The curiosity to learn about their own culture depends on an immigrant child’s background,” says Ho, who’s also of Chinese descent. “Parents might be very interested in keeping their heritage. They might want their children to speak their language, keep their religion, culture, and food, at the same time blend into the mainstream culture for their own advancement and survival.”
Ho sees a tension especially amid first generation Asian American women who may want to conform to the traditional image of a “quiet, sweet, virtuous, polite (woman who is) marriage-material in a patriarchal society” or become somebody who chooses her own life herself.
Such women, “love their families, but they are blazing new trails that would make their parents think outside the box,” Ho says. They’re considering “new options that would require their parents to make a leap of faith,” she added.
From an island to a continent
Like Asian Americans, women in other ethnic communities are also making independent choices for their lives.
Pauline Filemoni, from American Samoa, is surely one of them.
Filemoni, 40, is an advisor to international students at the University of Nevada, Reno. More than 700 scholars and students on-campus, from across the globe, seek her guidance on various educational and personal matters to transition smoothly from their native countries to the U.S. Hers is not the most common job for Pacific Islander women, three-fifths of whom are in the labor force in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau.
Pacific Islanders include Native Hawaiians, Samoans, Guamanians, Tongans, Fijians, and Marshallese. Samoans made 23 percent of the total Pacific Islander population in the U.S. in 2000, Census reports says.
Samoan women are most often impeded in their careers by their familial commitments and lack of higher education, Filemoni says. However, they are “more independent and are considered more equal to men in the U.S.,” Filemoni says. “In Samoa, we are a patriarchal society, where women support men. Traditionally, their role is to be a wife, a mother, and a caretaker.”
There are no universities in American Samoa, Filemoni says. The only post secondary education one can get is at the American Samoa Community College.
Samoan children in the U.S. have a harder time growing up than those on the island, says Filemoni, who grew up in the Pavaia’i village on the Tutuila island of American Samoa. According to Wikipedia, Tutuila is the largest and the most populous island in American Samoa.
“When you are growing up (back home) you are raised by a village,” she says. “You don’t worry about getting shot or being attacked on the road.
“Here in the States, it’s not the same. When they grow up, either they are struggling (socially) or their parents are struggling.”
As in most immigrant communities, Samoan children raised in the U.S. “have to choose between the American culture and the Samoan culture,” Filemoni says. “They often create (a mixed) culture and sometimes there are pieces that don’t belong to either cultures.”
There are also stereotypes that Samoans have to counteract, Filemoni says.
“I think people stereotype Samoans as being poor, uneducated, and violent,” she says. “As with all stereotypes, there are some truths in that. Nevertheless, my role is to educate people about my people. And I promote the rights of women (within my community).”
Teaching by example
There are lessons that all women in mainstream American society could learn from their counterparts who remain rooted, at least in part, to their ethnic heritage, Ho says. These include taking care of the elderly at home while having a professional life and learning to face discrimination at their workplace the way women of color have encountered and fought racism, sexism and class distinctions, Ho added.
Staying close too one’s roots, at heart, could be yet another lesson one could learn from women in immigrant communities. Despite their apparent efforts to espouse the American life, some of them perceive themselves closer to their roots than one would imagine.
“When I’m traveling, I come across people who think I’m American, but I always say I’m from Samoa,” Filemoni says.
Yang agrees. “No matter how well I speak English, or how well I communicate with Americans, I still feel more comfortable surrounded by people from my culture who speak my (native) language,” she says. “I came here in August 2002. I’ve been back and forth. But in the end, I still think I’m very Chinese.”