I interviewed my sister's close friend, Neelam, for this assignment. Her parents are both from India. However, her mother is Hindu and her father is Muslim. She defines her cultural identity as a true American Indian. She speaks Gujarati while at home, but speaks with a Southern English accent everywhere else. Neelam grew up in a very small town in Florida filled with dirt roads. She loves to cook Indian food and embraces her Indian culture in that aspect.
She has been affected by her culture in the ways that people think that because she is Indian she needs to be a doctor, because her father is Muslim that her whole family consists of terrorists, and because her mother is Hindu that she worships in cow pee. She feels that these steriotypes play a huge role in how she has been affected. These are the bad things that all come from being part of a different culture. For the most part she embraces her Indian heritage.
Hall suggests that there are two different kids of identity, being and becoming (Hall, 2003). I think Neelam is working on her “becoming identity.” She is still so young (college age) that she has many more things to experience before she can absolutely say one way or the other.
I think because she has diverse cultural ties it has made her aware of her Indian roots as well as her American roots. She seemed to me that she was very proud of her culture and this was very refreshing to see someone so young being able to embrace something different than what is around them. I loved the fact that she was a direct product of her environment, very “American” and very “Indian” when she was home. I think Neelam has found away to combine her two lives into one that works for her.
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