NYC Gori Girl Meet-up

Coffee and Yummy Indian Chinese food! I tried to make it an earlier dinner because it seems like most people will be coming from outside of NYC. We’ll make reservations from Starbucks depending on how many people show up!

Saturday, July 10th, 2010

Coffee @ 5:00pm – Starbucks

29th & Park-Park Ave. South
424 Park Avenue South
New York, NY
10016
Dinner @ ~6:00pm – Chinese Mirch
120 Lexington Avenue,
New York, NY

Aditya and I will try to make it up NYC way to say hello to all the folks up there – but no promises right at the moment. And I apologize to everyone for not posting lately – it’s work, work, work or getting out to do some hiking when there’s any free time.

For anyone interested in joining the Spring Gori Girl Meetup in DC (we’re doing this quarterly now) on April 16th, the details are below. All are welcome, and feel free to bring friends if you like.

Who: Anyone who’s interested in coming.

What: A chance to chat in person and get some good food & drinks.

Where: Northside Social Coffee & Wine, 3211 Wilson Blvd., Arlington VA (Orange line, Clarendon stop)

When: I’ll be there at 6:30 pm (April 16th – i.e. this Friday), at the latest, as will Aditya, and we’ll stay there until at least 7:30 pm. Then, depending on the interest of the group, we will either continue to stay there for dinner (Northside has a small menu) or will go to one of the local restaurants to eat. If you want to come, but are unsure whether you’ll be able to arrive by 7:30, please send me an email at gorigirl.admin@gmail.com, and we’ll figure out something.

Why: Dude. ‘Cause.

Eating options post-Northside are extensive in Clarendon, including a couple of Indian joints. I’d suggest Taste of Morocco, but majority choice will rule. If you could RVSP in this thread so we can get an accurate count of how many to expect, that’d be great.

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For anyone wondering why there haven’t been any blog posts about the India trip… well, let’s just say I find it hard to write about India without feeling like I’m being banal, clichéd, or just posting pretty pictures with some boring descriptive text. I’ve taken a few stabs at writing something… but then I delete it because it’s not up to the standard set by GoriWife with her writing on Pakistan.

I’ll give it the ol’ college try again tonight, Internet people. Oh, and that picture is of Aditya and I in front of his parents’ house in Shantiniketan.

Well, we’re back from India! And had the fun of coming back to find the blog hacked and needing a big clean-up. But that’s more or less over (forums will be up this weekend or earlier, with no data lost) – so let’s move on to nicer thoughts… like a spring meetup here in Washington DC!

Americanepali and Andrea have already indicated that they’ll both be available to meet on April 16th, so I’m going to tentatively schedule the meetup for that evening. Anyone else interested in joining in?

• Place: Café Assorti at 1800 Wilson Blvd. Arlington VA
  • Located between the Rosslyn and Courthouse metro stops in Northern Virginia, this cafe features Kazakh dishes and pastries (think Turkish meets Russian meets delicious). Parking shouldn’t be too much of a problem if you’re driving in – just look a street or two over off of Wilson. It should be a nice place to sit and chat.

• Time & Date: 2 pm ish, Sunday December 6th
  • Aditya and I thought that, given that people are coming from different areas, it’d be best if we don’t do a meal at restaurant at a specific time. This way if you run into traffic (oh, DC traffic), it’s not that big of a deal – just come in when you can, order up a pastry and coffee, and join in the conversation. We’ll be there from 2pm from whenever things run down. If it keeps going for awhile, well, Ray’s Hell-Burger is just across the street for an early dinner. Warning: breakfast (which features strawberry and cream crepes!) is only served ’til 3 pm at Cafe Assorti, so don’t arrive too late.

• Who: Anyone!
  • Anyone is welcome to come, whether you’re new to this blog or not, in an intercultural relationship or not, or whatever. Feel free to bring friends if they’d like to sample Kazakh food.

If you’ve got any questions, let me know below!

Photo Credit: Kevin N. Murphy

Without doubt this blog has been far more successful than I ever imagined it could be when I started it. Today, just a little over 18 months since I started writing at Gori Girl, we passed the mark of over two thousand comments written here by individuals other than Aditya & I. Two thousand comments, most of which have been detailed, thoughtful contributions to the post I’ve written. I hope you guys understand how thankful I am for your participation here – the discussions and, yes, disagreements have contributed much to my thoughts on things intercultural and India.

Appropriately enough, a post by Normis in the forums yesterday reminded me that we never got around to holding a “Gori Girl” meet-up for everyone in the Mid-Atlantic region (of the US – i.e. near Washington D.C.) this past summer. (What can I say? Summer is always a busy time for us.) So – who’s interested in hanging out somewhere in the DC or NoVA area? I promise you can mock my Hindi pronunciation. *grin* More details below the fold.

When: We’re thinking the first weekend in December – either December 5th or 6th. But I’m open to suggestions if that weekend is particularly bad for the majority of people who are interested in coming.

Where: This would depend on how many people are interested in coming, where they’re traveling from, and how many (if any) are Metro-dependent. I’m thinking either a large coffee shop (a Cosi’s, perhaps?) or a low-key restaurant where people can come and go at their leisure. Suggestions appreciated, if anyone has a good idea.

Who: Anyone who’s in the area and reading this is welcome. Don’t feel like you can’t come if you’re not in an intercultural relationship or any garbage like that. Bring friends if you think they’d be interested in chillin’ with the two coolest people in all of the DC Metro Area. (‘Cause, you know, Aditya and I super-cool. I mean, as I write this, I’m watching MythBusters while studying Hindi flashcards and rubbing the dog’s belly with my foot. If that’s not the epitome of cool, I don’t know what is.)

Let me know in the comments if you’re in!

Added: Aditya and I (and some friends) will be at this weekend’s BollyB!end 2 in Siliver Spring, if anyone in the area is planning on going.

Aditya: “Well, it’s a Sunday…”

Me: “No, it’s some Hindu holiday… Ganesh Chaturthi, I think?”

Aditya: “I have no idea.”

Maa: “Oh, maybe. I haven’t been keeping track of the dates. Hmm.”

So – Happy Ganesh Chaturathi to the Hindus among us, Ramadan Mubarak to any Muslims out there (I sent this preemptive apology ecard to my Bangladeshi coworker), and I hope the rest of you all had a great weekend.

In other news, Aditya and I are on vacation in California, traveling with his family. It’s the first time his siblings, parents, and himself have all been together in over seven years, so there’s plenty of catching up to do. Blogging will be sporadic for the next couple of weeks, but I hope to return after Labor Day with plenty of stories (and a new blog design!).

I’m a reporter with the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye newspaper, a daily aimed at readers in their 20s and 30s. I stumbled across your blog while doing research for a story I’m writing. I’m wondering if you might be able to help with the story, given your blog’s focus on intercultural relationship issues.

The story is about that stage of dating when you must meet your significant other’s parents. It can be one of the more stressful encounters for anyone, as you worry that they won’t like you, or you won’t like them, or that you’ll fail miserably at small talk. And it seems that dating someone from a very different culture can add yet another layer of stress. I saw some of the postings on your blog from people who said their boyfriend’s Indian parents were less than welcoming.

While my story isn’t specifically about intercultural relationships, I would like to include an example from an intercultural relationship, as I think it’s a somewhat unique experience yet something lots of people can relate to. Do you happen to know of anyone in Chicago who has had a particularly noteworthy meet-the-parents experience? Or is there any way to put a note up on your blog to see if anyone is interested in being in the story? It would be great to find someone who’s had an experience that represents some of the challenges and conflicts (sometimes funny, sometimes serious) that come up when meeting the parents, and how those issues were ultimately resolved. As I said, the focus of the story isn’t intercultural relationships, but I think it would be an important component. The story as a whole will tell the stories of several people’s meet-the-parents experiences, plus give some tips for a smooth encounter, such as: conversation topics to avoid; good ice breakers; how to deal with particularly touchy situations (very different political viewpoints, for example); how important it is for you to get along with your significant other’s parents in order for the relationship to succeed, etc.

Thanks so much for any help. I’d ideally like to talk to someone in Chicago who would be willing to have his/her name in the paper.

If anyone is interested, shoot me an email (gorigirl.admin@gmail.com), and I’ll pass along your contact information to Alexia. I do suggest you check with your significant other, and perhaps his/her parents first, though, just to make sure they’re comfortable with it. (I only caution this because I’ve run off half cocked before, sharing all sorts of news with others, only to get the stink eye from Aditya later for telling things he considered private. We all have different comfort levels regarding sharing family stuff.)

However, I’d love to hear what others of you are up to lately – feel free to comment here about whatever is going on in your busy lives!

1. If you write it, I’ll read it. Perhaps this is more a ground rule for me than for you guys, but I want to make it clear that I really appreciate your comments, and I read every one of them. I don’t have time to reply to everything, and sometimes I mean to reply but I forget or real life interrupts or, or, or… But I do promise you I’m reading all of them. If you really need to get my attention, and I haven’t responded to your comment, try emailing me at gorigirl.admin@gmail.com
2. I don’t mind criticism. If you disagree with me, and want to say it, you’re free to do so without fear of banning or censorship. I don’t even mind if you’re less than tactful in your criticism – sometimes I get in a huff and lose all tact too. Yes, that means I’m not going to censor anything, even if you’re insulting me or my husband or even delicious CoffyBite… as long as it’s somehow on topic. That said…
3. I don’t like insults for the sake of insults. What got Akshay/Amit banned wasn’t that he was criticizing me or Adtiya (you can see some rather negative posts of his that I left up because they were discussing his views on the site), but that he just started throwing out random (and crazy) insults. So if your post is just an insult, without a shred of value to the discussion, expect it to get deleted. If there’s even a teeny tiny bit on topic, though, I’ll probably bleep out cussing and insults and leave the bit that’s useful. If there’s a continued trend of straight-up insults, you might get banned, but I’ll still read your comments from the spam filter (see Rule Number 1). If the insult is particularly witty (and targeting me, rather than some poor innocent) I might even de-spam it. *grin*
4. Insults against other commenters or whole classes of people are not acceptable, ever.
   While I don’t particularly mind you attacking me if you so feel the desire, others do not have as thick skin as I do. I want everyone to feel that Gorigirl.com is a welcoming place where they can respectively voice their thoughts without being insulted or attacked. So don’t sling mud around at others – critiquing or arguing in a rational manner is fine, name-calling and hateful speech is not. Likewise, applying stereotypes to groups of people is not acceptable. You can discuss statistics, discuss personal experiences, and the like, but statements like “All Americans are stupid” or “Why are all Indians so smelly?” are just not cool. For more on how to carefully discuss stereotypes and generalizations without giving offense, read this post.
5. Sometimes your (innocent) comments don’t make it through the spam filter – it’s not intentional. This happens most often when you comment with a lot of links, but sometimes for no reason that I can tell. If your comment doesn’t appear immediately, don’t panic (or forget your towel)! It probably got eaten up by the spam filter, and I’ll clear it through as soon as I notice the problem. If you don’t see the comment appear in a day, email me.
6. Try to play nice, and keep it PG-13. I’m not a prude, I don’t mind cussing for the most part, and I’ve been known to throw an insult or two around on forums & blogs when I thought it was really warranted (and I was grumpy). So I’m pretty lax about those sorts of things here. For the most part, though, I’d appreciate it if you guys can self-edit enough to keep it PG-13 (I think that means you get one allowance of the F-word), and not get into spats. This hasn’t been a problem at all so far (barring today’s exception), and I’d love to keep it that way.
7. I won’t pull your comments up into a proper post without your permission. Again, here’s a rule for me, rather than you guys. I think it’s a bit presumptuous to pull up a person’s comments into a post without their permission (maybe they don’t want that much attention…), so I won’t do that unless I get your permission via the comments or email. That being said, if you’d like to have a post address your issue ( or if you guys would all just like an open thread to discuss Lahiri’s latest novel or whatever), just let me know and I’ll make it happen.

I think that covers it all, at least for now. I’m very, very, very anti-censorship so I’m going to give everyone as much leeway as possible… but don’t use that extra rope to hang yourself. If anyone has any questions, just let me know.

I’ve already interviewed about 30 couples and am looking to speak to some 20-30 more. I’m especially interested in couples that planned a bilingual wedding, and those that encountered cultural problems during the planning process. However, I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who is married to (or planning to marry) someone from a different cultural background.

I myself am an intercultural bride – I’m African-American, my husband is German. I got the idea for the book when planning my own wedding and realized that no wedding book on the market addressed many of the issues that I had to face (such as what country to have my wedding in!) If you’re interested in participating, please contact me at weddingswithoutborders@gmail.com. Thanks!

The survey she sent me was plenty long (I’m still working on it!), but it looks like she’s doing a great job gathering every bit of information other couples might be interested in. So if you’d like to share your story, send her an email.

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Oh, and as a quick note, if you’re interested in being on my blog roll, and are an active community participant here (commenting and the like), just shoot me a quick email (gorigirl.admin@gmail.com) and I’ll add you – I’m really bad about keeping up with that, and I know there’s some of you who deserve to be up there.

Personal News

1. I’ve decided to not continue with my Ph.D program in economics. Instead, I’ll be taking two more classes, then exiting with my masters. Obviously, this news doesn’t have too much to do with this blog, but it’s been a big change that I’ve been pondering over the past few weeks, which has sapped a bit of my creative energy. I still love, love, love economics, but I’ve decided the academic career is just not suited for my personality, interests, or lifestyle. Instead, I’ll do work that’s grounded in economics, but a bit more “real world”, and enjoy the fact that I won’t have to spend my nights and weekends trying to churn out research to get tenure. Plus: no horrendous job search at the end of five or six years of graduate student poverty.
   Intercultural tidbits: Aditya has been hugely supportive through this whole endeavor – first moving to DC with me so I could attend a Ph.D program, and now being completely cool about the fact that we moved across the country, just to have me quit the program a year later. His family has also been very understanding, even though I think they were looking forward to another daughter-in-law with a Ph.D. But they mostly want what makes me happiest, and understand that the academia wouldn’t. And this way my career is much more portable to India…
2. I’m still doing cool research this summer about India. While I don’t love research enough to do it for a lifetime, I do enjoy it, and I particularly enjoy the part-time job I have doing research with a European economist this summer. Get this: she’s married to a Bengali too! I recognized the golden wedding bangle she was wearing (a Bengali tradition), and asked. And, perhaps not surprisingly, her work has a focus on India. Simply put, the research is on how access to credit markets has affected Indian suicide in the rural areas – basically, when times get tough, and farmers see no way out, they often commit suicide. Access to reasonable lines of credit allow for a way out of the tough times, so you’d expect to see deaths go down as credit access goes up. Right now I’m just scrubbing the data (organizing it and making sure everything is right), but we’ll likely be running some regressions later in the summer to check whether the hypothesis is correct or not.
   Intercultural tidbits: pretty much all of it is intercultural and Indian – I’ve already developed a better “economic intuition” about India as a country by working through all the data.
3. I’ve gotten a great job. Apparently, economics Ph.D dropouts are a desired commodity on the labor job market, at least in the DC area. Despite the lowered economic growth (not yet a recession, though!), I was able to find a job very quickly as an analyst, partially due to a recommendation by a good Bangladeshi friend of ours. I’ll be working as in the field of wholesale power – i.e. energy markets – modeling how energy demands are changing in the United States, and what sort of resources will be needed in the future to meet those demands. It’s a pretty cool job for an economist, since energy is such a vital & dynamic part of any economy, and becoming more so. Plus I get happy feelings from working at a company trying to solve the coming energy problems. I’ll be starting this job this summer, while continuing to work on my research assistantship, and then will take classes part time in the fall to finish my masters. Should be a hectic time!
   Intercultural tidbits: I think I’m one of three or four white people in the (large) department. It feels like I’m back in grad school – or high school!
4. I just got out of the hospital – yesterday. Okay, this is a bit of a downer – and the reason I haven’t been around much this week. I recently developed, um, how did the doctor put it: “whopping big” blood clots in both of my lungs – i.e. pulmonary embolisms. Despite a bit of pain, I was never in any major danger, and I’m doing tons better now. The only downside is that, well, it feels a bit like I’ve transfered my mind into the body of an 80-year-old. I’m a slow-moving, slightly-wheezing, heart-racing lover of naps now. Seriously – I’ll sit down, and then, 15 minutes later, I’m out cold. Wake up an hour late, watch a few minutes of the Discovery Channel – then, whoop, I’m down for the count. It’d be rather amazing if it weren’t happening to me all the time. Luckily, this is a short-term problem, and I’m informed I’ll be back to normal pretty soon. Maybe not in marathon shape – but who are we kidding? It’s not like I was running marathons previously, either.
   Intercultural tidbits: again, Aditya has been amazing through all this: cooking, cleaning up, bringing me water, fluffing the pillows, listening to me whine between naps… His family has also been very concerned, calling several times a day from India to get updates and make sure I’m feeling fine. In fact, they’ve been doing a better job of calling than my own family has! (To be fair, Aditya’s family just talks more on the phone than mine does – and they like to keep in closer contact.)
5. Aditya’s parents are coming for an extended stay. This is pretty exciting news for us. They’ll be here for over two months this summer, which means we’ll have plenty of time to visit, see the sites, go on road trips, and the like. I’ll be writing more about this in the future, but right now Aditya and I are just pleased and busy with planning. We still need to purchase furniture (like, say, a bed) for the guest bedroom, and finish up with all the final unpacking around the house, but I think we’ll be ready by the time they arrive. They’re bringing curtains from India for all of the house’s windows, which is also awesome. I haven’t seen any of them yet, but I’m sure they’ll look great (Maa picked out the saris for my wedding too, so, clearly, she has good taste.)
   Intercultural tidbits: this visit will probably be a goldmine for topics and stories about our intercultural family, so look forward to it. We are!

Blog News

1. Skribit: from time to time I get emails from you guys requesting particular topics for a post. While I love getting those emails, I realize that not everyone has the time or energy (like the current, 80-year-old version of myself) to send off an email. So I’m enabling a widget in the sidebar, called Skribit, to allow you to suggest topics you’d like to see in the future without needing to leave the site. Just click on the “What should I write about?” section, then enter in what you’re interested about. And if someone else has already made a suggestion you’d like to see happen, you can vote it up. Or, you know, vote it down if you’re not too keen on the subject. I promise to listen to the voices of the masses, albeit not immediately. Gotta wait for the creative juices to start flowing (or for the napping to cease).
2. FriendFeed: I’m always finding a lot of interesting content, intercultural and otherwise, out on the internet. If it’s particularly amazing, or I feel the need to comment at length, I’ll write a blog post about it – but if I wrote a blog post for everything I was interested in, I’d be doing nothing but trolling the net and writing on this blog. So instead I’m putting in another widget which will show you the top of my “friend feed”: a list of all the stuff I find interesting enough to share, but not quite blog worthy. If you like something, and want to hear more about it, let me know (in the comments or skribit), and I’ll keep my eye out for similar material.

What does gori mean?

The following was derived from Aditya’s lengthy comments on the etymology of the word gori – be thankful that I’m sparing you all of the tangential diatribes that developed during our conversation.

Gori is a Hindi adjective that literally means “fair” or “light-complexioned”. The i at the end of the word is a feminine conjugation, so gori is often used as a noun, with the subject being understood without explicit reference. In this slightly looser interpretation of the word, gori can mean “pale female”, “fair woman”, or even “white girl”. The masculine version of gori is gora, which can be translated as white man. Since I’m awfully pale-skinned, at least in the winter, gori can be rightly used as an adjective to describe me, or as a noun in reference me.

How is gori used in real life?

In the comments section referenced above there was a bit of discussion on the connotations that “gori” carries. I’m not Indian, I don’t speak Hindi, and I’ve not spent much time in India, so I can’t answer this question adequately from personal experiences alone. I’ve heard the word used in a positive manner to reference the female lead of a Bollywood film. I’ve also heard both gori and gora used in a neutral manner to describe white Europeans and Americans. Aditya occasionally uses it (positively, I hope!) as a pet name for me, particularly when we’re looking over old photos where the camera flash has emphasized the differences in our skin tones.

I’ve also heard that gori or gora can have some negative connotations. Aditya maintains that, without context attached, it’s a neutral word – I think he compared it to the profession of engineering, which can be seen as a great job with wonderful prospects, or a career which only boring, socially-stunted people are attracted to, but is really just, you know, a job. Another Indian friend wrote to me about gori, saying that

In Indian context it refers sorta playfully/even a little pejoratively at times to a pretty or attractive girl, depending on context. Otherwise it becomes a euphemism for white people or foreigners, also perhaps a little pejoratively.

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about the connotations, if any, that gori might have – like I said above, I don’t have the background to present myself as any sort of expert on this.

Finally, in any discussion about the word gori as used by Indians, it should be pointed out that in India (like in many other countries), fair skin is considered beautiful or ideal by many people. The image attached to this post is from an advertisement for a bleaching cream that Indian woman use to lighten their skin. For a good discussion of this issue (I personally don’t want to get into it right now), check out this blog post.

The reasons why I chose Gori Girl

There were a few main reasons that made me think that gorigirl.com would be a good choice for this blog.

The domain name was available

Finding a short, easy-to-remember domain name that is somewhat related to your website topic can be a difficult prospect in the current internet economy. We’re no longer in the good ol’ days of 1998 where most words – or at least phrases – were available. Nowadays the rights to a good domain name can be sold for a lot of money (pizza.com recently went for $2.6 million), so speculators purchase names en mass in the hopes that some company will eventually buy it off them. When I was in the planning stages for this blog Aditya and I bounced a few names around, and Gori Girl, as the first name we thought of that was still available, won out.

“Gori Girl” is a good signal of the blog’s content

The name might be a bit confusing, but, then, navigating intercultural relationships can be too! First off, the gori sounds foreign to English ears, because it is, of course. People familiar with Hindi (or other Indian languages) will realize that the content has something to do with India. But by attaching “girl” to the gori (and yes, essentially saying girl twice), the title becomes a little slangy, and more than a little Western. This blog is about the mingling of cultures, so it seems appropriate that the title mingles languages. Plus, at least to my ear, “gori girl” rolls off the tongue in a way that sounds casual and fun – which is the attitude I try to project here (when I don’t let the little academic in me run wild talking about theory).

Being “the white girl” has been a big – and confusing – part of my life

For those of you who haven’t read the relevant sections of this blog, I grew up in Silicon Valley, California, which is an incredibly diverse area, with a lot of first and second-generation immigrants from Asia. I’m used to being the only white person around – “the white girl” if you will. The shopping center around the corner from my house? All Chinese or Taiwanese shops, except for the British pub. The high school “academic-y” crowd I hung out with? There were three other people besides me who were white Americans – and two of them were guys. Everyone else was Asian or first-generation Eastern European immigrants. And this wasn’t because I just liked hanging out with “the ethnic people” – it was because there were only “ethnic people” in the honors or AP classes I took. Even the extracurriculars I took – marching band, math club, volunteer tutoring at a local elementary school, Junior Engineering Technical Society (yes, nerdy, I know – I once aspired to be a boring, socially-stunted engineer) – were filled with non-white people.

This upbringing has made me quite aware of race, but in a way that’s different from what you’d expect. For instance, I’m more comfortable being the “token white person” than being surrounded by other white Americans. (It took me a couple of months to figure out why I was feeling slightly on edge at my predominantly white Midwestern college.) My white friends and I would joke about becoming eggs – white on the outside, yellow on the inside – but, frankly, if you didn’t incorporate part of the pan-Asian culture of the schoolyard, you were going to be left out of a lot of conversations, events, and fun times.

But the oddest part of this all is that I’m not even entirely white. Yes, my skin is quite pale in the winter – to the point where I look a bit ill if I don’t make sure to regularly put on tanning moisturizer. But in the summer I can get pretty good tan going – which comes from my Mexican grandfather and the bit of Native American blood sloshing around from both sides of my family. Unfortunately, my grandfather and grandmother (who is a French-Canadian immigrant) didn’t want to their children to be anything other than American born-and-bred. The end result is that the cultural part of my heritage from their side was wiped out in a single generation.

Writing as Gori Girl reminds me that, while I’m seen as white by strangers, I’m really a rather mixed-up person, just like the name. Yes, I’m white, but I’m also brown on the outside when the sun shines (enough that I get chatted up in Spanish during the summer), and I’ll always have a yellow-brown tinge on the inside.

So how does this relate to intercultural relationships?

A person in an intercultural relationship is going to pick up some of his partner’s culture, just like I picked up on the culture of my friends’ as a child. It’s inevitable – I touched on this idea briefly in a post a couple of day’s back. However, how much is picked up will depend on a lot of a factors, including each person’s personality, comfort levels, the surrounding dominant culture, and, of course, each person’s desires. Some couples will end up creating a relationship where one culture is dominant, while others will work towards some sort of compromise, picking from the best of each.

Personally, I think that a compromise is the way to go – but it’s a careful balancing act. My grandparents’ actions, while quite typical for the time, went way too far in one direction – they submersed themselves in the American culture surrounding them, leaving my mother, aunts, and uncles with very little to connect them to their family history. And my grandparents lost a little part of themselves too.

I don’t want that to happen with Aditya – and it’d certainly be easy enough, given that we live in the US, and are not particularly involved in any Indian community. Although he is quite Indian in outlook, he “passes” very well as an American, even though he’s only been in the US for six years – so well, in fact, that I can often forget that I’m in an intercultural relationship. He speaks with an American accent, knows most of the cultural references (his English Lit major and love of TV helps big time here), and appreciates a lot of American things. Case in point: it took over a month for him and his coworkers to realize that his avatar for their office wii (yes, I know…) was white, while the other Indians in the office had dark brown avatars.

So I’ve made efforts to incorporate Indian things into our household to keep “US-ness” from running us over. And, in some ways, this is an expression of my own Asiannified background too. But just like my grandparents, I need to be careful to keep from throwing everything into of myself into his culture – and that means keeping around those both the American AND pan-Asian things from my childhood that I appreciate and enjoy. And I share them with Aditya, just like he shares his culture with me.

So for all of you who are embracing your partners’ cultures: I absolutely applaud your efforts, but do be careful to not forget yourself in the process.

The United Colors of Desi: More and More South Asians Are Marrying Outside Their Race
An article profiling several white-Desi couples. Also includes some gorgeous pictures of happy couples.

Nothing can prepare you 
An article written by a male Canadian about his relationship with an Indian woman.