Friday Connections 05-11-10

Friday Connections: a time when I give links and a bit of commentary to things I’d blog about if I had the time. This week there’s just two categories: random India-related articles and vodka the Russian way. Because I’m all about multicultural celebration traditions, especially on Fridays after a long week.

Goris Come Clean… in the Mid-Day Mumbai

This weekend a bunch of us “gori bloggers” were featured in an article in the Mid-Day Mumbai. It’s a fun little piece, with lots of different viewpoints featuring some of my favorite bloggers – the questions the editor at Mid-Day asked were pretty thought-provoking for what I thought was a tabloid! I’ve uploaded scanned versions of the article beneath the fold, along with the complete answers I sent in.

Friday Connections 04-12-09

Friday Connections: a time when I give links and a bit of commentary to things I’d blog about if I had the time. This week the categories are international photography (in honor of the DSLR arriving today purchased for our India trip), some language learning tools that have been suggested to me (or that I’ve found) recently,and race relations in East & Southeast Asia.

Interracial Divorce in the U.S. – Statistics and How Much They Matter

Divorce. DIVORCE. It’s one of those things America is known for around the world, along with Hollywood and blue jeans. I’m sure most of you have heard the statistic that “half of all marriages in America end in divorce”. And it’s commonly thought that it’s even worse if you marry outside your race, culture, or religion – if the average American couple has such a difficult time staying married, wouldn’t marriages where the husband and wife seem to have major differences (a built-in area of conflict, if you will) be even more prone to divorce?

With a reputation like that, it’s understandable that a non-American family – one which strongly values familial ties (like many Indian families) – may hear the 50% divorce statistic and be a bit panicked when a son or daughter announces plans to marry an American. The logic, I suspect, goes something like

This American, growing up among divorce – perhaps even having divorced parents or other family members – probably has different expectations about how marriages work and how long marriages last. Thus, if we want our son/daughter to have a good marriage for life, they shouldn’t get married to an American, since that means they’ll have a 50% chance of getting a divorce! Fifty percent!

There’s enough concern about the issue of America’s pesky divorce rate that there’s even a thread in the forum here on family divorces, and how, if, or why they ought or ought not be disclosed to Indian family members.

Truth is, however, the statistics of divorce are rather complicated, and it’s very easy to misinterpret what they mean for individual marriages. And that 50% divorce statistic? Not true . Especially for interracial, intercultural, or international couples, where things get a bit more complicated.

Participate in an Interracial Marriage Study!

As most of you probably know, there is very little quantitative data out there on interracial marriages, especially anything beyond a basic count of how many there are. I recently stumbled across a study currently being conducted regarding satisfaction within interracial relationships, and I’d like to take a moment to encourage everyone here to consider taking about 20 minutes out of your day to help out a doctoral student completing the study, if you meet the requirements listed below.

Friday Connections 27-11-09

Friday Connections: a time when I give links and a bit of commentary to things I’d blog about if I had the time. This week the categories are mixed families, cross-cultural food, and gender inequality issues in India (with a really sweet video).

Friday Connections – 13-11-09

Oh yeah, I dated this international style! So, I”ve decided to start linking some of my favorite reads at the end of the week – there’s a million and one things I run across that seem like they’d be of interest to the readers of this blog, but I never have time to write a whole blog post about each one. Thus, Friday Connections. I’ll try to group links each week into subjects. Let me know what you guys think!

Begging in India and How to Actually Help the Poor

If you want to help Indian children, please don’t give to child beggars.

Of all of the advice I might give to individuals traveling to India – or most of the developing world – the most important one would be

Don’t give to beggars

I realize this sounds cruel and callous. It feels cruel and callous to me, even when I know it’s the best choice – especially when I’m sitting in an air-conditioned car in India, idling at a red light, and people who are clearly poor, clearly in need come to the window begging for a small handout. Just a few rupees, which, to an American or other Western traveler, is next to nothing. Change I probably wouldn’t bother to pickup off the ground if I saw it. Can you ignore such clear need without guilt creeping up on you?

I can’t. I feel guilty for my Western extravagance when I see the numerous beggars in India. Very guilty. But I still don’t give them any money. The reason is because I know – from a few simple economic principles – that giving to beggars is not a particularly noble deed. In fact, I’d say that giving to beggars in a poor, developing country – like India – is a bad act. It certainly doesn’t seem that way – and I don’t think givers give with bad intentions – but it’s still a problem. Let me explain…

The Best Cultural Resource You Have

If there is ONE piece of advice I could give to intercultural couples with questions and concerns – only one – it would be to

Ask Your Partner!

It seems like such a simple thing. If you have a question about your significant other’s culture, religion, traditions, or family, why wouldn’t you ask him or her? Your partner is your best resource in understanding his or her cultural background! And yet, rarely does a day go by when I don’t get a question in an email or blog comment (or read a post somewhere else on the internet) in which the quickest, most direct way to get the question answered would be if the curious or confused person just started a conversation with his or her partner on the topic.

The Hindi Project

The tickets have been purchased. We’re headed to India for a three week vacation/business trip in February and March of next year. And man, does my Hindi suck. Longtime readers may be scratching their head, thinking they’ve heard this song & dance about learning an Indian language from me before. They’d be absolutely, totally correct. Last year, however, I was trying to learn Bengali. And I have – some. Not much; mainly, I can play cards in Bengali. And curse. (Sometimes I get to do both at once!) This year it’s all about the Hindi. With a trip to Delhi and North India in sight, Aditya and I have both agreed that I need to focus more on learning Hindi. There’s the functional aspects to knowing enough to get around town and communicate when Aditya isn’t right at my side. Then there’s the social aspect of extended family, friends, and (in my case) Delhi coworkers. At our Indian wedding two years ago I could get away with saying “a little” in the appropriate language when asked if I knew either Hindi or Bengali. Guests and family loved it then, but I suspect the joke does not age well.

Book Review and Giveaway: Your Intercultural Marriage

Well, here’s a first for this blog – a giveaway! I was recently contacted by the publishers of Your Intercultural Marriage: A Guide to a Healthy, Happy Relationship with the offer of a copy of the newly-published book to review – and five copies to give away to readers here. Of course, being the bibliophile that I am, I jumped at the chance. Details on the giveaway are at the bottom of the review.

Looking for a Few Good Blogs on Relationships, India, and All Things Intercultural?

I’ve been sick the past few days – the sort where you just sit in bed and alternate between sleeping & reading. So, not a lot of blog posts here, but I’ve had a chance to catch up with a few new blogs that have come to my attention recently. A few of them have been added to the blogroll recently, but without much ado. So now it’s time to make a bit of an ado – here’s some of the best posts I’ve found.

South Asian Women and Nepalis in Intercultural Relationships – Speak Out!

I’ve gotten a couple of requests from a few readers here at gorigirl.com that I was hoping all of you might be able to help with – consider it a community workshop of sorts. The topics of the day are intercultural relationships featuring either South Asian women or Nepalis. I think the people who wrote to me are most interested in connecting with couples of this sort, but any resources such as websites, articles, or books that people can recommend would be welcome as well.

The Story of India

If you happen to be sitting around at home tonight, wondering what to do, PBS is presenting (in collaboration with the BBC) what looks to be like an amazing six-part series about the history and culture of India. I haven’t had much time to poke around the website, but I’m told by a lazy Indian friend who spent the day watching clips from the series that it’ll be fantastic. It comes on at 9 pm here on the East Coast, but the website says that there will be repeat showings of all of the parts of the series if you can’t catch it tonight.

Any Chicagoites Interested in Some Press?

I know we have some ladies (and perhaps gentlemen) here who call the Windy City home. Well, if any of you are interested, I’ve recently been contacted by a Chicago Tribune’s Red Eye reporter, Alexia, about an article she’s preparing to write on “meeting the parents.” Alexia would like to include an intercultural couple in the article, and was wondering if anyone here would be interested in being interviewed:

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.

Any Intercultural Couples Interested in Sharing their Wedding Adventures?

Hey guys – I recently came into contact with a woman in an intercultural relationship who became fed up with the lack of resources for intercultural couples trying to navigate thorny cross-cultural wedding issues. So she’s decided to fill the gap herself by writing a book on the subject (yay for initiative!). She’s looking to interview any sort of intercultural couple who are willing to share the story of their intercultural wedding, or are currently in the midst of planning such a wedding:

Interracial Hate Crime in Elkhart, Indiana

I’ve finished up with dreadful exams just in time to hear about a dreadful incident in northwest Indiana. According to the AP report:

An interracial couple who awoke to find a burning cross in their front yard in Elkhart are praying for peace and asking for privacy.

Maggie Williams says the cross burning took her and her husband, Adam, by surprise.

The FBI is investigating the cross burning, which police are calling a hate crime. Elkhart police say the 5 1/2 by 3 1/2 foot wooden cross was left burning against a tree about 15 feet from the couple’s front door about 2:30 a.m. May 2.

The Williamses have met with Mayor Dick Moore and representatives from the police department, the FBI and the NAACP. Bradley Vite, a family friend, says they also expect to meet with a Department of Justice official.

Guess Who’s Coming to Diwali?

Slate’s Dear Prudence column has dipped its toe into the intercultural relationship waters with a advice on how to deal with Indian parents refusing to meet their boy’s girlfriend. The situation is one that a number of readers here have seen – or are currently in – so I thought I’d link to this timely advice. Personally, I think that Prudie’s advice on what to do is pretty spot on: insist on having the parents meet the girl at the next chance. However, I don’t think Prudie understands all of the intricacies involved in an intercultural relationship – especially one where the parent-child relationship of one partner’s culture is so different from the other’s.

Septia Mutiny has a brief post on the same article – and while the post itself isn’t much to write home about, the comments section has a lot of interesting stories and discussions on it. Check it out when you have the time.

A Couple of Great Resources

In my internet browsing I’ve found a couple of sites that might be of interest to yah’ll.

First, of there’s a pretty active forum at Indiebride.com (which is a good resource in-and-of-itself), called Intermarriage, where people pretty much just discuss intercultural relationships. Different races, different religions, different nationalities – it looks like it pretty much all is represented there. The archives are massive too.

Then there’s a livejournal community, called Masala Couples, which focuses on intercultural relationships where one partner is South Indian. Again, the community looks pretty active, and there’s a lot of history to browse. And everyone is super-duper friendly.

Enjoy!

I’m Dreaming of FIOS Internet…

So, we still lack internet at the new place, which means the lovely post sitting in Word on my laptop won’t be available to you guys until I can get to campus tomorrow morning. You’d think I’d remember things like this *before* I left for home, but you’d be so wrong. I blame lingering moving amnesia. (This mini post is coming to you via Aditya’s iPhone.) In an attempt to ward off any wrath (or disappointment), I offer up the following two articles on intercultural marriages with Indian partners:

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.