Gori Girl

Participate in an Interracial Marriage Study!

Monday, November 30, 2009

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, November 27, 2009

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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).

My Immigrant Husband Is Now Free to Divorce Me!

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

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A phone conversation from last night: Aditya: Hey, guess what came in the mail today? GG, at the office, as always: How are you home already? Don't you work? ... And, yeah, so what came in the mail? Aditya: News from the Department of Homeland Security.

Book Review and Giveaway: Your Intercultural Marriage

Monday, August 17, 2009

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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.

Indian Wedding Story, Part Six

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

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This is Part Six of a continuing series on my Indian wedding adventure. If you’re new to Gori Girl, try checking out Part One, where the story starts. After we started the fire (think Agni Pradipan, not Billy Joel), I fed Aditya some pre-made Laddu, which is a common Indian sweet used in pujas and other ceremonies. After this Aditya stood up and promised to provide for me for the rest of my life, so, really, I didn't begrudge him the sweet. (Also: it was way too hot to do much but sweat beside that fire. Doesn't look like it? Read on.)

Intercultural Interviews: Indian Parents’ Perspective (Part Two)

Monday, July 13, 2009

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This is the second part of the interview I held with my husband Aditya's parents (you can find Part One here). This part starts off with an interlude on Maa and Baba's first meeting for their "semi-arranged" marriage, then continues on the topic of their first impressions of me. I finally got them to discuss some negatives: what they find difficult in having a non-Indian daughter-in-law and my (apparently) one fault. We also discussed some of the things they dislike about general American culture (as it relates to interpersonal relationships), and ended with some advice Maa and Baba have for intercultural couples, both generally and for those having some difficulty with Indian in-laws.

From Atheist to Hindu? Religion and My Intercultural Marriage

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

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Me? Oh, well, I don't have a faith. And, no, I'm not interested in getting one either. That was my polite non-answer when asked about my religious beliefs by two Christians who stopped by Aditya's and my doorstop to proselytize last weekend. And it was as true, as far as it goes - I'm not one much for simple faith in any context. When discussing my religious beliefs with friends & family, I'm most likely to to describe myself simply as an atheist. But when I'm feeling a little mischievous - or argumentative - I'll sometimes put in that I'm an atheist - and a Hindu. Yeah, it's a bit of a complicated situation; I blame Aditya for it completely. Like many other things in my life, religion is something that has become more complicated since we set off on our intercultural marriage adventure.

Wearing Sindoor as a White Woman

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

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Aditya loves, loves, loves it when I wear sindoor. For him it is the epitome of beauty. (There's also probably an element of husbandly pride and maybe something oedipal going on, but, hey, you can't win them all.) When I reach over to open to the medicine cabinet while brushing my teeth in the mornings, his face lights up in the hope that I'm grabbing out my container of vermilion powder: "Are you going to wear sindoor today?" You should! - you look so beautiful when you wear it!" And, almost always, I mumble something that amounts to "no, not today."

Interracial Marriage in the US: Some Simple South Asian Demographics

Monday, May 11, 2009

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Want to settle the debate on how much interracial marriage there is in the US? I know I'm tired of hearing the occasional uninformed comment on how South Asians just don't marry people outside their ethnicity, and isn't it downright odd that my supposedly proud-of-his-Indian-heritage husband would do so? (Hmm, well, he is an odd, odd dude. But not because he's married to me. Or, I mean, not 'cause he's married to a white woman - I'll admit you might have to be odd to voluntarily marry me. We brought matching crazy to the marriage table as dowry.) Well, the statistics on interracial marriages in America are now here, courtesy the US Census, so we can put this baby to rest. Actually, the statistics have always been "here" since the 2000 Census information was released, but I'm not such a numbers nerd that I felt like crunching the raw data myself with SAS or STATA. Luckily for me, a pair of sociologists have already done the dirty work, and their results have been made available at Dr. C.N. Le's Asian Nation website. I'm going to only present the South Asian related statistics here, but Dr. Le has the same sort of information available on all Asian ethnicities, and you can tease out information about other ethnicities as well.

Indian Wedding Story, Part Five

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

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This is Part Five of a continuing series on my Indian wedding adventure. If you’re new to Gori Girl, try checking out Part One, where the story starts. When I left off on the story of my Arya Samaj wedding to Aditya (see part four here), we had just exchanged garlands at the start of our wedding ceremony. Heavy, massive garlands that took my original concept of flower necklaces - Hawaiin leis - and kicked it up a notch or ten.

Cross-Cultural Connections in your Community

Monday, January 26, 2009

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I share my office with a Chinese-American man. My team at work consists of said office mate, an Indian-American (Gujarati) guy, a Turkish fellow, a white dude from the Midwest, my Taiwanese female boss, and three Indians in our Delhi office (two Mr.'s and a Ms.). The offices closest to mine include said Turkish fellow, a Bangladeshi bloke, an Indian (Bengali) lady, a Ghanaian-American gent, a French woman, and a Nepalese chap. Really. For those of you keeping count, that's two Caucasian Americans (including myself) out of fourteen folk. With numbers like those, as you may guess, I don't talk to white Americans all that much while at work. (Or women, either - but that's what you get for working in a field dominated by economists and engineers.) However, even when I step outside the office, I've found that I don't interact with a many people - or, really, more than a handful of people - who appear to be from the same general cultural & racial background as my own. Frankly, it's a little odd now that I think about it.

Wait… I Thought This Was MY House!

Friday, August 29, 2008

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Aditya and I have both been pulling long hours at work during the past couple of weeks. Frankly, it's rare that we both get home before the night sets in. While we both have careers that have require long hours (my company's motto: "the hours here are flexible; you can come in as early as you want, and leave as late as you want"), recent project disasters have stretched our workdays beyond our version of normal. This is particularly unfortunate as Aditya's parents, Maa & Baba, are currently visiting us from India. Of course, they are here for two months, so it's not as if we won't end up having plenty of family time together - but I do wish they didn't have to spend so much time at our house by themselves. I worry about them getting bored; even Kajol, the energizer puppy, can only go for so many walks. I fret about all the interesting monuments and historic sites we aren't seeing in the evenings for lack of energy and sunlight. And I'm genuinely distraught that, at some point, they might break The System while we're away at the office.

Like a Wheel in Motion: My Second Indian Wedding

Monday, August 25, 2008

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NeoKalypso, my wonderful guest contributer, tells of her experiences at a friend's wedding. After a wonderful summer full of jungle hikes, tasty SE Asia food, and plenty of other adventures with R, I was blessed to top it all off in the most perfect way with my friend CT’s weddingYep, that’s right, our very own CaliforniaTransplant and I are friends in real life. After sharing so many similar perspectives on intercultural relationships we decided we had to meet. Our friendship blossomed and I volunteered to help her in any way I could on the day of her Gujurati Indian wedding ceremony. She took me up on it, sent me about a two page “script” and I was ready to help! From there…magic unfolded. The gods graced us with their presence…

Indian Wedding Story: Part Four

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

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This is Part Four of a continuing series on my Indian wedding adventure. If you're new to Gori Girl, try checking out Part One, where the story starts. When I last left off on the story of our wedding in India (see part three), I had just arrived, as the picture above shows. The lovely lady trailing behind me is a friend of the family (and Aditya's childhood math tutor), who'd been helping me with all the preparations - it was like she was an older aunt of mine for the day. There were flowers ALL OVER the place as I arrived - from where the car dropped me off to the second floor hall where the ceremony would be, I was surrounded by sheets of flowers, while walking under flower arches (spelling Aditya's and my names in flowers) and over a red carpet, just like you see at movie premiers. Of course, the only person who took pictures of this wonder was my uncle, who, of course, has not yet gotten around to sending me his photos.

Any Intercultural Couples Interested in Sharing their Wedding Adventures?

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

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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:

Indian Wedding Story: Part Two

Thursday, April 17, 2008

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Part one of this Indian wedding story can be found here. The wedding ceremony took place in the evening, so Aditya and I were pretty free to do what we'd like the morning of the big day. His family had been planning the event all along - all we did was show up - so if there had there been any last minute catering disasters, for instance they were primed to take care of them. I was still a little jetlagged when I rolled out of bed, but figuring out how to operate the bucket-based showering system woke me up. When I emerged dripping from the bathroom, Maa politely inquired whether I'd like to wear a sari, a salvar kameez, or whatever clothes I'd brought with me from the US. Now, as I'd never been to India before (and my inlaws refuse to purchase the high priced imported Indian clothes in the US), this was going to be my first time wearing Indian clothes. I decided to go all out, and start with a sari.

Who is Affected by your Intercultural Relationship?

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

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Many people subscribe to the idea that your personal life is nobody's business but your own - as long as you aren't maiming others, anyways. While I generally agree with the sentiment this idea expresses, I also think it's important to realize that, like it or not, your actions affect a wide swath of people. In fact, at the margin, your actions affect the entire world. Let's all pause for a moment to ponder that grandiose thought while breaking out into The Circle of Life. Everyone back? Good. I brought up this topic because being in an intercultural relationships has a tendency to disrupt the "social equilibrium," if you will, of the people around you. In almost every country and region an intercultural relationship is the exception, not the norm. So while being in any relationship might affect those close to you - my dad still hasn't gotten over the fact that I'm no longer his little girl - intercultural relationships are both a regular ol' relationship and something of a challenge to the status quo. As if romantic relationships weren't tough enough on their own! In this post I'm focusing on how intercultural relationships, in particular, affect those around us. I'll start out by laying out a (non-comprehensive) list of the type of people who can be affected by your intercultural marriage or relationship, continue with how these effects ripple out through the social web of life, and then finish up with how much you should really care about it all. This post developed as I thought about how parents can react to their children's intercultural relationships - I'll be applying the principles and theory I develop here to that post, which will be the next "serious" one.

Indian Wedding Story: Part One

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

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I've mentioned previously that Aditya and I recently had our Hindu wedding ceremony in India, and I've been meaning to write a post or two (or a hundred) about my experiences in India. And then a reader mentioned that she liked the pictures of the wedding that are sprinkled around the GoriGirl site, and would be interested in seeing more of them. So I thought I'd combine these two ideas and post a couple of pictures each day, working through the story chronologically. We'll start off with our arrival in Calcutta (also known as Kolkata - but I'll go with my inlaw's usage), where the wedding took place.

ICR Review: Love’s revolution

Monday, March 24, 2008

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Every so often you'll be seeing an in-depth review from Gori Girl about an intercultural relationship resource that might be useful to you. Shorter reviews can be found on the comprehensive list of resources on the page "Intercultural Relationship Resources."

My Dainty Swastikas

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

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Someone gave me a pair of swastikas as a wedding gift. They were quite beautiful: delicate, pure gold swastika earrings, with subtle etchings along the front and edges. I wish I had taken a picture of them – and of my husband’s face when he opened the gift. I still don’t know who the giver was, but I suspect it was an older Auntie with superb taste and very few NRI relatives.

Tag Archive | "marriage"

Participate in an Interracial Marriage Study!

Friday Connections 27-11-09

My Immigrant Husband Is Now Free to Divorce Me!

Book Review and Giveaway: Your Intercultural Marriage

Indian Wedding Story, Part Six

Intercultural Interviews: Indian Parents’ Perspective (Part Two)

From Atheist to Hindu? Religion and My Intercultural Marriage

Wearing Sindoor as a White Woman

Interracial Marriage in the US: Some Simple South Asian Demographics

Indian Wedding Story, Part Five

Cross-Cultural Connections in your Community

Wait… I Thought This Was MY House!

Like a Wheel in Motion: My Second Indian Wedding

Indian Wedding Story: Part Four

Any Intercultural Couples Interested in Sharing their Wedding Adventures?

Indian Wedding Story: Part Two

Who is Affected by your Intercultural Relationship?

Indian Wedding Story: Part One

ICR Review: Love’s revolution

My Dainty Swastikas

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