How George Michael Helped Me Reconceptualize the Other

As I was diving more into George Michael as the person that was Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou following his death, I was struck by the way in which he characterized the influence of his Greek background in interviews.

In this clip during a press conference for the documentary “A Different Story,” Michael answers an awkward, but well-meaning question from a journalist about the role of Greek music and culture in his life.

An Australian friend explained this to me in a way to me that I had never understood. I think just the fact that I’m not English, I think the fact that I am of “mixed race” as it were. I think Andrew [Ridgeley] and I, to people outside of England…we just somehow appeared different because there was something very un-English about us I suppose.

Michael goes on to discuss how his music had always been rooted in American R&B and how he and his Wham! band mate Ridgeley (who was English and Italian/Egyptian) had projected their sexuality in a way that was very un-British at the time. “It’s not like I listened to a lot of Greek music at home as a child, well not voluntarily anyway,” Michael says.

This last part made me laugh, as it reminded me of how I listened to Tamil music at home only kicking and screaming. I was also taken with his point here because he talks about what he’s not in a positive way, and what he’s not isn’t necessarily based in his roots, but in what he genuinely likes, which was American R&B. His definition of himself as the Other appears to be a far more compelling driver in his life than the elements of Greek heritage itself.

He discusses his upbringing further in this BBC interview.

My father was the absolute archetypal 1950’s immigrant from Cyprus. Very determined. And every single member of his family made something of themselves in this country. They’re a typical immigrant family that worked their asses off and reaped the rewards.

This description resonated with me as it reminded me so much of my own parents, who emigrated from India. It occurred to me hard work and determination is not something specific to any one culture; however, it is quite emblematic of immigrant status.

Michael also reveals that his mother’s origins weren’t English as she found out from her own mother when she died that she had been Jewish. Michael was not at all an Anglo-Saxon Brit, but in fact had these layered elements to his background. In his life, he navigated aspects of both cultural and sexual identity and being the Other as best as he could.

A light bulb went off in my head.

I am an unrepentant atheist. I do not have particular aspects of Indian culture to which I cling. I’ve learned to cook a few Indian dishes from my mom, but I will never be as adept as cooking is not an interest of mine. At the same time, I have a keen propensity for language and I speak fluent Tamil. I certainly do consider myself Indian.

I realize there is a great degree of variability among first-generation Americans* in terms of how they negotiate elements of identity with themselves, and that it is a personal decision. However, I went through this phase last year where I questioned whether to do more “Indian” things in terms of food or experiences, and it felt so unnatural, not like me at all. Or taking Michael’s own words “not voluntarily at least.”

As a writer of poetry and short fiction, I pursue topics that are of interest to me, regardless of origin. I do not necessarily feel the need to be an Indian or diaspora writer. In fact, I want to be an intersectional writer. Even when I delve into Indian mythology, I am pre-occupied by the Other as in a piece I wrote with Roshani Chokshi in Papercuts magazine to bring light to the voices of marginalized women in the Mahabharata – not the heroines – but the castaways. I am usually far more enamored with Sumerian/Babylonian and Celtic mythology. I gravitate towards what my heart wants.

I realized that my perception of myself as the Other has a far more defining – and even empowering – influence on my life than that of Indian or South Asian culture itself. And I am completely happy with that; in fact, understanding this is a huge weight off my shoulders.

It seems so obvious, but I needed to hear it from someone else.

*I am defining first-generation here as the first generation born in the United States.

Note: I clearly had too much to say about George Michael to relegate it to just one post.

Exploring South Asian identity politics & the art of the short story

Jhumpha Lahiri has a remarkable ability to charm the socks off her high-brow reviewers. “Lahiri is ‘wow,'” says Caleb Crain for The New York Times, on Pulitzer Prize-winning Interpreter of Maladies. Colleague Michiko Kakutani calls The Namesake “a debut novel that is as assured and eloquent as the work of a longtime master of the craft.”

I’ve tried to like Lahiri’s writing. I really have. I found Interpreter of Maladies to be beautifully written, but thematically tepid. I read a few pages of The Namesake and became irate with her generalizations of Americans and Indians. I perused a few stories in Unaccustomed Earth and nearly threw the collection out the window. Ah, the art of the short story! The exposition of identity politics!

I became so fed up with Lahiri’s focus on identity that I vowed to write short stories where identity politics were incidental and irrelevant to the story. In trying to mask the politics of identity, I think I missed the point. As recent events and conversations have revealed to me, identity politics are heated and salient as ever. It’s that Lahiri presents them in clichés, platitudes, and obsessions with infidelity and apathy. She also writes about a very tiny subset of Indians – first and second generation wealthy, Bengalis who have studied and/or live in the one mile radius of Cambridge, Massachusetts. I lived in Cambridge for two years – this profile isn’t even me.

Where are the other Indians? East Asians? Jewish people? Other Bostonians? (Oh wait, I forget that people in Cambridge hardly ever cross the Charles River). Young professionals outside the medical field? Almost nowhere to be found – it’s like they don’t even exist, exposing both the limitations of Lahiri’s personal experience and imagination. Lahiri’s angst isn’t the issue – her characterization of it is outdated. A friend of mine remarked to me, “You know where Americans are stuck? Mississippi Masala. People still ask me if my life is like that.” Let me remind readers that this Mira Nair film was released almost two decades ago. Identity politics and culture is mutable and ever-evolving.

Admittedly, Lahiri has a fine flair for expressing tragedy. However, her characters are recycled and under-developed. I keep thinking to myself “Thank gods, I am not these people.” Her protagonists are passive and lukewarm, and her command of suspense incredibly poor. Her stories give me so little hope. There is no triumph after struggle.

In many ways, film and comedy are well-ahead of the curve over literature. Nair’s films have always been visionary. Bend It Like Beckham (Gurinder Chadha, 2002) is a film about South Asian identity politics; however, it’s also about the challenges young people face whenever they want to do something different. Harold and Kumar (Danny Leiner, 2004) is ground-breaking, because it’s really a story about two smart guys being total idiots. The cultural elements — the pressure on Kumar (Kal Penn) to get into medical school and the need for Harold (John Cho) to stand up against his manipulative, fraternity-boy co-workers — are presented through comedy. Comedian Russell Peters makes fun of Indian stereotypes and makes us laugh.

Short stories are difficult to write. An author has about 2500-5000 words to place point of view strategically, develop major and minor characters, frame the setting, spin the plot, and reveal the themes – in other words, to make the point. In my opinion, there are very few genuinely good short story writers: William Faulkner, Flannery ‘O Connor, Angela Carter, Edgar Allen Poe (who arguably invented the genre in English literature), and Anita Nair. Now there’s a South Asian writer you should read, along with Chitra Banerjee Divakuruni, who addresses domestic violence in her work. All the writers I mentioned incorporate the weird and gothic, strong elements of suspense, and/or even magical realism.

Why shouldn’t I write a collection of short stories focused on identity politics that is salient to my generation? Suddenly, the inspiration for stories and themes was all around me: pan-Asian identities; the relationships between first and second-generation South Asian peers; similarities in the immigrant story across cultures; where exoticism can turn out to be perceived as a liability for image-creation rather than an asset; the apparent success of Jewish-Indian romances; the paradoxical experience of being a third-culture kid; racial profiling; vulnerabilities in the workplace, where being young and a woman is equally problematic; and how class differences, of even the minutest kind, are often far more dividing than cultural ones or color lines.

Electing President Obama, who is white, black, second-generation, and a third-culture kid, is just a first-step; we as Americans still have a long, long way to go. The unfortunate fact is that humans are 99 percent similar to each other. Unlike Lahiri, who is obsessed with cross-cultural differences, I’m obsessed with cross-cultural parallels. The more I travel, the more I see that we are more similar than we are different. But we focus on the one percent that’s different: the one percent that causes all the conflicts, the one percent that is the reason for rich, cultural diversity in the world. “Identity politics are a whole lot more complex than they need to be,” I said to my friend with a deep sigh.

True lack of prejudice and worldliness is a necessary, two-way dream. To understand curiosities, one has to be curious. To be accepted, one has to accept. To globalize, one needs to be globalized as well. The real question is can we all get over ourselves in order to genuinely eliminate racial and cultural discrimination? I will not give up on the possibility.

A powerful short story of identity politics would be one which they are the undercurrent of the story and not the story itself. One in which the multiple layers of identity draw us together just as much as they pull us apart. The themes can (and perhaps should) be universal in nature. After all, as Lord Alfred Tennyson said, there are no new ideas, only new ways of expressing them.