The Good Immigrant

by Nikesh Shukla

  I am not claiming any expertise here, rather sharing a story from my teaching. In many ways I have only scratched the surface and I’ve tried to include other voices in this essay for those who want to go deeper. I developed my practice from one of just offering a more diverse range of stories in the classroom to modelling writing that drew on my own background so as to signal to my students that they may do the same. I made time to have discussions with students that developed our language for describing skin colour and hair texture and recognised the diversity in the classroom and the lack of diversity in the stories we were writing. I shared examples of how writers explore character’s thoughts and feelings so that stories become specific, memorable and something that resonate with us as human beings. I’m not suggesting teachers should always do this but rather that they try it and then review the results; perhaps along with the children they teach.

  When I initially wrote about this issue, many people commented saying either that I’d articulated something they’d felt but not said, or that I’d made them see something they’d previously not noticed. A few people were clearly annoyed by it or just dismissive. But many began telling their own stories, often tales of frustration with classroom environments and children’s literature – as former children, as parents, as teachers. Perhaps in the telling of these tales, of being the antagonist battling against omission and absence, we can become protagonists, writing ourselves into a richer, multilayered narrative – beyond a single story.

  Speaking to Nabila, she told me she had never written about an Indian heritage and/or Muslim character before. Nobody had ever told her she shouldn’t. But at the same time, nobody had ever explicitly given her permission. Subsequently, she wrote two further full stories about ‘Maryam Patel’. The third instalment described Maryam’s trip to India.

  Trust me, it was a good read.

  An earlier version of this chapter appeared on Media Diversified.41

  27 I use here ‘children of colour’ and ‘people of colour’ to refer to those who are racialised as ‘other than white’. Originating in the USA, this term is used increasingly in the UK. Alternative terms include ‘Black Asian and Minority Ethnic’ (BAME), racially minoritised and ‘Global Majority’.

  28 I view race as socially constructed and agree with Gary Younge that it is ‘a nonsense’ that nevertheless affects our lives and thus should be talked about.

  29 ‘The danger of a single story’, Chimanda Ngozi Adichie TED talk. https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story/transcript?language=en

  30 Rudine Sims Bishop ‘Reflections on the Development of African American Children’s Literature’, Journal of Children’s Literature, 38:2, (Fall 2012).

  31 Rudine Sims Bishop, ibid.

  32 Verna Wilkins, ‘The Right To Be Seen’, Patrick Hardy Lecture, October 29th, 2008.

  33 Darren Chetty, ‘The Elephant in the Room: Picturebooks, Philosophy for Children and Racism’, Childhood and Philosophy , Vol. 10 No 9, (2014).

  34 ‘Call for more ethnic diversity in kids’ books’, Sky News. http://news.sky.com/story/1323753/call-for-more-ethnic-diversity-in-kids-books

  35 ‘Malorie Blackman facest racist abuse after call to diversify children’s books’. The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/26/malorie-blackman-racist-abuse-diversity-childrens-books

  36 Christine Geraghty, Women and Soap Opera: A Study of Prime Time Soaps, (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1991).

  37 Doof Doof refers to the drums that kick in as the theme tune plays at the end of the show.

  38 ‘Who has the most doof doofs?, BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1wZjwgr7519fmWF6m10wgz1/who-has-the-most-doof-doofs

  39 Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, (Harvard University Press, 1992), xiv.

  40 Karen Sands-O’Connor, Soon Come Home To This Island: West Indians in British Children’s Literature, (2007), 140.

  41 ‘You can’t do that! Stories have to be about White people’, Media Diversified. https://mediadiversified.org/2013/12/07/you-cant-do-that-stories-have-to-be-about-white-people/

  On Going Home

  Kieran Yates

  I’m looking out of the window midway through the eight-hour journey back to my homeland and thinking of the countless diasporic tales of going home I’ve read over the years. I consider how the sea has inspired a thousand clichés, about never feeling quite whole, of experiencing an identity cut into neat, disembodied pieces. Staring out it suddenly becomes so clear why we contribute our experiences to a canon saturated with tales of diaspora drama. From Rushdie’s ‘imaginary homeland’ to Naipaul’s ‘sugar cane and sugar cane’, to each reference of a billowing sari in the wind, it’s ironic how fraught literature has been with Kipling-esque throwback exoticism. But for any writer, the poetry of crossing oceans to rediscover our home is irresistible, and perhaps for many of those writers who were rarely given opportunities to champion their homes it was too tempting to draw from the multicoloured utopian visions of lush green jungles and air scented with milk and honey. As a fragmented world allows for more nuance now it’s obvious that in reality, it’s the details of these experiences, not the grand clichés that really reveal the most about ourselves and our journeys.

  It’s been eight years since I’ve returned to Punjab. Last time, I was a student, which enabled me to swerve questions about marriage and career, but now I’m officially an adult everything will be up for scrutiny. I’m making mental notes about how best to sidestep the lines of questioning in the courtrooms of family living rooms and kitchens, as we pass over Turkey. I see the mountains below and think about when my granddad made this journey over 40 years ago in the opposite direction, on a Boeing 747 to London Heathrow.

  The Britain that accepted him, the place I call home, is now experiencing a period of rejection. The last year has seen a depressing attack on many immigrant communities, as the aggressive rhetoric of adhering to ‘British values’ has catapulted itself into political and social policy. Cameron specifically targets Muslim women for their poor language skills, the tabloid media demonises refugees on a daily basis, and the rhetoric encouraging us to prove our allegiance to the country’s best interests, makes the place I call home feel less safe for people who, largely, look like me.

  As the tannoy announces in both Hindi and English that we can unfasten our seatbelts, I consider how the demonising of language is a depressingly familiar narrative – these new plans (that actually pop up every few years) proposing the enforcement of English lessons, as a way of promoting integration under the guise of celebrating British values.

  In reality, proposals like this create even more forensic side-eyes that you notice when you’re speaking your mother tongue on the train to Kings Cross, or forget yourself in a quiet café and finding yourself speaking Punjabi too loudly on the phone to your cousin.

  I know that language can be painful, and so too do a generation of immigrants who have arrived here through different pathways. For them, language is the great battle to fight, and for many it’s a war you always feel like you’re losing. Even when you get the language, unless you shed your accent, you’re continually reminded of your difference. For Indians, our accent has almost become a universal in-joke. The Apu-thank-you-come-again novelty, the ingrained Western truth that ‘everything sounds funny with an Indian accent!’ is an imprint of cultural worth. French accents are sexy, intelligent; Americans (in rap, anyway) cool and culturally appropriated; Indians are comedic – a fact that made the ‘One Pound Fish’ guy a brief chart hit thanks to tongue-in-cheek purchases from middle England. Whenever I think of his ‘novelty act’ that ‘the nation’ loved, I’m amazed that even as recently as 2012, that colonial spirit of finding humour in difference lived on in the hearty laughs of people using my granddad’s accent to be entertained. His Indian/British accent was a map of where he’d been and what he’d seen. He travelled from our village in Bahowal to Delhi, to Southall, to Calgary
. His voice mirrored those journeys, a living imprint of his memories, and revealed the things he didn’t about himself.

  Language acquisition is of course a result of age, prior education, resources, and access, rather than a simple time-plus-effort equation. A fact that the current dangerous political rhetoric erases with its snappily presented policy; it’s difficult to argue with. Who can protest against the idea of more resources for immigrants? The only problem with this is that those who speak the language of their homeland first, before the language of the coloniser, are made to wade in thick, asphyxiating shame. That they should fall victim to the threateningly punitive ‘learn-or-get-out’ deal that political rhetoric is ramping up, is obvious. For anyone who has actually seen someone learn a language, it’s safe to say that the school of ‘well you live here, just learn the language!’ thought isn’t quite as easy as that. And remember, even when you get it, people will still take the piss.

  Next to me is my one-year-old cousin. He is flicking the tray compartment up and down repeatedly, fascinated. My mind is immediately back to my nanaji, who had never travelled on a plane before his journey to London, and I think of how he must have been fascinated by this tray and the cup holders and the plastic cutlery and the window shutters, and how he must have craned to see these same views below.

  After a nine-hour drive I’m in the pinde, in my home village of Bahowal. This is where my family comes from, where generations of us have lived, worked and died. My cousins are staring at my sari in adoration. I’m embarrassed at how unnecessarily extravagant it is. My grandma is enjoying the attention I’m getting, but my cheeks are red and I’m terrified of my relatives thinking that I revel in this uncomfortable showboating.

  We spend three weeks in this village, disconnected from the internet, showers, unable to walk around unchaperoned. I struggle with the details. I’m scared of the high-speed scooters my cousins whizz around on, which are victims to the untarmacked roads. My reticence to just fearlessly hop on one with my sari on makes me look like some kind of nanny-state soldier trying to enforce Draconian traffic safety and I’m heckled until I finally just shut up and submit. The buckets of water I collect from the well are the exact height of my knees and every time I walk with them, I knock them over, spilling water everywhere, to the entertainment of the neighbourhood children who come to watch me every morning. Even my long, perfectly pointed acrylic nails give away my cushy life, devoid of manual labour, and every time flour gets stuck in them when I’m in the kitchen, making chapattis, I can hear my grandma tutting next to me. My attempts to realign myself with a traditional Punjabi identity fall flat and I’m getting it wrong over and over.

  My Punjabi identity back home is a fairly typical second generation one. It’s Hoshiarpur football T-shirts as streetwear in London, Bhangra and grime playing out of your cousin’s BMW, sending pictures of you in Air Max 90s and a sari to a WhatsApp group. Being a British Asian in 2016 is about being in on the joke when in comes to reclaiming parts of our identity you’re supposed to feel ashamed about.

  I wear sari tops in the rave, blast Bhangra in the car, make friends with corner-shop owners and teach co-workers about Vaisakhi, delicately explaining to them why saying ‘Salaam Alaikum’ to a Sikh is a misstep. I grew up revelling in being a typical Southall girl, finding familiarity in the shaved eyebrows of my older male cousins, before moving to a white community where people didn’t get me and I noticed just how different I was. Being dragged out of my comfort zone enabled me to discover a new kind of British identity and eventually my family got used to my weirdness, that I wanted to be a writer, that I had white and black friends, that I wanted to stay in reading Harry Potter instead of going to the Mega Mela on the common.

  At home, the coding is pitched right and I’ve learned how to navigate my identity in white spaces, in family spaces, in my own. But here, in this village, my specific adoption of Punjab through my own lens is scrutinised by my family and found lacking. They don’t understand my jokes, my observations, my London-twanged Punjabi.

  This becomes particularly apparent at times, like when my masi catches me on the roof of our house where I’ve escaped with my sister (it’s the only place you can get any privacy and I’m so bored of the local gossip and eternal tea-making below). I’m making a video of a faux toothpaste advert, spinning around as I bite into some sugar cane and flash my pearly whites into the camera (my grandmother swears by sugar cane as the answer to pristine white teeth). I’m winking into the camera and making ‘ColCane’ taglines in an Indian accent, and my masi berates me for acting like a child. She doesn’t understand me, what I find funny, why I’m so weird and different. She constantly compares me to my cousin, who looks like a Kardashian, works as a teacher and has just had an arranged marriage to some heartthrob doctor son. They are cooing over pictures of her while I’m spoken about in tones of puzzlement and sympathy. I overhear my uncle’s wife noting that she heard me listening to ‘black music’ in the bathroom (Fetty Wap) and that I was probably ‘messaging a boy’ (untrue, no data) and that I always wake up too late (true, but jet lag?).

  Going back to the pinde flags up all the things I can’t do properly – my rotis aren’t round enough, my hands aren’t steady enough to apply mendhi, my teeth are too weak to pull sugar cane. While my job as a journalist requires me to artfully draw out other people’s voices, I’m unable to give myself one that doesn’t present me as pretty inadequate. I am what my favourite cousin calls a ‘proper paki’ when I’m at home, owing to my love of ‘freshie’ interior details, Zee TV and old-fashioned songs – but here I’m a fraud, ‘a proper coconut’ (as my other cousin calls me), too modern to gain favour with the simple tasks, and too strange to be adored by my masis. Despite this, I love every minute of my inadequacy, and it’s the intimacy of the unsaid – that they describe me as beautiful when I’m not there, that they worry when I’m out of sight – that allows me to grow roots.

  Our next stop is in Delhi.

  My 15-year-old cousin in Delhi who reminds me of a desi Paris Hilton illustrates that there is a different code here. Her opening question on seeing me is, ‘What’s your favourite cosmetic product?’, spoken in a city-dwelling modern Delhi drawl that I recognise from Bollywood, aping Karisma Kapoor.

  It signals that being humble about what you have isn’t the state of play here.

  As I arrive, she sees me in my thick, unfashionable suit of heavy embroidered gold thread and as she stands in designer pyjamas, I can see she’s visibly disappointed.

  ‘Why are you wearing that?’ she asks me.

  The answer is that I endured the hellish car trip in said suit to look respectful – my tracksuit is in the boot – and it now seems that I’ve been scratching my neck on this heavy chuni for the last 10 hours for nothing. When we arrive, my other younger cousin, who is almost 10, runs out to greet me excitedly – somehow, it’s been relayed through family Chinese whispers that I’m a fashion journalist and she’s expecting a Chanel-clad, high-fashion, vogue catwalk model. What she sees is my matted hair and shapeless, outdated (as her sister has just let me know) suit and she’s confused. I’m wearing my nani’s sandals and I can see her looking at my dusty, unmanicured feet.

  Her mum, my ex-model masi, looks at my eyebrows. I had them threaded before I left, by my Topshop regular, but by now they’re unruly and grown out, and I haven’t trusted anyone to do them here through fear of getting them too thin (like my last trip). It’s unfathomable to my masi why I have bad eyebrows and the trio stare, amazed at my terrible make-up. In a post-desi YouTuber world it’s incomprehensible to my cool teen cousins that I would arrive un-contoured and un-highlighted.

  I try to explain that ‘I’m sorry I look very tired, it was a long journey’, and they’re nodding but in a way that suggests that they would probably look immaculate had they done the same and that I’m too lazy to care how I look.

  All in all, I don’t think I’m quite what they were expecting.

  Over the wee
kend my cousin takes me through her selfie wall, which has over 100 colour print-outs of pouting selfies she has taken. We bond over our love of Zayn Malik, she’s disappointed at my lack of knowledge about Shruti Arjun Anand, a make-up YouTuber, after I told her I was ‘into make-up’ (I am, but not on a par with her forensic knowledge, bordering on maniacal) and her mum berates me for feeling uncomfortable asking their servant to make me food.

  My unironic love of Bollywood classics and Honey Singh are judged quickly and expertly by my aunty in Delhi, a middle-class ex-model who cites Indian ‘cinema’ as an interest and has five Fair’n’Lovely products in her bathroom. At one point I spread a thick layer of the lightening cream on my face for Snapchat declaring my fairness and she’s staring at me, wondering what’s funny. I know the rules but I don’t quite impress, and before I know it, it ceases to matter because we’re en route to Delhi airport, on our way back home.

  The taxi driver as we were driving to the airport opened the doors and on hearing me speak boomed, ‘Ah! You’re from London?!’

  The accusation hung in the air and after a second I had to begrudgingly acknowledge that I was. Opening your mouth reveals more than you might like about who you are and where you come from. We’ve created routing responses for the monotonous, bordering-on-parodic regularity with which we are asked where we’re ‘from’, and in India you are forced to admit, that it’s London.