In Which We Discuss Annie Murray, Race, and Being a Legend

I have had a very productive morning!

My local library, South Yardley, had Annie Murray speaking at their monthly coffee morning, so I went along.  Apart from the librarians, I was the youngest person by about thirty years.  I can see why Murray's books would appeal to the older generation.  In my case, I like that I know intimately the streets the characters walk on; someone older than me could picture them at the right time, as well.

I got my copy of My Daughter, My Mother signed.  Soldier Girl is actually my favourite, but I don't own a copy.  Also, My Daughter, My Mother is special to me because it's about two single mothers, one of them originally from India/Pakistan, in Birmingham in 1984.  I'm half Indian, and I was born in Birmingham in '88.  As I said when she signed it, that book is the one that's most about me.  Most recently - as in, I finished it at half one this morning - I read Chocolate Girls, about three women living around Bournville/Selly Oak during the second world war and the decade or so afterwards.  I liked it.  It was a bit hard to push through at first, but it really picked up near the end, and I read the last two hundred or so pages in one go.

I had a nice chat with the cute librarian on the way out.  I found a graphic novel of I Am Legend, so we started talking about that.  He hadn't read it or seen all of the film.  I am disappointed in the cute librarian (not really).  I told him that I liked that the main character was black, even though it was Will Smith, who is the black guy who doesn't scare white people.  I like white people - my mother is one - but, I swear to god, you could pick up any book in the average British library, and some ridiculous percentage will have a white person as the main character.

Then we talked about The Hunger Games.  I started to point out that olive skin isn't freckly, but then remembered that I am olive-skinned and currently have freckles on my shoulders, so I shut up on that point.  We agreed that the outcry over Rue looking exactly as she was described - ie, black - was ridiculous, and he conceded that the casting call for Katniss specifying a white actress was a bit much.

In Which We Discuss the Hindi-Bindi Club and Racial Identity

My father is Indian, my mother is a mixture of English, Irish and Welsh. Since my parents cannot stand each other, this causes problems. My mother spent many years insisting that I was British, pure British, which was a bit pathetic, since people would spend five minutes looking at me, and then ask "What are you?".

I'm not purely British. But, because my father is second generation and a lazy alcoholic to boot, I'm not really Indian. He's my main link to the culture, and he barely knows anything about it himself. My grandparents see me as one of his problems, not their grandchild (it probably doesn't help that my name is Kali).

In short, although my face loudly proclaims that I'm not white (for lack of a better term), I feel like a fraud pretending to be Indian.

I do read a lot of books by Indian and South-Asian authors. Very few seem applicable to me. Most South-Asian people on TV, in films, or in the media in general, are Pakistani Muslims. Indians tend to be from the Punjab, or the bigger cities like Mumbai or Kolkata. The mixed race characters tend to live with both of their parents, rather than be entirely cut off like I am. The few times I've visited my aunts or cousins in the last few years (less than five times in the last nine years), they've insisted on treating me like a baby and giving me badly cooked English food. They don't see me as one of them. But I'm not white either.

The Hindi-Bindi Club is about first and second generation Indian immigrants in America. One of them is mixed, but, as observed above, she lives with both parents. The three daughters refer to their mothers as the Hindi-Bindi club - because they speak in Hindi and wear bindi (bindi being the 'red dots').

A little note about Hindi. Although true Hindi is the main language of India, each region has its own dialect (and these differ from each other far more than most people would expect). For instance, most people have heard of chapattis. My family, who are from gujerat, call them rhotli.

Anyway, the book reminds me of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. Both books focus on first and second generations (Amy Tan's are from China), and how the mothers and daughters view each other and their culture, in short. The Joy Luck Club focused on the growing bridge and lack of knowledge between mothers and daughters, while The Hindi-Bindi Club focuses more on the different values held by mothers and daughters. It's also mentioned that, in Indian culture, love is shown via food. By the offer or refusal to make someone's favourite dish, for instance. Between every chapter, there are recipes. Most of them I don't really recognise. I've never eaten Indian food, except that cooked by my dadima, and she always gave my sister and I the most basic stuff. Since she didn't (and still doesn't) speak English, we never did find out what was in any of it. But I think I could make a passable rhotli, since the recipe given for chapatis is similar enough to what I've seen my dadima do. And we do have an anglicised potato and chicken curry. My dadima taught my mother how to make it, and she passed the recipe onto my grandmother. We've now successfully bastardised it, by adding more potatoes and leeching out spices.

Another issue that The Hindi-Bindi Club brought up for me was the importance of sons to Hindu families. I knew that they were important, since many of my father's issues stem from his having two daughters, but I never knew why. Now I do.

It seems that, for Hindus, only sons can perform the necessary death rites. In other words, my father won't make it to the Hindu version of heaven....because of my genitals. Considering that someone once thought it perfectly acceptable to call me a mutt, and I've been criticised for using the term "mixed race" to refer to myself (by someone who isn't actually mixed), I am now more thoroughly mixed then I usually am.

It was a good book though. I like Cowboy John best. I particularly liked the way one character described him as an American who had become Indian, much as their daughters were Indians who had become American.