Immigrants from South Asian countries are among the fastest growing segment of our population. This work, designed for students and interested readers, provides the first in-depth examination of recent South Asian immigrant groups--their history and background, current facts, comparative cultures, and contributions to contemporary American life. Groups discussed include Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, Nepalis, and Afghans. The topics covered include patterns of immigration, adaption to American life and work, cultural traditions, religious traditions, women's roles, the family, adolescence, and dating and marriage. Controversial questions are examined: Does the American political economy welcome or exploit South Asian immigrants? Are American and South Asian values compatible? Leonard shows how the American social, religious, and cultural landscape looks to these immigrants and the contributions they make to it, and she outlines the experiences and views of the various South Asian groups. Statistics and tables provide information on migration, population, income, and employment. Biographical profiles of noted South Asian Americans, a glossary of terms, and selected maps and photos complete the text.

The opening chapter introduces the reader to South Asian history, culture, and politics, material on which the rest of the book draws because of its continuing relevance to South Asians settled in the United States. Leonard provides a fascinating look at the early South Asian immigrant Punjabi Mexican American community whose second and third generations are grappling with the issue of being Mexican, Hindu, and American. A comparative examination of immigrant groups from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Afghanistan illuminates the similarities and differences of their rich cultural and religious traditions, the social fabric of their communities, and how these immigrants have adapted to American life. Leonard looks closely at the diversity of cultural traditions--music, dance, poetry, foods, fashion, yoga, fine arts, entertainment, and literature--and how these traditions have changed in the United States. Keeping the family together is important to these immigrants. Leonard examines family issues, second generation identities, adolescence, making marriages, and wedding traditions. This work provides a wealth of information for students and interested readers to help them understand South Asian immigrant life, culture, and contributions to American life.

The next volume in the Common Threads book series, Immigrant Identity and the Politics of Citizenship assembles fourteen articles from the Journal of American Ethnic History . The chapters discuss the divisions and hierarchies confronted by immigrants to the United States, and how these immigrants shape, and are shaped by, the social and cultural worlds they enter. Drawing on scholarship of ethnic groups from around the globe, the articles illuminate the often fraught journey many migrants undertake from mistrusted Other to sometimes welcomed citizen. Contributors: James R. Barrett, Douglas C. Baynton, Vibha Bhalla, Julio Capó, Jr., Robert Fleegler, Gunlög Fur, Hidetaka Hirota, Karen Leonard, Willow Lung-Amam, Raymond A. Mohl, Mark Overmyer-Velázquez, Lara Putnam, David Reimers, David Roediger, and Allison Varzally.

This is a study of the flexibility of ethnic identity. In the early twentieth century, men from India's Punjab province came to California to work on the land. The new immigrants had few chances to marry. There were very few marriageable Indian women, and miscegenation laws and racial prejudice limited their ability to find white Americans. Discovering an unexpected compatibility, Punjabis married women of Mexican descent, and these alliances inspired others as the men introduced their bachelor friends to the sisters and friends of their wives. These biethnic families developed an identity as "Hindus" but also as Americans. In this work, Karen Isaksen Leonard has related theories linking state policies and ethnicity to those applied at the level of marriage and family life. Using written sources and numerous interviews, she invokes gender, generation, class, religion, language, and the dramatic political changes of the 1940s in South Asia and the United States to show how individual and group perceptions of ethnic identity have changed among Punjabi Mexican Americans in rural California. The intermarriages featured conflict as well as respect and love, and the Punjabi-Mexican families formed a unique community in many ways. As she inquired about the childhood experiences of people with names like Maria Jesusita Singh, Leonard discovered the swift communication network of the "Mexican Hindus", the dynamics between domineering Indian men, and the strong kinship ties and compadrazgo relationships of their Hispanic wives. She describes the cultural inventiveness of the children of these unions, who claimed the "Hindu" identity despite their incomplete inheritance of Punjabi culture. Shealso examines the problematic kinship between recent South Asian immigrants and the Punjabi Mexican Americans. Assembling life stories as well as collective biographies of localized groups, Leonard demonstrates that ethnicity is both persistent and flexible, that ethnic identities are continually constructed and reconstructed by individuals and by society. Her exploration of a small community that lasted only one, possibly two generations reveals much about the historical construction of ethnicity, its meaning to people across time, space, and context, and the nature of ethnic pluralism in the United States.