The Beadbonny Ash

As many of you know, one of my two housemates this year is Priya, a young woman from Kolkata who has come to the States for the first time for graduate school. I knew living with Priya was going to be interesting from our first conversation, on Facebook:

Priya: u know what .. in india we do not have the concept
of having shower curtains
in the bathroom..
so everything is new for me

Me: really? doesn't the water get everywhere?

Priya: hahahahaha..
nono
we have a shower..
which has a streamlined flow..

(She told me some months later that they generally take showers with a bucket and a cup.)

In one of our first phone conversations, she asked me if I was really excited to be rooming with somebody from India. Taken aback by this question I kind of stuttered out that, well, I'd roomed with someone from Vietnam before... "Oh, then it's like no big deal for you. I see." She sounded disappointed. I have discovered since that she has wanted to live in America all her life, she loves American culture and film and fashion, and she saw/sees living with "white people" as a big deal. I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about that. I mean, I'm flattered (and not sure I should feel flattered), but I'm also embarrassed, b/c I definitely don't think "white people" as a whole deserve for her to feel that way, and I'm extremely puzzled as to WHY she feels that way. She has also told me that she is uncomfortable hanging out with white people, and embarrassed that she'll say the wrong things. I've tried to tell her that we don't care, that if she says something unusual we won't mind, we'll just chalk it up to cultural differences and probably want to hear more of her (to us) unusual perspective, but although she agrees with this, she still feels uncomfortable and--I get the impression--outclassed around white people.

Speaking of her love for American movies, I have learned that she and her friends back in India believed that American culture was like it is depicted in movies. She honestly believed, before coming here, that all Americans slept with somebody different every night, and she had tried to work out the logistics of that. (Which is interesting, b/c even American movies don't depict us all as THAT promiscuous!) We had a conversation about this one night, and I told her that because of my religious beliefs, I believed in abstinence until marriage, whereupon she gave me a big hug (which she doesn't do often) and said "Now you're speaking my language! That's what Indians think." Which surprised me, because she has also expressed impatience with the conservative attitudes of Indians toward sex. I'm left wondering why, if she comes from a culture that might find our culture (as depicted in movies) morally bankrupt, why she seems to idolize our culture so much and want to join it?

Speaking of American movies, when our shower was out of commission in the fall quarter and we had to shower sometimes in the women's locker room at the gym, Priya commented laughingly that she felt like she was in an American high school movie, and asked me if high school students in America were really THAT mean to each other all the time. I am disturbed to think that our nation's reputation in the world is so strongly affected by the highly distorted image of our culture presented in the movies, and I'm starting to understand why people in conservative Muslim nations think American culture is the root of all evil. I'm also wondering how much our highly distorted movies are changing even OUR perception of our culture, and thus changing our culture to match our movies. After all, the knowledge that the movie industry requires and produces a higher level of physical attractiveness than real life doesn't stop many of us from comparing ourselves physically with actors and actresses. And I wonder how our movies are changing the cultures of OTHER nations, which are watching and emulating the version of American culture they see there. After all, I sometimes feel that Priya is in a sense MORE American than I am, b/c she cares more about things like American designer clothing etc.

Priya really seems to think that America is best, which startles me, as an American. This paradox makes me think of the commencement speaker at Wilson in 2007 who stated in passing that America was the best country in the world. morallydiseased, lexixanatos487 and I didn't react at all--the statement went in one ear and out the other because we had heard it so many times, and we expected it from a military woman. But wyldlittlepoet (hope you guys don't mind I'm using names), who was an international student from Trinidad, was incensed. She asked us in furious whispers how that woman dared to claim that America was the greatest country in the world. We were startled at her reaction. "Don't Trinidadians say that about Trinidad?" we asked her in bewilderment. "No, of course not!" she answered. I realized that when most Americans say "America is the greatest country in the world," what we really mean (and I have checked with other Americans since when I tell this story, and they agree with me) is that we like America best because it's our home. There's some pride in our history as a democratic nation involved there, but what we're really saying is, "I prefer America to any other country in the world and that's why I live here." As evidenced by our next question to wyldlittlepoet: "If Trinidadians feel that way about Trinidad, why do they live there?" Now I can see that the way we phrase "America is the best country in the world" rather than "I love America best because it's my home" is weird, and probably makes us sound extremely arrogant. When really, if somebody had specifically asked me what I thought about America as stacked up against other nations, I definitely wouldn't have put America first. We're probably the strongest militarily, but that definitely doesn't make us the best. I don't even know where the US ranks in terms of economy (not at the top, I'm sure) and who knows where it would rank morally (though again, definitely not at the top).

But when we do find ourselves at the top in something, we have strange reactions to that knowledge. Some time ago I found a website that would tell you how rich you were in comparison to the rest of the world. I posted this link on Facebook. Since Priya and I are both in the same program, we make the same salary. The website ranks us as in the top 13% of the richest people in the world. Priya's reaction to this news was not the same as mine. She was absolutely thrilled that she was making so much money, and said with a huge smile that she was going to tell her friends back in India where she ranked. This was completely opposite of my reaction and the reactions of most of the Americans I know. Instead of being happy that we're so rich, we feel shock, and immediately following that, guilt--as evidenced by the fact that immediately below the results are suggestions for how to donate to poor countries. Priya's reaction startled me, but when you think about it, it's our reaction that is counter-intuitive. I'm not saying it's not a good thing that we feel responsible to spread the wealth around, but when you think about it, it's kind of weird that our first reaction isn't to be happy that we have so much.

I have also learned something about global economy: when you factor in the exchange rates between different kinds of currency, we are of course making a heck of a lot more than people in poorer countries. However, we also need to factor in that our cost of living is a lot higher here. Priya told me that she sometimes calls her mother while she's grocery shopping here in the US and tells her how much she's spending and her mother is horrified and tells her to try to find the food cheaper. But it doesn't really get much cheaper. They spend a lot less on food, clothes, etc in India than they do here. Priya said that you can get a mid-quality sari in India for like fifty bucks in US currency--although a really highly decorated one might run you $500 US. It really makes you understand the argument I have heard supporting what we would term sweat shops in foreign countries as paying actually pretty decent wages for the countries in which they're located. (Of course, I'm not making an argument here for taking advantage of workers with little legal protection, or arguing that we couldn't give up some luxuries in order to help people in other countries. It's just that factoring in the cost of living gives you a little different picture of some of these issues.)

I had an interesting conversation the other day with an international student from China. Meng-Fei started talking about freedom of speech and artists, and told me that an artist in China had gotten up on the top of a skyscraper, stripped naked, and held up a big sign saying something about the government. She told me she didn't approve of artists because she thought they were too extreme and a little bit crazy. I, of course, immediately thought, "Oh, she just thinks that way because her government has taught her to think that way"--but then I started wondering what OUR government has taught us to think, and we've never questioned it, because it's what we all believe together and we haven't experienced the alternative views from other parts of the world.

And speaking of governments: in the fall semester, at one point Kyle and Priya and I were discussing what we would look for in a husband, and what kind of career we might like him to have, and Priya claimed that she would like to marry a politician or something. Kyle and I immediately exclaimed at this and started talking about how politicians were lying, philandering sleazebags, and how would she ever know if he were telling her the truth? She actually sounded a little upset and told us (with a little laugh) not to ruin all her dreams at once, and we got off the topic. But I have since wondered at her apparent (at that point) respect for politicians, since she has told me in numerous conversations since then that the government in India is corrupt, that many public officials don't do their jobs right unless they're bribed, and that the jobs don't go to the people who deserve them. I was even more surprised a few weeks ago when she started reading off an article (I think she may have found it online) slamming America's educational system and talking about how much lower our educational attainments were than those of other countries. I agreed with the article, but she seemed shocked--not that American schools were bad, but that somebody had written so. She said, "But it's so disrespectful!" I said, "Yes, but EVERYBODY here says that about our educational system. It's a common belief." She was still shocked.

(My mother points out that the American educational system, in contrast to the educational systems in many (most?) countries in the world, attempts to educate everybody the same. In many (most?) countries, a large number of people or all people may get a certain level of education, but only the best students, the ones who get certain grades or pass certain tests, get into the better schools and manage to get a higher level of education. The fact that we're trying to pull everybody up at once is actually what causes our scores to be lower: we're testing everybody, not just the best. I myself mentioned to Priya that when the article deplores our lack of foreign language education, that 1) In many countries in the world, one of the most important foreign languages to learn is English, which we already speak, so we don't have the inducement to learn that one, and 2) Unlike Europe, America is big and not close to a dozen different countries that all speak different languages, so most of us (especially those who don't live near Mexico) also don't have THAT inducement to learn foreign languages. Which isn't to say that our educational system couldn't be better or that it wouldn't be better if more of us learned foreign languages. Or that it isn't arrogant of us to say that we already know English so we don't need to learn foreign languages.)

As you can tell from the length of this post, I've been storing up these thoughts and pondering them in my heart on and off for the last several months. And I'm sure there'll be more to add on these topics as I think about them more. What do you guys think about this stuff? (And my apologies to wyldlittlepoet and anyone else who has studied post-colonial theory: I know very little, really, about postcolonialism, and I'm sure you could write me a novel on the subject! :) This is just what I've been experiencing in my own life in my interactions with international students, and what I've been thinking about it.)

EDIT: Okay, so RIGHT on the heels of that post, Priya called me downstairs to have some Indian food with her and two of her friends from Sri Lanka, and she was telling us all her HILARIOUS stories about her culture shock when she got to the US. That girl should go into stand-up comedy. I think the best was her reactions to the food at the orientation the first week here. They served us salad, which they don't eat in India (she called her mom and told her that they served us grass for lunch); lemonade, which is clear in India, not yellow (she thought it looked like piss); bagels, which they don't have in India (she called it "raw bread"); and coffee, which in India always already has sugar in it, so Priya didn't know she needed to add any. Her retelling of all this was SO FUNNY.