A summary of two ways to belong in America?

Answer 1

The author Bharita explains the differences she has with her sister Mira on citizenship in the United States. Bharita thinks that "immigrants" in the United States should become citizens and not just be legal immigrants; she wants them to go all the way like her. On the other hand, Mira just wants to have the benefits of her "green card" but still maintain her Indian citizenship. Mira keeps her "Indianness," because that is her identity: "My sister is an expatriate, professionally generous...socially courteous...and that's as far as her Americanization can go."

Bharita's main point is that she is a person that "embraced" everything American and "renounce[d] 3,000 years of caste-observant, 'pure culture' marriage in the Mukherjee family." She describes of when she felt the same way Mira did "with the scapegoating of 'aliens,'" but in her case in Canada: "I felt then the same sense of betrayal...will never forget the pain of that sudden turning, and the casual racist outbursts the Green Paper elicited." This situation made her leave Canada, especially because it "attacked" South Asian immigrants.

Bharita points out that the biggest difference between her and her sister is that she is an immigrant and her sister is just fine "living in America as expatriate Indian." Bharita needs to feel a part of the country she lives in, like civic duty. "The price that the immigrant willingly pays, and that the exile avoids, is the trauma of self-transformation."