Scenes criss-cross in my mind and I am taken back to that fine line that I walk.
Saturday, daytime, Central Valley. I am with the woman whose case I am working on through Narika, an organization that focuses on domestic violence in the South Asian community. This particular case, involving a client I will call "K," is one of the most complicated cases I have experienced. Hers is also the family to whom I have become the closest in my years of working in the South Asian community, and I have a tremendous amount of affection for K and her family, especially her children. We talk about how one daughter wants to become a physician "like Sunita didi" (a compliment, an honor, that has no equal in my life and probably never will), how her other daughter is determined to become an engineer "and build my mom a house" and how her son aspires to professional basketball. On this visit, we forego basketball to sift instead through photographs that they have taken over the past week. I have brought them a CD of devotional music, and it plays in the background as we laugh over the strange expressions and faces that the photographs, some candid, have captured.
The resilience of these children floors me. Their ability, indeed their natural desire, to laugh and joke in the shadow left by trauma is at once startling and inspiring. K was in a violent marriage and left unable to work as a result of the injuries she sustained at the hands of her husband. I have found her a physician who speaks her language, who is kind and unafraid to engage with her as a fellow Punjabi, who allows K to call her didi, not doctor. I hold her hand as she cries in the exam room, describing the origin of her injuries, explaining that she does not have money to buy crucial medications, wondering aloud how she will support her family since working at the moment is a challenge given the severity of these injuries. We are working to raise money to pay for a CT scan of her head, which is vital given the injuries she sustained. I have wished often over the months I have worked with K that I had the money to write her one big check to cover Everything, especially this medical cost. More importantly, I wish I had a metaphorical patch big and tough enough to cover the hole that this experience has left in her heart.
***
Back to Berkeley. Days later. I stand, clad in salwar kameeze, in front of a room of educators who are India-bound on a special program promoting cultural exchange. They are interested in women's issues and I was asked to give a presentation on women's health in India as part of their pre-trip orientation.
Cut to the audience's questions.
Question 1: "Well, I read this story in the news about how there was this 5-year-old girl in India. She was an epileptic and her uncles were raping her. Is that … common in Indian culture?"
Question 2: "Is it true that Indians exile their daughters if they have birth defects … or fistulas … or body odor?"
Question 3: (To self) "Why am I doing this again?"
Which leads me to explain: This dispatch is not directly about my project, but instead it is about one of the biggest concerns and frustrations I have in doing this project. It is an issue I ponder almost daily as I try and recruit women and physicians for interviews and as I play and replay snippets of interviews in my mind and transcribe them on my computer. What is particularly "South Asian" about the suffering of women like K? Why are their situations always discussed from the vantage of culture and religion, as though there is something organic and deliberate and predictable about patterns of abuse among South Asians as opposed to Americans? On one hand, South Asians are defined in terms of their "ancient, amazing" culture, and on the other hand, this loosely-defined "culture" steps in as an explanation for all that is deviant and supposedly pathological about South Asians?
It is a very strange, liminal position to inhabit: writing about complex social phenomena among South Asians and then contending with factors that lead people to interpret any writing or research on South Asians through one particular lens. Wanting on one hand to draw attention to the diverse struggles of my sisters, but not wanting more generalizations and more stereotypes to be attached to these struggles.
This week highlighted my dilemma because I spent a good amount of time with my client and her family, and on the phone trying to coordinate various services for them. And I spent time researching and preparing a presentation in which I was asked about domestic violence as if it were somehow emblematic of the plight of Indian women in particular. Needless to say, it is not. In the same way, the Laci Peterson case is not emblematic of the plight of white women. And yet, how can I speak about K, her needs, and her situation without falling into the trap of feeding stereotypes, which clearly exist? This juxtaposition—of engaging directly with the ramifications of domestic violence in the South Asian community, and then being asked offensive questions about domestic violence in the South Asian community—has had me thinking and writing all week.
These musings are not intended to deny the importance—indeed, the necessity—of drawing attention to South Asian women who are brutally mistreated in their homes. It's an extraordinarily important (and sadly common) issue that affects women of all backgrounds; the consequences for some women, such as K, happen to be especially devastating because of linguistic, cultural, and social isolation that worsens abusive situations. K bears these isolations oceans away from all that is familiar to her; she has worked hard ever since she came to California, working 18-hour days and earning a degree as a health assistant, all to make a new life for her family. In a few seconds that she barely remembers, her world changed. She wonders every day why this has happened to her, and what will happen to her from this point on in this vast country. Stripped of all identities that could be politically or subjectively interpreted, K is just a woman who has been horribly and unjustly abused, and who is looking to move forward with her life without the means to do so. At moments like that, it doesn't matter what her race, culture, or language is: there is a common emotional experience that women in K's situation may experience to different degrees and in different ways. Her alternating sorrow, rage, worry, grief, and anxiety have nothing to do with her birthplace, religion, or ethnicity. Her children have everything to do with the emotional force she is tapping into in order to move past this experience.
Narika is coordinating ongoing fundraising efforts for K and her family to pay for medical treatment and groceries. Donations with the code "AD" will be designated for her.
To those who have read this far, thank you for taking such an interest in my research and work. Faces and stories—those of K, her children, Vandana, Captain Bhangra, and all of the others I have worked with—are what keep me going in this line of work. I hope that these dispatches help you understand the complexity of immigrant women's lives and struggles, stereotypes set entirely aside.
—Sunita
Sunita Puri is a 2005 Summer Fellow of UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center.