International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS)

In DESI LAND Shalini Shankar examines the complex cultural negotiations that South Asian American teens confront as they forge their own ethnic, generational, and personal identities. Drawing from her ethnographic study of South Asian American high schoolers in Silicon Valley, Shankar pays particular attention to how these teenagers define economic and social “success” in response to the pressures and expectations of their families, their peers, and society at large. Growing up in the midst of the technology boom, the lives of these middle- and upper-middle-class Desi youth have been dominated by a narrative of success connected to the perception of Asian Americans as a model minority, equipped to achieve in school and in the workplace. Yet these young people feel less pressure to assimilate than the generations that preceded them. Rather, even as they absorb many elements of mainstream American culture, they are equally comfortable with racial and linguistic diversity, and they integrate styles, trends, and traditions from their own ethnic backgrounds into a new hybrid, diasporic cultural identity. Shankar shows us how Desi youth grapple with questions of race, class, and family tradition as they struggle to fashion their own sense of self and definition of what it means to be successful in a world that offers a bounty of opportunity as well as daily doses of racial, ethnic, and religious discrimination.

Shankar begins by considering the history of South Asian immigration to the Silicon Valley, the formation of Desi communities in the area, and the centrality of the technology industry to the economic and cultural lives of Asian Americans living there. She then focuses more specifically on the teen culture she encountered at the local high schools. Here, spending her days in the classroom and talking to students in their leisure time, Shankar learned about the fashions, social codes, slang, and media technologies that define Desi teen style. She examines how Desi youth engage with consumption and material culture—what Shankar calls “Desi bling”—to create distinctive styles that represent their class aspirations and shape their priorities as they look towards adulthood. A chapter on the role of multilingualism and slang considers how Desi teens play with mixing languages and accents, often combining American slang with terms adopted from their heritage languages, meant to both delineate and obscure cultural differences. Looking at how dating plays into the lives of Desi teens, Shankar how these high-schoolers balance romantic relationships that are deemed unacceptable by their parents with their longer-term desire to adhere to the expectations of their families and communities. Shankar concludes with a consideration of how questions of race and class have changed since 9/11 and the bursting of the technology bubble in Silicon Valley.