Week 6: Maira - "Mixed Desires: Second-Generation Indian Americans and the Politics of Youth Culture" (Ang, Adrian)

In Sunaina Maira's "Mixed Desires", Maira discusses how second-generation Indian Americans establish their own subculture based on remixing the Black American hip-hop movement in a South Asian essence. Using a theory from Amritjit Singh, Maira suggests that the turn to hip-hop by Desi youth symbolizes a dissent from parental expectations, as well as a critique of middle-class Anglo-Saxon America. I thought that this article was interesting to read; form reading it, it seems to support the idea of the Asian American experience often being a hybrid of the Asian and American cultures. Many of my friends, who identify as Asian American, also take an interest in hip-hop as well; they say that it allows them to listen to another community's experiences and narratives that they can empathize with. Although Asian Americans, like the Desi youth studied in this article, do remix American pop culture into something more representative of their racial identity, I ask this question: are second generation Asian Americans forced to create a remix culture or does it stem from an interest in creating a remix culture?

A flyer for an event from a New York City Desi-interest club

Works Cited

Sunaina Maira. “Mixed Desires: Second­Generation Indian Americans and the Politics of Youth Culture.”

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