Miss India Georgia is an intelligent and insightful video documentary that tells the story of four Indian American teenagers, who in `the process of preparing for Atlanta\u27s annual South Asian beauty pageant reflect on the trials and tribulations of their bi-cultural lives. It is a timeless tale told over and over as each new wave of immigrants has come ashore and their children have had to resolve the incongruities of their multiple ethnicities

DasGupta, Kasturi

English

VCU Scholars Compass

[Review of] Daniel Friedman and Sharon Grimberg. Miss India Georgia

Book Reviews ography. Conversi's particular focus is on the leading intel lectuals and intel l igentsia who selected the "core-values" of the Basque and Catalan national ist movements. Conversi explains the violent nature of Basque nationalism as due in part to endemic pol itical and cultural fragmentation. I n  Basque country, where the Basque language was quickly d isappearing and there was l ittle tradition of "high culture," there was continual difficu lty reach­ing a consensus on "core-values." Conversi contrasts this to a more un ified , inclusive Catalan nationalism with an establ ished "high cu ltu re" and a consistent focus on a widely spoken language. Key to his analy­sis is the large impact of immigration on the two reg ions and their na­tionalisms. Due to these d ifferences and others he d iscusses in  the book, the impact of the Civil War and Franco's intolerant and violent anti-regional ist pol icies escalated violence in the Basque case but not among Catalan national ists . To an anthropologist, Daniele Conversi's attention to the use of culture, ethn icity, and symbols as tools for manipulation and mobil iza­tion is appeal ing.  His work opens a space to consider the intentional as wel l  as historical ly determined use of "cultu ral" and "ethnic" elements by interested parties, and his analysis of the intended and unintended re­sults of such choices is interesting. This type of analysis brings up tradi­tionally anthropological questions concerning defin itions of "culture," that innocent looking word that often h ides internal difference and power re­lations beneath a veneer of sameness and supposedly shared identity. This approach also provides material for those interested in how ethnic groups acqu i re thei r defin ing characteristics-through both bottom-up and top-down processes. Conversi's attention to the role of el ites, of the state, and of culture in determining the outcomes of Basque and Catalan national isms is appreciated, but h is evident confusion of "culture" with "high culture" throughout the book u ltimately leaves his arguments un­convincing.  Laura Bathurst Un iversity of California, Berkeley Daniel Friedman and Sharon Grimberg. Miss India Georgia. Urban Life Productions. 22-D Hollywood Avenue, Hohokus, NJ 07423. VHS video, 56 minutes. 1 997. Rental (may be applied to purchase price): $50.00 ; Purchase Price: Col lege or University classroom use: $250.00; Public Library, Secondary School ,  or nonprofit commu­n ity organization: $95.00; Personal Use Only: $39.95; Shipping and Handl ing:  $6.00. Phone: (800) 343-5540; Fax: (201 ) 652-1 973. Miss India Georgia is an intel l igent and insightfu l  video docu­mentary that tel ls the story of four  I ndian American teenagers, who in 97 Ethnic Studies Review Volume 20 the process of preparing for Atlanta's annual South Asian beauty pag­eant reflect on the trials and tribulations of thei r bi-cu ltu ral l ives. It is a timeless tale told over and over as each new wave of immigrants has come ashore and thei r chi ldren have had to resolve the incongruities of thei r  multiple ethn icities . Miss India Georgia captures with special poi­gnancy the complexity of emotions that transpi res and the interactions which the young women have with their parents, grandparents, friends, boyfriends, as they articulate their frustrations, impatience, and al l  kinds of mixed feel ings at being caught at a confluence of such distinct CUl­tures. The documentary is particularly deft at capturing the often subtle, often d i rect ways in  which the young women navigate the i r  social ter­rain ,  set apart by culture conflict and a hierarchy of marginalities brought on by thei r ' brownness' in an otherwise culturally and racially homoge­neous social sphere.  The conflict is not about core societal values such as material success, which both the young women and their parents eagerly embrace, but those values which are popularly labeled old fash­ioned and traditional. The parents in the documentary, l ike most Asian I nd ian parents, embody a cultural heritage deeply rooted in tradition, convention and rel igion. Chi ldren are socialized to unquestioningly re­spect the authority of the parents. Cultural fidel ity and continu ity are disproportionately associated with upholding virtues associated with tra­ditional Indian womanhood or feminin ity. This explains the parents' im­permeabi l ity when it comes to rel inquishing thei r hold on their daugh­ters, especially when it comes to interacting with their young men-friends. But, i n  the social context of their adopted land, thei r objections to dating breeds rebel l ion and tremendous unhappiness among their progeny. Miss India Georgia does a remarkable job at portraying these disagree­ments judiciously. The documentary successful ly shows how futile it is to generalize about Asian Indians and their assimi lation experiences when it presents the unique ways in which each young woman resolves her particular experience of "twoness" and the additional marg inal ities that she perceives. I n  several ways, however, the documentary does represent the Asian I ndian community in a rather monol ithic form. All four  of the young women in  the documentary come from very affluent, professional fami­l ies, when in  fact a large segment of Asian Indians, especially those who have recently immigrated, are neither affluent nor wel l  educated and therefore experience their  adopted country qu ite differently. Moreover, not al l  young women in the Asian Indian diaspora have adopted the traditional American notions of feminin ity so uncritical ly. As a matter of fact, many young women have tried to resolve their marginal ities by seeking out community with those who have challenged traditional ideas of femin inity, both Indian and American. In  other  ways, however, Miss India Georgia quite effectively ful­fi l ls the objective it sets out for itself: to provide a narrative of the struggles 98 Book Reviews of four young women as they try to establ ish their identity as second generation Ind ian Americans. Therefore, it is an important addition to works relating to the American ethnic experience. Kasturi DasGupta Georgian Court College Nathan Glazer. We Are All Multiculturalists Now. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1 997). 1 92 pp., $1 9.95 cloth. Some of the readers famil iar with Nathan Glazer'S writings may be surprised or intrigued, as the case may be, by his latest book, We Are All Multiculturalists Now. That title seems qu ite an extraordinary decla­rat i o n  f rom a man  who  became known i n  the  1 980s fo r  h i s neoconservatism as wel l as for his persistent criticism of certain l iberal social policies such as affi rmative action. Has he finally seen the l ight? Not exactly. The book is by no means an apologia nor is it a ringing endorsement of multicu lturalism either. Indeed, the reader is held in some suspense t i l l  the last chapter to f ind out what G lazer real ly means by "we are al l multicultural ists now." Nevertheless, h is main purpose in the book, he says, is to examine the phenomenon of multicultural ism­"that new dispensation" as he calls it. And he does it with re lative even­handedness. To being with he declares that, as far as cu ltu ral wars in  educa­tion are concerned, the multiculturalists have won. They have won in the sense that the old assimi lationist orientation (dispensation?) in the curriculum toward the "melting-pot" ideal has been abandoned. That is h i s  assessment ,  but one that is not shared by many c ri t ics of multicultural ism some of whom ascribe to it al l that has gone wrong with education in public schools in particular and the society in general. Glazer identifies what he considers "the four  big questions" that critics have about multicultural ism and he analyzes these questions in some depth. These questions, he says, represent critics' fears. One of the fears is that multiculturalism wil l  lead to national dis­unity. The distinguished historian, Arthur M. Schlesinger, J r. ,  is one of the lead ing proponents of this view. He presents his case against multicultural ism in his controversial book, The Disuniting of America ( 1 990) . Sch lesinger, J r. is particu larly harsh on Afrocentrism. Like most critics, he regards Afrocentrism as an offshoot of multicu ltu ral ism with a separatist agenda. He claims that Afrocentrist scholars are doing a dis­service to African American h istory-a history that, he bel ieves, is a part of the Western democratic tradition even though it had been shameful ly neglected. While G lazer is also critical of Afrocentrism because he con­siders it extreme, nevertheless, he believes that the mainstream African 99 

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[Review of] Daniel Friedman and Sharon Grimberg. Miss India Georgia

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