Writing with an American Accent By Jyotsna Sreenivasan

Nine years ago, while waiting for my first novel to come out (And Laughter Fell from the Sky), I excitedly put together a website of “second generation” literature, as in, fiction and memoir by children of immigrants (SecondGenStories.com). I wanted to list as many novels and memoirs as I could from authors whose parents were originally from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, or the Middle East. After all, I was a second-generation author (my parents are immigrants from India) and I figured that surely everyone was seeking more literature by Americans like me who shared the unique perspective of having a foot in two worlds. 

The second generation often has a very different perspective on American life than their parents do. First-generation immigrant Americans tend to have strong ties to the country they left, yet consciously chose to come to the United States. Their children, on the other hand, often have weak ties to their ancestral country and had no choice about being raised in the United States. Julia Alvarez, who immigrated from the Dominican Republic as a child, titled her first book How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.

The second generation typically loses their foreign accent, if they ever had one, and begins to speak like the Americans around them, but the first generation, those who came here as adults, typically don’t lose their accent. They retain their identification with their ancestral culture even in the way they speak.

Despite my efforts to position my first novel in the category of second-generation American literature, my publisher decided to put my book into the “chick lit” and “beach read” categories, where my complicated characters existed uneasily among blander offerings. And almost no one paid attention to my Second Generation Stories web site. That was not a category of literature that anyone else recognized.

I’m still at it, writing about second-generation lives (my new book is a short story collection called These Americans) and adding books to my site. And perhaps the second generation is having a moment. Vice President Kamala Harris is second generation on both sides (her mother was from India, her father from Haiti). Mindy Kaling, whose parents immigrated from India, features second-generation characters in her shows. Two of the founders of YouTube (Steve Chen and Jawed Karim) are children of immigrants. According to the Pew Research Center, 58 members of Congress have at least one immigrant parent.

To me, second generation literature is a way to understand what it means to be American. The second generation is often desperate to fit in to mainstream American culture. Their parents aren’t much help, because many immigrant parents want their children to retain the ancestral culture through language, religion, food, and behavior. So second generation children must figure out how to be American on their own.

One of the stories in my new collection, “At Home,” is about a girl from India who, over the course of a year, learns to feel “at home” in America, but at what cost? Another story, “Crystal Vase: Snapshots,” is about a reunion of two childhood friends many years later. The white girl, Liz, had helped the newly arrived Indian girl, Revati, to learn to be American and fit in, but now their friendship is shaky. 

I hope more people will take an interest in second generation American literature. All of us, no matter our immigrant heritage, have had the experience of not fitting in, and of feeling like we had a foot in two worlds. This unique perspective can be unsettling. But it can also be transformative. 

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Jyotsna Sreenivasan is also the author of the novel And Laughter Fell from the Sky (William Morrow, 2012).
She was selected as a Fiction Fellow for the 2021 Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her short stories have been published in literary magazines and anthologies. She was a finalist for the 2014 PEN Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction and received an Artist Fellowship Grant from the Washington, DC Commission on the Arts.

These Americans is her first short story collection. She was born and raised in Northeast Ohio. Her parents
are immigrants from India. She lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Follow her on Twitter @jyotsna_sree

Find out more on her website https://secondgenstories.com/

 

THESE AMERICANS

WINNER OF THE ROSEMARY DANIELL FICTION PRIZE. THESE AMERICANS, a debut collection of short fiction, explores what it means to live between Indian culture and American expectations. An Indian-born immigrant mother gives birth to her daughter in a small Ohio town.

  A girl recently returned from India strives to become “American” again.  A naïve immigrant mother is in denial about her lawyer daughter’s lesbianism. An elderly doctor keeps a shocking secret from her daughter. This engaging collection of eight short stories and a novella will stay with you long after you turn the last page.

“Readers looking for accessible short stories capturing immigrant experiences and women’s lives will find These Americans a study in contrasting cultures. . . . Thought-provoking, diverse, yet interconnected by Indian heritage, American experience, and women’s lives and concerns, These Americans offers a rich set of insights.”

Midwest Book Review

“The crafted stories of Jyotsna Sreenivasan’s collection These Americans offer the perspectives of immigrant and native-born Indian Americans as they balance Indian culture with the expectations with American life. . . . Though there are subtle variations in tone and setting, the stories of These Americans form a cohesive, captivating collection.”

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Category: On Writing