Battling Acceptance as a Melancholic Migrant
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Bend It Like Beckham has always been one of my favorite films. I think I have always resonated with Jess and her struggle for validation and acceptance as a brown girl in the West. Additionally, Jess’ Punjabi parents have somewhat reflected the same strictness and pressure to conform to cultural expectations I have continuously faced within my own family. I have always faced this pressure as a result of my conservative family, never trying to understand the root causes. However, after reading Sara Ahmed’s Melancholic Migrants, I have realized the same strictness stems from the battle for acceptance faced by my melancholic migrant family.
Ahmed's concept of the melancholic migrant highlights the discomfort and mourning of a migrant who is ‘stuck’ in a bad feeling, or holding on to something lost, unable to escape a cycle of sorrow and discomfort. The inability to let go or ‘unstick’ reflects the attachment to a place of acceptance, specifically when it contrasts to a place of rejection. Growing up, my grandparents would always reminisce about their lives and experiences in East Africa, where they were comforted by a country and community that accepted their culture, an integral part of their identity. They openly expressed themselves in their language, cooked their food, and listened to their music without hate or criticism. In contrast, moving to Canada, they were encouraged to mask any part of their cultural identity they could, to better assimilate to Canadian culture. Overnight their lives changed, moving to a society that discriminated against their accents, languages, religion, and race. Although I was young, I could see their expressions of mourning and melancholy attached to the nostalgia of their previous lives.
Reflecting on my personal experience, I believe one of the reasons that first-generation immigrants, particularly South Asians, tend to be so strict is because of their battle for acceptance between two spheres. The sphere of the West, in which they will never be accepted, and the sphere of their cultural community (extremely prevalent for south asian communities in the West) in which they rely so heavily on for support, rooted in shared experience. Cultural communities, whether religious or social represent the cultural validation that many first-generation immigrants yearn for and rely on as they navigate their transition to the West. Furthermore, in someways, they reflect the culture that was left behind after immigration, and the culture and sense of acceptance that the melancholic migrant cling to. Thus, they enforce strict cultural expectations on their children who are caught between a culture clash of fulfilling the cultural expectations of their parents and assimilating to the culture of the West. The strictness of upholding cultural expectations is rooted in the need to maintain acceptance by their cultural community and to avoid ostracization. This idea is depicted in Bend It Like Beckham when Jess is accused of kissing a white boy. Such a taboo concept completely ostracized the Bhmras from the rest of their cultural community, placing them in a position where they were no longer accepted by either sphere.
I can finally somewhat empathize with my grandparent's strictness because I am beginning to understand the challenges they endured in battling for acceptance between the West and their cultural community. When I was younger, I always thought they were just completely traditional and trying to force a conservative controlling lifestyle. Never did I consider the hardships they faced, and that their reliance on their cultural community compensated for the rejection they faced by the West. I never considered how critical my cultural community was for overcoming systemic and structural barriers enforced to make sure immigrants like my grandparents never felt accepted. I never considered the challenges of leaving a life of acceptance and validation overnight to one of discrimination and hate. Unfortunately, it is too late for me to ask them about their experiences, but engaging with other south asian diasporic texts and experiences such as Sara Ahmed is my gateway to understanding them. I always felt a sense of sorrow for my grandparents and I'm just now realizing they were just melancholic migrants.