Making Ethnic Choices: California's Punjabi Mexican Americans (Asian American History & Cultu) [Paperback]

Karen Leonard (Author)

Book Description

Series: Asian American History & Cultu | Publication Date: January 25, 1994

This is a study of the flexibility of ethnic identity. In the early twentieth century, men from India's Punjab province came to California to work on the land. The new immigrants had few chances to marry. There were very few marriageable Indian women, and miscegenation laws and racial prejudice limited their ability to find white Americans. Discovering an unexpected compatibility, Punjabis married women of Mexican descent and these alliances inspired others as the men introduced their bachelor friends to the sisters and friends of their wives. These biethnic families developed an identity as "Hindus" but also as Americans. Karen Leonard has related theories linking state policies and ethnicity to those applied at the level of marriage and family life. Using written sources and numerous interviews, she invokes gender, generation, class, religion, language, and the dramatic political changes of the 1940s in South Asia and the United States to show how individual and group perceptions of ethnic identity have changed among Punjabi Mexican Americans in rural California. Karen Isaksen Leonard is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[A] thoroughly original study that greatly expands our knowledge of how ethnic identities are formed. Leonard writes clearly and her inclusion of the voices of the Punjabi-Mexicans lends humor and depth to the history. This insightful study will be of interest to all scholars concerned with immigration and ethnicity and the history of California."
—The Journal of Asian Studies

"This is an extraordinary work. It is simultaneously an ethnography of early South Asian immigrant life in California, a model of fine-grained historical research using all manner of documents to reconstruct and interpret the migration flows, social structure, and family cycles of Punjabi men and their Mexican spouses, and a sophisticated examination of the complex role of 'identity' in their perceptions of themselves and their descendants.... In the midst of contemporary discussions about multi-culturalism, politically correctly positions, and valuing diversity, this book would be a fine place to begin a thoughtful consideration of the potential multiplicity of meanings ethnicity may have for human begins."
—Journal of American Ethnic History

"No other book has the scope or the vision of Karen Leonard's work. I expect this book to be consulted as a model of historical research for many years to come."
—James Freeman, San Jose State University

From the Publisher

Defining and changing perceptions of ethnic identity --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 424 pages
• Publisher: Temple University Press (January 25, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566392020
• ISBN-13: 978-1566392020
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #246,981 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A scholarly book with a powerful story, September 25, 2006

By 

William J. Hart (Montrose, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Making Ethnic Choices: California's Punjabi Mexican Americans (Asian American History & Cultu) (Paperback)

Professor Karen Leonard's study of one of California's more interesting multi-ethnic communities, founded at the turn of the 20th century by Hindu, Moslem and Sikh men from India's Punjab region and their Mexican-American wives, is a well-researched look into how different immigrant cultures meld to become American, while retaining some ethnic traditions. Leonard also examines the effects of discriminatory U.S. and California laws on the community. As it happens, anti-miscegenation laws were influential in forming many of the original marriages, as those with like racial classifications married like.

An earlier reviewer of Leonard's book claims that the author was unaware of the difference between Hindus, Moslems, and Sikhs--and this reviewer thereby questions her scholarship. The claim is simply not true. Leonard makes clear that the lumping of all three Indian groups under the category "Hindu" was accomplished by the prevailing "Anglo" community in California. The term became so widely used that the Indian men finally acquiesed and referred to themselves in that way, whatever their religion. But they were not confused, and neither is Dr. Leonard. All this is explained clearly in her study.

For a unique and eye-opening view of Americanization under the most trying of circumstances, buy and read this book.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Both Insightful and Irritating, May 13, 2006

By 

Robert A. Williams "libertarian" (Oberlin, OH United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Making Ethnic Choices: California's Punjabi Mexican Americans (Asian American History & Cultu) (Paperback)

Karen Leonard had done research on Hindus in Hyderabad during the 1970s (see her "Social History of an Indian Caste: the Kayasths of Hyderabad, 1978). It is important to know a little about the Kayasth caste of Hindus because Leonard's impression of them most certainly affected her ability to do research later on Punjabi Sikhs and Muslims in California. The Kayasths were devoted to the acquistion of knowledge rather than practicing the Hindu religion. They transformed themselves under Mughal rule in India and later transformed themselves again after the British took over. Kayasths switched allegiance faster than any invader could expect. Their neutrality made them into Indian chameleons, which allowed them to not only survive but prosper. Under British rule in India, they rose to the highest positions accessible to Indians. They dressed and talked British and were the first Indians to drop their cultural identities.

After she presented a talk on "Women in Indian Culture" at Yuba Community College in 1979, she discovered that Punjabi males of the Sikh religion and a small number of Punjabi Muslims had immigrated to California (many via Canada) before the British partitioned Punjab into the Pakistani West and the Indian East, and that most of the Sikhs and Muslims in California had married Mexican-American Catholic or Mexican Catholic wives. Further their half-caste American-born offspring were marrying Sikhs and Muslims back home from India through arranged marriages rather than mixing with the opposite sex in California and stumbling into lust relationships. Leonard said in her preface that she "had been totally unaware of the recent large Punjabi immigration to rural northern California and of the operation of this marriage network linking Marysville and Yuba City with peasant villages back in Punjab" (p ix). Without any previous knowledge of Sikhism or Islaam, Leonard "decided to trace the handful of Mexican-Hindu [sic] families to see how these pioneer Punjabi men had transmitted Indian beliefs and behaviors to their descendants. That was my initial, simple preconception of the research project" (p x).

Leonard's methodology was historical social science rather than ethnography and participant observation. Not knowing the difference between a Sikh and a Hindu, or a Muslim and a Hindu, Leonard unknowingly charted an oral history course for herself involving a steep learning curve that she had difficulty ascending. By lumping Sikhs and Muslims together under the misnomer of "Hindu", she displays ignorance of the cultural and even linguistic differences between the three groups. Her background was equally ignorant of Mejicana Catholic culture. In addition, Leonard'sr unfamiliarity with Sikh and Muslim cultures and her inability to distinguish Sikhs and Muslims from Hindus raises questions about her previous study on Hindus in Hyderabad, India and the extent to which she truly understood Hindu culture.

The result, alternatingly insightful and irritatingly wrong to the initiated reader is this book - "Making Ethnic Choices", which contains 13 chapters grouped into three parts. The three parts are 1. Introduction, 2. The World of the Pioneers, and 3. The Construction of Ethnic Identity. The 13 chapters are 1. Exploring Ethnicity, 2. Contexts: California and Punjab, 3. Early Days in the Imperial Valley, 4. Marriages and Children, 5. Male and Female networks, 6. Conflict and Love in the Marriages, 7. Childhood in Rural California, 8. The Second Generation Comes of Age, 9. Political Change and Ethnic Identity, 10. Encounters with the Other, and 11. Contending Voices. These interesting and pleasantly readable chapters are followed by appendixes, over 60 pages of notes, a bibliography, and an index.

Chapter 7 -11 under Section Three examines the English-speaking American-born offspring of the Sikh and Muslim Punjabis with their Mejicana wives (or "Hispanic" wives according to Leonard) and is where the author's understanding of cultural theory begins to show. She shows how the second generation of Punjabis saw themselves as Indian rather than Mexican, yet often went on to marry Mejicana spouses that shared ethnicity with their mothers. Most of the second generation was assimilated after that and the third generation was not to be.

Leonard's empathy and ability to interpret and analyze the data from her research clearly lies with the second generation who most resembled Leonard. When Leonard otherized the Indian-born Sikhs and Muslims, worse - when she lumped them under the misnomer of "Hindu", she displayed her difficulty in remaining objective. Leonard's attempts at interviews and interpretation were related to sociological issues of "self and other". Her research was biased in seeing cultural differences from the standpoint of her own here and now and judging those differences according to the degree they deviated as cultural backwardness. Worse, Leonard may not even be aware of her bias. Aristotle said it succinctly - "we like those who resemble ourselves". If Leonard could live and teach in Jullinder or Lahore long enough to speak and understand Punjabi, then live in Mexicali or Hermosillo long enough to speak and understand Spanish, then rewrite this book under her newly acquired culturally-informed awareness, the result would probably bring more validity by relating to all participants rather than those who most resemble Leonard.