Muncie, India(na): Middletown and Asian America (Asian American Experience)

Muncie, Indiana, remains the epitome of an American town. Yet scholars built the image of so-called typical communities across the United States on an illusion. Their decades of studies ignored the racial, ethnic, and religious diversity and tensions woven into the American communities that Muncie supposedly embodied. Himanee Gupta-Carlson puts forth an essential question: what do nonwhites, non-Christians, and/or non-natives mean when they call themselves American? A daughter in one of Muncie's first Indian American families, Gupta-Carlson merges personal experience, the life histories of others, and critical analysis to explore the answers. Her stories of members of Muncie's South Asian communities unearth the silences imposed by past studies while challenging the body of scholarship in fundamental ways. At the same time, Gupta-Carlson shares personal memories and experiences that illuminate her place within the historical, political, and socio-cultural currents she engages in her work. It also reveals how that work informs and transforms her as a scholar and a person. As meditative as it is insightful, Muncie, India(na) invites readers to feel the truth of the fascinating stories behind one woman's revised portrait of an American community.| Cover Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Creating a Typical America: The Middletown Studies and Muncie 2. Marring Typicality: South Asian Immigrants in Muncie 3. Fitting In: Muncie South Asians and Childhood 4. Navigating Rebellion and Respect: South Asian Teenagers and High School Life 5. Cowpath Crossings: Postindustrial Work and Indian Doctors 6. Knowing Your Place: Religious Identities and Differences Conclusion: Race, Religion, and the Limits of Tolerance Epilogue: An Unraveled America? Appendix Notes Index | "Gupta-Carlson brings a much-needed perspective to Middletown studies. But she also addresses pressing questions about what it means to be an American today. Through careful reflection and analysis, she develops a compelling case for the importance of involved and sustained dialogues that bridge difference."—Luke Eric Lassiter, coauthor of The Other Side of Middletown "The book is very engaging and well-written; straightforward reporting in a journalistic style and discourse analysis are interwoven with novelistic depictions of the author's personal experiences and interactions with significant others." — Journal of American Culture "Himanee Gupta-Carlson provides nuanced perspectives on what being an American means to those who immigrated from South Asia and—more important—to the children of these immigrants in Muncie, India(na): Middletown and Asian America ." — The AAG Review of Books | Himanee Gupta-Carlson is an associate professor at SUNY Empire State College. The book is a study of South Asian Americans in Muncie, Indiana – the author’s hometown. Muncie is the small Midwestern city made famous for being “typical America” through the __Middletown__ studies. The book is among the first studies of the South Asian American community in Muncie as well as small-town middle America more generally. It situates the experiences of Muncie’s South Asians within the larger context of scholarship in Asian American Studies, racial and ethnic studies, postcolonial/diaspora studies, and the Middletown archive. At the heart of the book is the question: What does it mean to call one’s self an American is one is non-white, non-Christian, and/or non-U.S. born? It uses an interdisciplinary blend of auto-ethnography, and discourse analysis to argue that a failure to account for the racial, ethnic, and religious diversity of America has left behind a false legacy of what defines an American. It shows how the Muncie South Asian American community has sustained itself through extraordinary friendship and resilience, qualities which allowed the members of the community to negotiate internal differences among Indians and other South Asians to make a home in a city – and a nation – that renders them non-American. This work is a study of South Asian Americans in Muncie, Indiana - the author's hometown. Muncie is the small Midwestern city made famous for being 'typical America' through the Middletown studies