Disqus - Latest Comments for TheGoriWife

Re: Protecting Rodent Families– Humane or Insane?

TheGoriWife — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 03:11:10 -0000

I'm a NOVA-ite, so my comment is totally useless here. But! I had six (SIX!) groundhogs living under my front porch this spring and I trapped one, hoping to relocate them one by one to somewhere that was not under my porch. I called FFX Co. animal control only to be told it's against the law to disturb the habitat of a wild animal. No moving. And they wouldn't come out to do anything about it either, since it wasn't a dangerous animal. My ONLY legal choice was to cart them down myself to their shelter, and pay $25 each to have them euthanized. (Six of them!) I couldn't catch them all before the babies were weaned so now my neighbors will probably have the same problem come next spring.

Anyway. Not about DC, but I feel the pain of stupid municipality thinking about pests.

Re: Amazing Pictures of Hajj in 1953

TheGoriWife — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:28:48 -0000

My, how things have changed! Thanks for the great pictures.

Re: Aziz is Bored

TheGoriWife — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:32:32 -0000

I love how your head/face look like some old desi Uncle. I bet this is exactly how you'll look 30 years from now, just grayer and more wrinkled and maybe with glasses. And you'll say "beta" more, and pat young people's heads.

Re: 30 Mosques in 30 Days : Day 21: Harlem Islamic Cultural Center

TheGoriWife — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 01:14:00 -0000

Daal is REALLY easy to make - I can give you a fail-proof recipe :)

Re: Of Love and Race

TheGoriWife — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:58:40 -0000

I think what you wrote here and a little bit above is exactly what I was trying to say - you just put it better :)

Re: Intercultural Marriage Fluff

TheGoriWife — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:38:25 -0000

I did it! Thanks - I love being able to churn out a blog post without actually thinking of a subject to write about.
http://thegoriwifelife.blog...

Re: Of Love and Race

TheGoriWife — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:31:56 -0000

Thanks for the link :)

I've been thinking about this, and the only thing I came up with is perhaps that when I see desi aunties and uncles staring at me, I see disapproving looks and I want to scream "We've been married for five years! His parents know all about me and they LOOOOOVVVVEEE MEEEEEE!!!!" I think it has to do with your reception in the desi community. For me, people talked about me behind my back, M's roommate broke their lease and their friendship, everyone in his life - even people who I thought were my friends, too - told him no to marry me, that I wasn't good enough. I am all too familiar with disapproving looks. So I notice, and I still care. in the beginning, it was probably much more harmful that beneficial. I've come to terms with a lot of it, and traveling to Pakistan always helps, too. (I get a lot of stares there that are clearly curious or interested, rather than disapproving.)

I suspect that you don't have the same reaction because your introduction to desi culture was totally different than that. It seems Aditya made it clear from the beginning that his parents might have a non-desi daughter-in-law one day. He probably didn't have such closed-minded, playboy friends to advise him that American girls, while useful for many things, were not to be married. Any disapproval your relationship met seems to have been delivered in a kind, caring way, and was able to be resolved. Not everything was resolved for us very easily. Sometimes the resolution was that we would no longer tolerate the kind of vitriol being spouted against us. M lost friends. LOTS of people refused to come to our wedding.

These days, I still care about the stares because I feel my appearance in the world helps the Gori Wife cause. I want to make eye contact with those aunties and uncles and smile, maybe say Salaam. Hopefully the next time they hear about someone's son or daughter marrying a non-desi, they'll think maybe it's not all bad. I watched to documentary, and I really liked it. i just can't imagine the children of the Lovings, maybe some of the first openly mixed race children in Virginia, didn't care about the stares they got. It is on their shoulders that we modern mixed-race or mixed-culture couples stand today.

Re: Becoming an Intercultural Communicator

TheGoriWife — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:19:55 -0000

Actually, these are things I've been tossing around for awhile, trying to figure out how to write about them. Not entirely related to you original post, though. But the avoiding the implication that you're all-knowing about desi culture, or trying to be/become Indian, etc. Those are definitly important to remember, and important for intercultural communication, too. But often I feel as if these things are used to cut off an outside experience. Maybe they're just not bright line rules. Like, I've read about "going native" and I think I probably went through some of that in the beginning, and I don't necessarily think that was a bad thing for the development of my identity and incorporating my new knowledge base into that identity. Or maybe it was a different version of something like it. Some way of finding the boundaries and outlines of this new identity. And appropriating culture....ugh. I'm not sure how I feel about that either, because some people have told me that because I'm not Pakistani (or speaking to am American-born friend of mine, that she wasn't Pakistan-born), so how do we purport to "speak for Pakistan." Like I can't tell people the difference between South & North Indian food because I'm an impostor, or appropriating desi-ness, or pejoratively "going native." But my life has been mired in this stuff for YEARS now, doesn't some of it become my own experience? It's a muddled mess in my mind. I mean, I agree with the original points, too! That one should not imply "that I'm either (a) all knowing about South Asian culture or (b) trying to "be" or "become" Indian or otherwise appropriate Indian culture as my own."

Sorry I couldn't be more coherent.

Re: Becoming an Intercultural Communicator

TheGoriWife — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:27:38 -0000

Oh - sorry. Perhaps a substantive comment as well?
Reading through this framework, it mirrors my relationship trajectory a lot. I think I had the critical engagement down already and that's part of the reason I was searching and/or open to an intercutlural relationship. I also frontloaded a lot of knowledge-gathering about desi culture, especially when there seemed to be less information sources from which to gleam that info. (Where was The Namesake & Slumdog Millionaire 7 years ago!?!) The last two are probably where I'll have to continue working the rest of my life. The only thing I think is the converse to all of these. With knowledge comes knowing the limits of your knowledge. With understanding must come the ability to realize when you don't understand. For me, this is often easier with my husband than with others. Maybe it's just another aspect of familiarity with the culture, but I think of it more are familiarity with the conversant. We have a symmetry, a history, a tempo. I understand his Urdu better than anyone elses. (I know this isn't about communicating in a foreign language, it's just an example of my point.) His cadence is the groundtruth for me. When I'm speaking about Pakistani life or culture with him, I immediately know when I've missed a beat. When speaking with others, sometimes I don't realize it as quickly or easily. Sometimes I feel like I'm off the beat entirely when I'm not.

Re: Becoming an Intercultural Communicator

TheGoriWife — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:18:19 -0000

You mean Aditya is a pseudonym? It never occurred to me....