Desi Lands

Shankar in Desi Land addresses the emergence of a hybrid Desi teen culture in San Jose that is distinct from the mainstream white culture. She notes that "Desi teen culture signals a generational consciousness and an effort to further define the category of Desi" (79). She points to their use of ethnicity and popular culture to define what it means to be Desi. Shankar also notes that "these meanings differ across class and other statuses" (79).

Although she applies her analysis to the South Asian community in general in San Hose, my experience with second generation Sri Lankan migrant teens living in California has been very different. Unlike the Desi teens that Shankar has studied , these Sri Lankan teens have very tenuous or almost no connection with their motherland in terms of language or culture. There is no strong common ethnic or cultural repertoire to bind Sri Lankan teens together, since the community is very small and scattered unlike the large population of Indian migrants living in San Jose. My overarching impression was that these teens are fully absorbed to the mainstream white teen culture and are separated by an unbridgeable gulf from their parents, who are first generation migrants.