On my drive home from out of town a few days ago, I heard Piper Kerman describing her prison cheesecake recipe during a Wait Wait Don't Tell Me! segment on NPR. What struck me as particularly remarkable about the whole thing is Kerman's open embrace of her mistakes that led to time in prison but ended up being a profitable venture for her. Having watched a few episodes of the show, it was illuminating to hear the first person perspective. Her narrative seems to be that, she continues to make the best of her past misadventures and create value for others along the way. This would all be quite wonderful and even inspirational, if Kerman did not exude such an air of nonchalant privilege. It was hard to see how her triumphant re-entry to society could be replicated even remotely by the average incarcerated person.
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
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