The Namesake

I enjoyed the film that we watched in class today, it was very different compared to the rest of the films that we watched thus far.  It was interesting to see the experiences of Indian-Americans in comparison to the other Asian-American groups.  One thing that I found interesting was that the parents (first generation) in this film seemed to stick to their Indian roots and heritage and were less assimilated than the first-generation of the other Asian-American films we watched.  The parents, in particular, the mother, did not change the way that she dressed from the time that they left India and throughout the course of the movie.  They also continued to speak in their native language a lot more than the other groups.  Another observation that I made was that although it did not appear that they were in a place dominated by Indians, they still had a group of the same ethnicity to cling to and identify with.  I also took notice at how conservative they were.  The scene that caught my attention was when the mother and father were walking together at the Taj Mahal and the mother would not tell her husband that she loved him, "like the Americans do."  They were also taken aback when Maxine greeted them with a hug and kiss on the cheek.  All in all, I really enjoyed seeing the differences in culture between the different Asian groups and their experiences in America.