Letters to the Editor
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How far do you have to reach?
My God - can you make excuses for everyone? No one ever does wrong in your minds without it having a symbolic and vaguely anti-establishment bent. I am exhausted by people making excuses for any quasi-liberal who fucks up. For god's sake - you don't have to protect everyone just because they've aligned themselves with your political bent! Sometimes, its prudent to recognize that someone made a mistake (let me make it clear that I understood that was the point of your article). A mistake does not have to be glorified. Are we so insecure and defensive that when "one of us" screws up we immediately go into damage control mode and fashion an excuse and admirable explanation for her behavior?
This is not symbolic of the Indian-American struggle, or anything similar. This is an entitled young woman who got caught - by spinning it any other way we affiliate ourselves with her assumption of entitlement and her blatant disregard for the true art of writing. For the first time, I'm ashamed of Salon and their shameless catering to an adgenda.
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How Kaavya got her contract back
Yeah, that's all fine and groovy, but what is the lesson really learned.
Oh yeah, how to become famous and blame it on people exploiting me, while my so-called race friends rejoice that I died to save their sins or someting like that. Actually, I was thinking of doing a book about that, but I can't figure out how to end it after I've died on this cross. But then I got this great idea of rising from the dead to pen my autobiography. Original, no?
There is another possibility where I adopt some exotic name. Maybe like Kaavya Viswanathan. Yeah, that's it, I'll pretend I'm a 19 year old Indian Harvard student writing how I "Got my Groove Back with Stella and Got Hot and Laid and bought a Streetcar and named it Desire and yelled "Stella!" because she took my Groove and then I went on a Mission Impossible the III time, discovered Scientology only to have non-yelling child birth with my wife which caused me to do drugs like Ibuprofen only to mistake them for heroin and get arrested by a meter maid and break into a Million Little Pieces.
It's masterpiece! I'll call myself Ishmael and open the story with something original about how it was the best of times and the worst of times. Then I'll get on Oprah. She'll love it!!!
You see, it really isn't about writing something from our heart, recognizing that every life holds a story within it, it's really about being rich and famous and not taking any chances that our life story is too dull for even fifteen seconds of fame. Why should less interesting people get the credit for work we deserve to own? Lucy was right, we are the pretty people we deserve to be the Christmas queen. Why risk writing drivel when so many lesser people have written such great things for us to use?
I'm glad you found this type of behavior so helpful to your people. I wouldn't want you to think people like us were just leeches.
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I had a title but I forgot it
when I read that, I thought it would raise eyebrows.
Sandip I felt was writing mostly from a diasporadic indian-american point of view. It's a window into a world some Salon reader's might not be familiar with. Indian americans are lucky to be able to read the viewpoints of people from all sorts of backgrounds, and in a way is a chance for non-indian americans to read about a slightly different take on this situation.
Sandip doesn't represent everybody who is indian-american, but the main point which is familiar to many indian-americans is that "its ok to screw-up". He's right, even in a middling, middle class way, a lot of indian american kids don't want to screw up, by doing such mundane things as....liking graphic design, not liking samasos, or maybe not like-liking another indian american.
That being said, a lot of indian-american kids had parents who came to the US after the 1965 immigration act, and one of the major ways to come here was to have a scientific skill. So most of the indian americans who are now in their 20's-30's had middle class parents with an education in the sciences. there is nothing really mysterious about that.
this was an intro at looking into the Kaavya story from a different viewpoint
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Last thought
There was an excellent commentary on the subject matter of this "piece" and perspective that I think it was trying to offer that I just found in the WSJ from Friday. It certainly did much more to convey the issues that were apparently trying to be addressed by this author. I must now go rethink a few things as I've just recommended the WSJ over Salon for a better perspective on a story.
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let's hope she doesn't
Kaavya Viswanathan's spectacular plagiarism screw-up should reassure overachieving Indian-Americans that we can fail and survive.
I hope Viswanathan doesn't survive*. The world could do with a few less spoiled, unethical rich kids/aspiring investment bakers who, with the help of their equally unpleasant parents, have the majority of an insipid chick-lit book ghostwritten by a book "packaging" house so they can get into Harvard.
I have no sympathy for her. Some might say "Oh, it's not her fault, her parent's pushed her too hard." Those people's also think Cary Tennis is insightful, so their opinions are irrelevant. Every self-respecting teenager in the developed world does whatever they want to do, parents be damned. This was her screw up, and she should suffer all the natural consequences.
*Just to be clear, although it's tempting I'm not advocating for the poor little idiot's death, I'm using the term "survive" in the same sense Sandip Roy did
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Absurd
I'd just like to tell Sandip: You don't speak for me and you don't speak for a lot of Indian-Americans.
And your hyping of the successes of indian americans is just sickening. You do realize that the majority of Indians that chose to and were able to immigrate here were educated and/or wealthy, right? You don't suppose this might have something to do with the success of Indian Americans?
And honestly, how many kids in affluent families with successful well educated parents aren't under tremendous pressure?
Yeah, Indian parents often seem to have a more rigid definition of "success" than is normal in the american culture, but so what? If you claim that Indian kids are unable to deal with this in a rational fashion rather than by plagiarizing and making up weak excuses later, then you are telling me that we, as a culture, are weak minded and morally weak. I find that beyond insulting.
When Indians fail, its not because we have such extraordinary pressures, and its not because we made poor decisions out of a fear of failure. And when Indians succeed there is no genetic or cultural reason for it either.
We fail and succeed for the same reasons that anyone else does: we're fucking human.