The Karma of Brown Folk

By Vijay Prashad

Book Overview

Village Voice Favorite Books of 2000

The popular book challenging the idea of a model minority, now in paperback!

"How does it feel to be a problem?" asked W. E. B. Du Bois of black Americans in his classic The Souls of Black Folk. A hundred years later, Vijay Prashad asks South Asians "How does it feel to be a solution?" In this kaleidoscopic critique, Prashad looks into the complexities faced by the members of a "model minority"-one, he claims, that is consistently deployed as "a weapon in the war against black America."

On a vast canvas, The Karma of Brown Folk attacks the two pillars of the "model minority" image, that South Asians are both inherently successful and pliant, and analyzes the ways in which U.S. immigration policy and American Orientalism have perpetuated these stereotypes. Prashad uses irony, humor, razor-sharp criticism, personal reflections, and historical research to challenge the arguments made by Dinesh D'Souza, who heralds South Asian success in the U.S., and to question the quiet accommodation to racism made by many South Asians. A look at Deepak Chopra and others whom Prashad terms "Godmen" shows us how some South Asians exploit the stereotype of inherent spirituality, much to the chagrin of other South Asians. Following the long engagement of American culture with South Asia, Prashad traces India's effect on thinkers like Cotton Mather and Henry David Thoreau, Ravi Shankar's influence on John Coltrane, and such essential issues as race versus caste and the connection between antiracism activism and anticolonial resistance.

The Karma of Brown Folk locates the birth of the "model minority" myth, placing it firmly in the context of reaction to the struggle for Black Liberation. Prashad reclaims the long history of black and South Asian solidarity, discussing joint struggles in the U.S., the Caribbean, South Africa, and elsewhere, and exposes how these powerful moments of alliance faded from historical memory and were replaced by Indian support for antiblack racism. Ultimately, Prashad writes not just about South Asians in America but about America itself, in the tradition of Tocqueville, Du Bois, Richard Wright, and others. He explores the place of collective struggle and multiracial alliances in the transformation of self and community-in short, how Americans define themselves.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0816634394
• ISBN13: 9780816634392
• Release Date: March 2001
• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.8" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

A Refreshing Perspective!!!

Mr. Prasad's views were a refreshing change....Mr. Prasad's work tells it like it is and shows that even though many nonwhite immigrant groups have been successful in this country and have achieved honor and status that they, just like African-Americans and other people of color, are not above the pervasive anti-nonwhite racism that permeates this society.

"We want your work, we don't want your lives."

This should be required reading for indians living in the US. Whether you agree or not with all of the opinions it helps create positive discussion (including an explanation of why such a large percentage Indians in the US have fared so well financially). It also helps place South Asians in the context of US social order--where one's status often revolves around money and race. The book is worth reading if only for its scathing review of deepak chopra :)

A must read for ALL south asians

This is a book, that you will either love or hate--no middle ground. I personally love this book. Vijay Prashad's book provides a honest, critical analysis of south-asians in America. It is sharp in its criticsm of Hinduvata's influence in shaping Indian identity; just as keen in debunking the model minority myth. It is a superb rebuttal to D'Souza, and other neoconservatives and the ways in which white america uses south asians as weapons against blacks. Prashad draws on Orientalism of America, and how this affects the ways in which desis are viewed and the ways in which they act in the racial landscape of America. Finally, Prashad asks of desis to commit model minority suicide--something every desi needs to explore critically. This book must be read by all south asians in US, to whom it is so passionately argued; whether one agrees with Prashad's arguments or not, there is something informative and worthy of consideration for desis of all political affinities. For others, it is a parochial account of the Indian immigrant experience, which makes it a bit difficult to understand, but nevertheless something you need to read and try to understand; definetely a must read for black-americans, for this book calls for a black-asian (brown) solidarity that is worth exploring. The fate (Karma)of ALL brown folks in white america, needs to be shaped by such a solidarity.I especially recommend this book to South Asian teens, who are caught in the midst of finding their identities, and jumbling to reconcile desiness with their americaness.

Love in the Time of Solidarity

Vijay Prashad has written an incisive book that is far reaching and timely. This is a handbook for those who have been thinking about what it is to be South Asian American in the US racial landscape. I haven't read anything in a long time that can draw out the progressive connections between the likes of Asian Dub Foundation, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and John Coltrane; and those who would have us fall into obsessive-compulsive disorders such as Sly Baba Chopra and D'Souza. Passionately written and politically astute.

breaking it down

Prashad's book keeps in step not only with academic scholarship about Asian Americans and Asians in America but shows why we should all care. Finally someone breaks down meaningless stereotypes about Asian "success" and Black "failure" -- D'Souza's self-congratulatory rhetoric ignores the complicated truths of survival we see and live everyday. Prashad gives common sense a good name.