An Asian Indian Student's Identity: Living in Two Worlds

Authors

Kavita MittapalliFollow

Abstract

Using narrative inquiry, I tell the story of an Asian Indian student attending a large mid-Atlantic university who approached me in the summer of 2002 for my master's thesis interview. She was an Indian by birth who was adopted by White parents when she was an infant. She had not been to India since. Her story provided me with rich insights into her life including her childhood, identity formation, relationships with her adoptive parents and siblings, and social interactions outside home while attending school. I came to understand issues of meaning-making of her life and sub-culture through her story. I use narrative inquiry as a way to represent her story.

Keywords

Narrative Inquiry, Representation, Identity Formation, Asian Indian, and Sub-culture

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Arvinder K. Johri, doctoral student at George Mason University for assisting her in editorial work.

Publication Date

9-1-2009

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2009.1405

Recommended APA Citation

Mittapalli, K. (2009). An Asian Indian Student's Identity: Living in Two Worlds. The Qualitative Report, 14(3), 466-477. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2009.1405