A lot of the South Asian diaspora expresses tensions between our generations & the generations of our parents, and I think a lot of this has to do with how accessible and widespread practices of 'self-awareness' have become in a transnational & globally connected world. A thread.

Self-awareness is largely guided by Western cultural hegemony -- that is to say that there is a strong emphasis in Western upbringing for kids to 'explore themselves' and 'learn who they are as individuals.' For a lot of the young South Asian diaspora, we don't grow up that way.

So when we do begin to ask questions about our own desires & wants, the frameworks available to us -- on the internet, in the media, in popular culture -- is one that emphasizes individual freedom, growth, and independent thought. We access Western ways of thinking about the Self

This makes it easier for us to explore our own personal (and sexual, etc) desires. We start to learn vocabularies and concepts that mean something to us, and we internalize ideas that are tangible and relevant. Often, though, these ideas are rooted in Western cultural hegemony.

This is not to say that people in our communities don't produce organic ideas from self-awareness. We certainly do. But we also now live in a world that is more connected via the media and internet, and global conversations are much more easily accessible.

It just so happens that those conversations are dominated by Western ideas of self, desires, culture, normality, and more. And we, as folks on the periphery, absorb a lot of that on a mass scale our parents may not have when they were growing up, where the world was less fluid.

I think that's why diaspora folks feel so disconnected from their parents - because we have access to a different set of ideas & vocabularies, often informed by Western ideas on a mass & globally connected scale that our parents had on a much smaller level, or did not have at all

This ultimately creates a seismic generational shift between us and our parents and elders. I often wonder why there's a bigger emotional, mental, and ideological gap between me and my mom than my mom and her mother, or grandmother. And I think this explains a part of it.