Blog by Fabiha Chowdhury

What does it mean to be a South Asian girl living in a western world?

It’s a question I grapple with every day. Despite 25 years of lived experience, I don’t think I can give you a succinct answer. I have tried reading the books, listening to the podcasts and watching the videos. But nothing has ever given me something I could hold on to as an answer. It’s only when I cast my mind back 8 years ago, to when I was volunteering at a writing workshop, where I can think of one piece of art that could possibly answer that question.

Despite the fact I read hundreds of different pieces of work, there is only which I came across that has so viscerally stuck with me in the years since. A Pair of Jeans by Qaisra Shahraz. This was recommended to me by a colleague whilst talking about the expectations placed on South Asian women from what we say to how to stand to how we dress.

Originally published in 1988, A Pair of Jeans is a short story about protagonist Miriam and how her decision to wear a particular outfit for a hiking trip catastrophically backfires. Shahraz never expected her work to be picked up by a professor in a different country to be used as a literary text examining short stories which wrote about women. And so, she decided to create an updated version as she was worried that readers would not see this as a work of fiction, and instead as an ‘accurate’ mirror of the community.

After reading the original 1988 version, I had this incredible feeling that no other piece of writing ever had elicited from me before

The story has Miriam come back home from her hiking trip in a pair of skinny fit jeans and a cropped jacket. Aside from the chic style the jeans and jacket display, they also give a hint of trouble as Miriam’s future in-laws catches her clad in this outfit late at night as she’s about to enter her home. The 1989 version has Miriam in the same jeans and cropped jacket as before, but this time has donned on a vest top which must’ve shrunk in the wash and results in her exposing about an inch of flesh at her waistline.

Many of you may be wondering: What’s the big deal? That it’s completely normal to wear skinny jeans and a vest top. Expected even.

But this is not the reality for a significant number of young south Asian women, living here in the UK. It probably sounds so alien but growing up I wasn’t allowed to wear jeans at home. Or if I did, they couldn’t be skinny jeans, ripped jeans, jeggings etc AND, I had to have on a top that was long enough to flow and cover my bottom. This wasn’t just when I was out and about in public, this was at home too. The idea of even just showing the skin of my stomach/waist was unthinkable.

I remember thinking none of my white friends had to dress like that, and that most of my Asian friends did.

This story, as absurd as it may seem to some, had me imagining my own mother and her reaction – the very realistic parroting of the old Asian proverb, ‘What would people say?’

The thing that makes A Pair of Jeans a really powerful is how it concisely displays how when you’re a child of an immigrant dealing with the clash between your cultural/religious identity and the western world you live in, you have to adopt two (usually separate) sides to yourself. One side will not like the other, and the idea of compromise feels so far out of reach.

Whilst growing up, I associated different attributes of myself, different ways of acting, with each side of my identity. The western version of me, which I embodied at school and with my friends, was the version of me that also wore jeans and t-shirts, was very outspoken and did what I wanted to do. In what my mum would say, I acted ‘white’. The South Asian version of me wore casual shalwar khameez like Miriam did – she also did the cleaning, child-rearing, didn’t talk back and so on. The perfect daughter whom you used to compare your own child to. I never knew that the term to describe this shifting identity was ‘code-switching’ – it was something that I automatically did and felt imperative in order to survive day-to-day life.

The story has Miriam showcase this by her thought processes as she walks down the stairs wearing something more demure after being caught in the act of not being a stereotypical stay-at-home Asian daughter. She marvels at how hypocritical it all feels, the switch from one identity to the other. I know for a fact that the only reason it feels hypocritical at all is because she had to consciously make that switch. She does it all the time without thinking about it (i.e. the choice of what to wear hiking and with friends compared to what to wear to celebratory events with family).

Remember the old Asian Proverb I referenced before, “What will people think?” This saying is of massive relevance to Miriam’s story. This saying is a phrase universally used by South Asian parents to try and shame kids into doing as their told. Public opinion, be that of neighbours, family, or friends, holds a lot of importance to the older generations. Why? I honestly couldn’t tell you. I had the saying hissed at me many a time for simply sitting next to a boy, talking to my male family friends and whatever else. It wasn’t due to maliciousness on my parent’s behalf – I think they were trying their best to look out for me in the only way they knew how.

A Pair of Jeans is one of those few stories that captures the essence of what it’s like to be an Asian girl living in a western world. The constant switching between identities as Miriam experiences in the story is just so lifelike. The guilt and shame that’s associated with one or the other.

Surprisingly so, A Pair of Jeans had me empathising with the older female figures in this story Fatima and Begum. Usually I’d be quick to dismiss their actions, but Qaisra Shahraz does an amazing job of displaying their conflicting emotions for the whole situation too.

Coming back to the the question of what does it mean to be a South Asian girl living in a western world? I still don’t have an answer, but Shahraz gives us a place to start: a piece, which can act as a mirror to your own experience. Perhaps its living in a space where your experience is unique and layered, where your parents fight to protect you with tools forged in a world that no longer exists. It possibly means holding contradictions, code-switching without thinking, and learning to carve out an identity in the silence between cultures.

Reading A Pair of Jeans felt like stumbling across a truth I’d been carrying for years without words to name it. It captures the tension, the guilt, the quiet negotiations that shape our lives. And yet, it’s just one story- I couldn’t tell you where you can find the others as they are still being written, videoed or told.