Day 5 (Ethan)

 



We started off day 5 with a presentation from Ms. Agarwal, where she talked about weddings in India. She showed pictures from her wedding and shared with us how different the traditions are in an Indian wedding compared to an American wedding. 


After the presentation we had an interview with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, who is an award-winning Indian-American author. Before and during some of J-term we all read her book “Sister of My Heart”. The bestselling novel about the extraordinary bond between two women, and the family secrets and romantic jealousies that threaten to tear them apart. During the interview, Chitra answered a lot of our questions and talked about her experience as an author. She shared a lot about how she came up with ideas for her books, what influences her to write her books, and how her books reflect real life. It was interesting learning things about her and the sense of “Sister of My Heart”.


The last thing we did in the morning was watch the 3rd episode of “Asian Americans”. The film discussed a lot about the problems the Chinese had to face in the United States in the 1950s. During the 1950s, China was a very communist country and Americans feared that Chinese immigrants would spread communism to the United States. Americans suspected a lot of Chinese Americans and even banned immigrants from coming into the country. The film then went on to talk about the first Asian politicians in America and their fight to get into the House of Representatives. 


In the Afternoon, we ended off the day getting a lesson on Bollywood dancing. Bollywood Dance is the name given to the dance-form used in Indian (Hindi) films. Bollywood Dance style is a fusion of various dance styles. It includes Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Bhangra, Jazz, Hip-hop, Arabic, Western dance to name a few. Classical Indian dance incorporates the two basic elements of dance and expression. This was a fun experience to get a feel on what dancing is like in another culture.

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