Stranger Intimacy Ch 1 & 2

Text: Stranger Intimacy by Nayan Shah

Chapters: 1, 2

The rather incomprehensible and intriguingly enigmatic title, at first glance, proves to be the crux of the book, Stranger Intimacy, written by Nayan Shah.  In the text, Shah portrays the real and vivid picture of the consequences of having South Asian and Chinese immigrants in the Western North America (Vancouver, California, Seattle, etc) during the late nineteenth and in the early twentieth century. In order to enforce the validity of his observations and analyses, he presents a plenty of anecdotal evidence and interesting arguments.

According to Shah, the immigrants mainly from India and China – the so called “transient people”, mostly men, moved to Western North America to find temporary jobs and worked in ranches, lumber yards, etc. The coming of the immigrants proved to be rather intrusive to the “homosocial” communities of the predominantly white population who had already settled in these parts. The assimilation of the immigrants into the societies was made extremely difficult, if not impossible by the hatred and disgust that the white individuals and families had due to their physical and cultural differences (racial differences).  Overwhelmed by the increased population of foreign immigrants and their sense of responsibility for their own people, adult white men started to grow overprotective and accused innumerable foreigners of acts of indecency. Moreover, the increased competition for jobs further fueled this white hatred of foreign immigrants. For instance, in Fair Oaks, California in 1911, “three young white men” instigated a raid on Hindu immigrants working as lumberjacks for sexually harassing and assaulting white men in the community.  Even though “South Asian men”, Indians, escaped any kind of torture and physical assault, they were warned that they would be “killed” if they came back to the place again.

As the immigrants failed to assimilate into the existing white societies, as their number grew, they formed their own communities, hanging out in bars and sharing their experiences together. Despite of this positive atmosphere created, these communities also had their dark sides. Perhaps out of despair and loneliness (immigrants were mostly men who lived alone with their families back in their homes), much public drunkenness, violence and prostitution were rampant. Two of the quintessential examples of these communities that were geographically separated from the middle class white families and were formed by the immigrants were Chinatown and Gastown in Canada, the so-called Borderlands. Due to the proliferation of these acts of indecency, policing in these communities were tightened and a large number of foreigners were incarcerated or had to pay fines. As these immigrants or ‘strangers’ went through hardships and lived together in confined spaces, although they came from completely different backgrounds, they grew more and more intimate, understanding each other’s positions and circumstances. This fact attributes to the title of the text, Stranger Intimacy.

Personally, it is painful to see these “strangers”, who are literally strangers in the region, are discriminated and treated as inferiors in white dominant societies just because their different color and race. Although they indulge in things that are considered disgusting and indecent, I believe that their circumstances required them or almost forced them to engage in such acts.