We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
In 1956, Dalip Singh Saund was elected as Representative of California’s 29th district, becoming the first Asian American member of the US Congress. This chapter approaches Saund’s 1960 memoir Congressman from India with particular attention to his complicated role as a “representative,” in multiple senses of the term – as a representative in the US Congress, but also in his various embodiments as a Sikh, an Indian, and an American. Published during his second term, Congressman is a carefully calibrated performance, in which Saund narrates his story as a sort of proto-model minority tale and constructs the USA as a global ally to Asia during the Cold War. Despite the tale of immigrant achievement and his indefatigable optimism, racial inequality persists as a theme throughout, and this chapter examines two moments in the memoir where the politics of race play a key role: his 1956 campaign for Congress; and his tour through Asia as an ambassador one year later. In attending to these moments, this chapter asks, how did the pressures of Cold War ideology impact how Saund rendered his past and how he imagined American and Indian futures? And how did his narrative shape the climate for the wave of South Asian immigrants who would soon arrive in the USA with the passing of the Hart–Celler Act five years later?
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.