The American South, in many ways, is a microcosm of the complex racial, political and social histories of the United States and the ways in which we, as a country, draw boundaries and construct identities and definitions of belonging.

This project takes a closer look at the intersection of cultural and regional identities among South Asians in North Carolina, particularly in how specific terminology and identity formation varies across generations.

For the interviewees who participated in this project, the spaces in which they slip in and out of their identities are varied and layered. Just as the Southern experience isn’t a monolith, neither is the Asian American experience nor, as in the case of this project, the South Asian American experience in the South.