{ "id": "p16022coll554:156", "object": "https://cdm16022.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getthumbnail/collection/p16022coll554/id/156", "set_spec": "p16022coll554", "collection_name": "Immigrant Stories", "collection_name_s": "Immigrant Stories", "collection_description": "
Immigrant Stories is a research and archiving project run by the Immigration History Research Center (IHRC) at the University of Minnesota. Immigrant Stories helps immigrants, refugees, and their family members create digital stories: brief videos with images, text, and audio about a personal experience.
\n\nThis project defines \"immigrant\" broadly. Our collection contains digital stories from people living outside their country of birth as well as stories created by their children and grandchildren. Immigrant Stories also welcomes stories from international students, international adoptees, and people who do not feel that their stories fit a particular, or just one, category. All stories are important, and we invite you to make a video and share yours with us.
", "title": "Renuka Paltanwale", "title_s": "Renuka Paltanwale", "title_t": "Renuka Paltanwale", "title_search": "Renuka Paltanwale", "title_sort": "renukapaltanwale", "description": "Renuka Paltanwale was born in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, India in 1998. Her father had moved to California in 1994 to work for Microsoft, and she and her family lived in California until she was in fifth grade. They returned to India, and she continued her education there before later returning to the United States to study at the University of Minnesota.", "date_created": [ "2016-12-10" ], "date_created_ss": [ "2016-12-10" ], "date_created_sort": "2016", "creator": [ "Paltanwale, Renuka" ], "creator_ss": [ "Paltanwale, Renuka" ], "creator_sort": "paltanwalerenuka", "types": [ "Moving Image" ], "format": [ "Oral histories | http://vocab.getty.edu/aat/300202595" ], "format_name": [ "Oral histories" ], "dimensions": "0:04:30", "subject": [ "Origin India", "Origin India (Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh)", "Ethnicity Indian" ], "subject_ss": [ "Origin India", "Origin India (Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh)", "Ethnicity Indian" ], "language": [ "English" ], "parent_collection": "Immigrant Stories; https://cla.umn.edu/ihrc/immigrant-stories", "parent_collection_name": "Immigrant Stories", "contributing_organization": "University of Minnesota, Immigration History Research Center", "contributing_organization_name": "University of Minnesota, Immigration History Research Center", "contributing_organization_name_s": "University of Minnesota, Immigration History Research Center", "contact_information": "University of Minnesota, Immigration History Research Center. 311 Elmer L. Andersen Library, 222 - 21st Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55455; https://cla.umn.edu/ihrc", "local_identifier": [ "cla-ihrc-is-0185" ], "dls_identifier": [ "cla-ihrc-is-0185" ], "rights_statement_uri": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/", "transcription": "file:///F/Immigrant%20Stories%20Transfer/Paltanwale,%20Renuka/Renuka%20Paltanwale%20Transcription.txt[7/13/2017 9:59:16 AM]\nYou might ask: who am I? I am an American citizen, but I was born in India. My parents came to California\nwhen my dad joined Microsoft in 1994. I am their first child. My parents didn’t have any family in the US to\nhelp care for a newborn, so I was born in India in 1998.\nWho am I? I am a girl who went to elementary school in Fremont, California during the day and recited\nancient Sanskrit shlokas in the evening. On weekdays after school I watched Arthur and Sesame Street on\nPBS Kids. On the weekends, my dad and I watched TV-serials based on Indian epics.\nBut who am I? I have been trilingual since I can remember. In fact, I was surprised when my parents\nrecently told me that when I was a toddler, my father spoke only English and Marathi to me, while my mom\nwould only respond if I spoke in Hindi to her! That’s how my family ingrained all three languages in me.\nAs a little kid, the question ‘Who am I?’ didn’t come up too often. Sure, my family was vegetarian. Our house\nwas full of old Bollywood and Indian classical music. Diwali was our big holiday, not Christmas. But my mom\nbrought home that little tinsel tree on Christmas and took my brother and I trick-or-treating every year. I\nknew the Indian national anthem, but I also knew the American Pledge of Allegiance in two languages.\nWhen I heard my parents discussing our move back to India at the end of my fifth grade, I really asked\nmyself: who am I? At that point, I was a girl who had moved back and forth between India and the US thrice\nalready. I practically changed my accent every year!\nIt took a while, but I eventually fit in at middle school in India. By the time I started high school, I was so\nsettled I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to return to the US. I had become an Indian with an\nAmerican passport.\nA few years down the line, my parents and I decided it would be beneficial for me to study and later work\nand settle down in the US. Three busy years of high school and college applications were a blur. I didn’t\nreally wonder: ‘Who am I?’ until I set foot on the U of M campus.\nToday as I find myself asking my new friends scores of questions about American culture and history, I\nwonder what it means to be ‘Indian American.’ When I moved to India, I was ‘the girl from the US’ to my\nclassmates. Now back in America, am I ‘the girl from India?'\nWill I live the rest of my life the Indian way, or the American way? Is there an Indian American way? Can\nyou even describe an entire lifestyle or philosophy with a single label?\nI wish to support my parents when they are older, as they do for my grandparents, today. I think that it’s a\nbeautiful Indian tradition that has made communities stronger and maintained support systems despite there\nbeing generational gaps. The ways in which I will take care of my parents probably won’t be the same, but it\nis one of my goals.\nMy parents’ American dream was to gain financial security for themselves and their children and then to\nreturn to India. I see myself living and working in America, but my dreams have been shaped by my\nexperiences and tastes acquired in India!\nIt’s hard to answer this question: ‘Who am I?’ I don’t even know if it truly matters. I’m just glad I’m in the\nright place to start finding answers.", "kaltura_video": "1_9lcwknve", "page_count": 0, "record_type": "primary", "first_viewer_type": "kaltura_video", "viewer_type": "kaltura_video", "attachment": "360.pdf", "attachment_format": "pdf", "document_type": "item", "featured_collection_order": 999, "date_added": "2021-01-26T00:00:00Z", "date_added_sort": "2021-01-26T00:00:00Z", "date_modified": "2021-01-26T00:00:00Z", "_version_": 1710348979593543680, "type": "Moving Image", "collection": "p16022coll554", "is_compound": false, "parent_id": "156", "thumb_url": "https://cdnapisec.kaltura.com/p/1369852/thumbnail/entry_id/1_9lcwknve", "thumb_cdn_url": "https://dkp5i0hinw9br.cloudfront.net/243c70627846c2c00db2a9e877d2999f99f21359.png", "children": [ ] }