Love, Hate and Other Filters

Maya struggles with the traditional expectations of her Indian immigrant parents and the American culture that surrounds her in Batavia, Illinois. She attends an Indian wedding dressed traditional clothes and gold jewelry. Her mother observes that Maya looks like she is going to a funeral. Sofia’s disappointment in Maya is clear when a friend takes Maya to the bride’s dressing room: “Take her, beta, and show her how to be at least a little Indian” (5). When Maya goes to school with Violet on Monday morning, she wears skinny jeans and a V-neck sweater, a clear demonstration of her personality and modern preferences.

Yet Maya does not abandon her heritage entirely. She consciously chooses not to sleep with Phil, a decision that ultimately affirms her Indian upbringing. When Violet sends along a condom for Phil and Maya’s nontraditional prom night, Maya shakes her head. Though she wears a red bikini to swimming lessons with Phil, Maya still asks him to turn around when she is dressing. She also prefers not to kiss Kareem or Phil when others might be watching. She tells Phil that it is her “Indian modesty complex” (257).

The Indian experience of being caught between cultures is an existing subgenre in other books and film. Love, Hate and Other Filters specifically mentions The Namesake. Maya knows the book, and she is in a unique position to explain it to Phil during their tutoring sessions. Examples of other films and books in this genre include Bend It Like Beckham, in which a British Indian young woman wants to play soccer (and to date a non-Indian) against her parents’ expectations. The novel Ayesha At Last is a rewriting of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice that is set among desi (term referring to people who originate from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka) Muslims in Toronto.

Asif and Sofia see a daughter who seems to value her Americanness over being an Indian or a Muslim. But Maya cannot escape her ethnicity, her identity, or her faith. At school, she is the only brown-skinned student among a sea of white-skinned classmates. Her Muslim identity makes her a target after Ethan Branson blows up the federal building in Springfield. Even after Maya tries to explain to her classmate Brian that she is an American, he does not listen or even care. Instead he blames “you… people” for his veteran brother’s missing leg (207). All he can see is Maya’s skin color and her religion. Maya starts to wish that she were a normal (white) American teenager: “I want to disappear, to blend into the throng of students” (178), to be a teenager who can “mourn without fear” (154).

Yet Phil does not see Maya’s culture, religion, or skin color as her defining characteristics. He appreciates how she “knows the right answers” (40). He has had an open mind since first grade, when he was the first classmate to taste Maya’s Indian birthday treat. Violet also sees Maya as a fully-developed person rather than a religious and ethnic minority. In fact, she is the one who encourages Maya to stand up for herself and reports Brian’s verbal bullying to the school dean.