Passage West

Passage West, by Rishi Reddi

This was a fascinating read about South Indians in the Imperial Valley in California...many Sikhs and other Indians came from the Punjab to work up and down the west coast in the early part of the 1900s. 

I learned a few years ago about the Ghardar Party, which was founded in Astoria, Oregon, in 1913. According to this informative article from the Oregon Historical Society, 30 million people left India between 1830 and 1930. Men would go off to other British colonies to work and send money back home.

In the early 1900s, they began to go to North America, and this is where our story starts. It's the tale of Ram Singh, who arrives in the United States in 1914. After experiencing racism and violence in Washington, he flees to the Imperial Valley in California, where he finds refuge with other Sikhs. 

He's left behind his wife in India, Padma, and their son, who was born after Ram left India. Over the years he plans to return home, but those years stretch on and on as he hopes to make more money.

The Indians in the United States worked extremely hard and were treated horribly. The white men envied their success and began getting violent to lash back.

And when World War II began, many immigrants joined the U.S. Army to prove their patriotism. A few years later, the U.S. government rescinded their citizenship, disallowing them from owning property, voting, and many other rights.

Many Indian immigrants married Mexican women, especially because if they went back to India to collect their wives, they were unable to return to the U.S. again.

I thought this book was fascinating and heart breaking...another example of our whitewashed history. It was primarily the story of the men, and I would have appreciated hearing more about the women's perspectives. The women in the story seemed a lot more relatable than the men.