They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us

by Prachi Gupta

We were siblings, but more than that, we were siblings who liked each other, and more than even that: siblings who were friends.

But I still struggle with what to call myself, rotating between Indian American, South Asian, desi, or, simply, brown. None seem quite right.

The belief that we were exceptional protected us. Until it didn’t. Because stories designed to uphold hierarchies protect only one group—those at the very top.

Anyone who fails to meet the expectations set forth by white America risks being ignored, overlooked, dismissed, forgotten, abandoned.

in a country where their position remains tenuous and their acceptance is always in question.

The myth erases the legacy of racial exclusion from America’s collective consciousness while perpetuating racial exclusion. The myth creates cognitive dissonance and then tells us that this dissonance does not exist. The myth splits our psyches, then calls this violence peace. The myth forces our minds to forget that which our bodies cannot: that belonging is always conditional.

He was like you—gentle, mild-mannered, and kind. I was the fussy, possessive, mischievous one, clawing at you for constant attention. My temperament mirrored Papa’s—stubborn, opinionated, strong-willed, outspoken, and loud. Traits admired and encouraged in my father but concerning when manifested by a girl.

There was a time when my outspokenness brought us together instead of tearing us apart. There was a time when speaking my mind was received not as a threat but as an act of love.

Either you had to sit and turn into Papa’s disciple, as one of us, or you had to withdraw in resignation, unable to contribute—not because you had nothing to say, but because Papa stood at a pulpit for one.

“There’s no war,” I said to Yush. “What battle is Papa fighting?” The problem with that kind of a personality, I said, was that when everything was peaceful, one had to create wars to feel useful or important.

I asked Papa why he yelled so much, and he said, “Because that’s the only way I’ve found people will listen to me.”

I have thought often about the woman in that photo: what she yearned for and what she believed she was about to find. I have long wanted to meet her. I want to understand what happened to her.

I never asked you what hopes and dreams buoyed you amid the all-consuming loneliness and grief of leaving your family and your country behind.

When, even in his own country, his people’s stories did not matter, he was forced to study his oppressor’s greatness, and learned to deny his own.

I am not sure if it ever turned into love—at least not love as I understand it—as much as a dependency on each other.

I barely knew the men who raised you, but I could see the effects of their kindness on you and how that kindness shaped Yush and me. I wondered what it might be like to be raised by men like them, men who did not appear to yell to get what they wanted.

You were so busy at home that I rarely saw you engage in any hobbies, Mummy, and as a girl I assumed that you simply had no interests.

I never thought about what you might want for yourself beyond meeting the expectations of the role you played.

I had not made Annie an Indian American girl like me. The decision to cut myself out of my own story was automatic and subconscious.

I had seen Annie as human but myself as a malleable hunk of metal, a sidekick to support a white girl on her journey of self-actualization.

His screaming and insults were so commonplace that I can’t remember many incidents with any specificity—what he said, what triggered him, or how exactly you responded.

I was always on guard for the next rupture of peace, this thing I knew was coming but could never predict or prevent.

He had no awareness that I was imitating the very behavior that he modeled at home.

The truth is, I had no idea if Drew could have appreciated me for who I really was. I never gave him the chance. I couldn’t accept myself, so how could I let Drew?

Papa said that I was sabotaging my future, but I felt like he was the one undermining it.

My badness could not be rehabilitated. Papa had given up on me. I was no longer worthy of his anger, only of his scorn.

To my surprise, he even offered to pay the full tuition, room, and board—a sum easily totaling two hundred thousand dollars. I was amazed by Papa’s generosity. But in the next sentence he added, “After that, you’re on your own. If you ever need any help or support, don’t come to me.” I didn’t expect to rely on Papa financially after college, but in his words I heard a threat: Papa might disown me if I pursued art seriously.

But I couldn’t picture how a single thing would look—how I’d dress, what I’d do, who my friends would be, what I’d study, how I’d spend my free time, where I’d live. Trying to fill that dark space with lightness and distinct shapes and vibrant colors was a futile and dangerous act that would only torture me with possibilities that I knew I could never have.

Marin and Nancy represented parts of myself I strove to inhabit in an identity that I did not yet own. I felt like they understood who I wanted to be.

I wonder what you would have seen about yourself if you had a separate group of friends—maybe through a job or an outside hobby—who saw you not as a symbol but as a full person. I wonder if Papa discouraged you from pursuing independent activities for precisely that reason.

The angrier Papa became that I would not bend, the more rigid I became, every bit as stubborn as my father.

I had never seen Papa doubt himself before, and it made him finally seem human to me.

We didn’t know how to control the stories that others would tell about Yush or us, and so it was best not to say anything at all. We put up a wall between ourselves and everyone else while pretending there was no wall at all.

We didn’t know that by trying to forget, we were more deeply committing ourselves to the very circumstances and problems that had caused the explosion in the first place.

I needed someone to hear me, really hear me, and tell me that what I felt was okay to feel, because I didn’t trust my own senses. And I needed to know that, despite all the material comforts I enjoyed and all the gifts that Papa bestowed upon me, what I experienced was difficult, and I wasn’t bad or weak for thinking so.

You treated Papa like the enemy one moment but were fiercely loyal to him the next.

I wonder if your decision to tell him some version of my thoughts was a way to share your own opinion passively, which was safer than directly saying that his behavior hurt you.

This is what I believed it meant to be okay: the ability to convince everyone else I was okay.

It seemed to me that everyone around me was unstable and it was my job to make sure that everyone was okay.

despite all that Papa had accomplished and how intelligent he was, happiness and peace were strangers to my father,

I was trying to get in touch with the part of myself that could express, but after a childhood of learning how to suppress, I didn’t know how to do that.

You knew Papa would get angry, and you didn’t want to be blamed. You had set me up to take the fall, and you denied it now because you were scared of how Papa would react. You had long ago stopped being my lookout.

Deep down, I had always feared that I was just like Papa, because, like him, I was hot-tempered, stubborn, and highly critical.

It was only in not lashing out that I was able to prove to myself that I wasn’t the same. Had I mirrored his reactivity, I would have become further confused and convinced that even as I despised him, I was just like him, seeing his behavior in my own reactions to him. I would lose the ability to distinguish who I really was versus what I was reacting to,

Papa acted as if his success was self-made. But Papa couldn’t have accomplished so much without your willingness to support him and stay at home to raise us.

This stunted his ability to respond to my emotions, which had begun to overflow. He saw my emotions like the threat of a tsunami’s rising tide, under which he’d drown.

It was this cycle that hurt so much, the sense that he could express care only when he could play the hero.

While the readings empowered me at first, they ultimately shamed me into a deeper silence. Everything I read revolved around white families.

The interventions that worked for white women did not consider the various structural, racial, or cultural barriers that immigrant women of color faced in accessing help, assuming also a familiarity and cultural acceptance of divorce.

That thought hurt me even more—that Papa was so careless with the evidence of my childhood not to hurt me but because it didn’t matter to him. Had it ever mattered?