How May I Help You?: An Immigrant's Journey from MBA to Minimum Wage

by Deepak Singh

Overview

In this moving and insightful work, Deepak Singh chronicles his downward mobility as an immigrant to a small town in Virginia. Armed with an MBA from India, Singh can get only a minimum-wage job in an electronics store. Every day he confronts unfamiliar American mores, from strange idioms to deeply entrenched racism.
 
Telling stories through the unique lens of an initially credulous outsider who is “fresh off the plane,” Singh learns about the struggles of his colleagues: Ron, a middle-aged African-American man trying to keep his life intact despite health concerns; Jackie, a young African-American woman diligently attending school after work; and Cindy, whose matter-of-fact attitude helps Deepak adapt to his job and his new life.
  
How May I Help You? is an incisive take on life in the United States and a reminder that the stories of low-wage employees can bring candor and humanity to debates about work, race, and immigration.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520293311
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	02/14/2017
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	305
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Deepak Singh is a writer, radio producer, and journalist. He is a frequent contributor to PRI’s The World and has written for The New York Times, NPR, The Boston Globe and The Atlantic.

Table of Contents

Foreword Holly Donahue Singh xi

Acknowledgments xvii

1 Answering Machine 1

2 Lucknow 7

3 Transit 24

4 My American Wife 36

5 Job Application 42

6 Hired 49

7 First Day 59

8 One Month's Notice 67

9 English 78

10 Colleagues 83

11 Olive Skin 99

12 Camera King 110

13 Don't Buy It 117

14 Foreigner 121

15 My Name Is Deepak 131

16 I'm Straight Today 135

17 Holly and I 146

18 All Hands on Deck 150

19 Long Two Years 162

20 The Golden Quarter 173

21 Two Americas 190

22 Paula 198

23 Cameron 208

24 Don't Sue Me! 215

25 Post-Christmas Blues 228

26 A Handful of Dimes 242

27 India Visit 248

Editorial Reviews

"With careful candor and clarity, [Deepak Singh] shows the challenges facing new immigrants and the effort it takes to surmount them."

Booklist

"With careful candor and clarity, [Deepak Singh] shows the challenges facing new immigrants and the effort it takes to surmount them."

Booklist

2016-12-06
An immigrant's thoughtful account of what it means to make a new life in a strange land, in this case the South. Singh, an immigrant from northern India who found his way to Charlottesville, Virginia, is the definition of aspirational—but also, as he writes, because he is armed with intelligence, ambition, and a master's degree, a touch on the arrogant side. Any superiority he may have felt disappeared when he put on a pair of khakis and a button-down shirt and went to work at the one job he could find, selling cellphones and other electronics in a strip mall. "I got the feeling that my resume didn't look familiar to most hiring managers," he writes, "so they buried it at the bottom of the pile." Still, despairing of ever finding work suited to his talents, he took the gig—and, because he's motivated and smart, rose up to become "an asset to the company." Singh wears his pride lightly, and for the most part here, he plays the role of the not-quite-dispassionate but ever watchful observer, learning things about American mores and customs along the way—don't ever call a black person by the N-word, eat pizza with your hands—but also seeing deeper oddities in a land where many citizens have been to jail, where adults cling to childish, grasping ways, and mothers and daughters wear matching outfits that are too young for the one and too old for the other. Singh is something of an Indian success story after a year on the sales floor, but, he reminds his readers, not all Indians are ipso facto successes: true, Indian immigrants tend to fare well in this country, but "there are Indians who mop the floor and clean the toilets and struggle to pay the rent." An interesting look at a puzzling society—ours—from the point of view of a sympathetic but not uncritical outsider. Good reading for students of comparative cultures.

Kirkus Reviews