Workbook
For Nepali (American) Families
A Workbook on Diaspora Identity, the Himalayas in Memory, and the Generation Building Something New
You brought something across the world. This is where you figure out what you are passing down.
Nepali American families navigating the space between Nepal — its culture, language, and way of life — and the life being built here. Families from diverse backgrounds within Nepal (hill, Terai, Newari, Gurung, Sherpa, Tamang, and others) trying to name a shared identity across generations.
The Name It First Experience
Nepal is not easy to carry. It is a country of extraordinary complexity — dozens of ethnic groups, languages, traditions, and a geography that shapes identity in ways no other place does. You brought some version of that here. Your children are growing up inside a very different version of the world. The distance between those two realities is where your family has been living. This workbook does not ask your family to reduce Nepal to something simple. It asks you to name — together and on paper — what being Nepali means in your specific household, what you are choosing to carry forward, and what you are building that is entirely new. Grounded in Racial Identity Development theory (Cross, Helms), Acculturation Theory (Berry), Intersectionality (Crenshaw), diasporic identity scholarship (Brah, Hall), and research on Nepali American diaspora identity, this workbook gives your family a structure for the conversation. The work is yours to do together. This is where you write it down. You leave with The Nepali American Family Charter.
You can opt into 30-, 60-, and 90-day check-ins from your account. We recommend you do — the point is to see what changed.
Sample questions
- What do you call what your family carries from Nepal — not just the culture or the food, but the particular way of being in the world that came from that place?
- When your children ask questions about Nepal — about why you left, what it was like, what it means — what do you find yourself saying, and what do you leave out?
- What would The Nepali American Family Charter say your family is choosing together — what to carry forward from Nepal and what you are building here that is entirely your own?
Research basis
Cross (1971, 1991) Nigrescence Model adapted for South Asian American identity / Helms (1990) racial identity statuses / Berry (1997) acculturation strategies / Crenshaw (1989, 1991) intersectionality applied to ethnicity, caste, and gender / Brah (1996) Cartographies of Diaspora applied to Nepali diaspora / Hall (1990) Cultural Identity and Diaspora / Sijapati (2011) on Nepali identity and ethnic mobilization / Gurung (2009) on Nepali diaspora identity formation in the US / cultural frameworks of dharma, caste (jat), and ethnic identity within Nepal (Tamang, Newari, Gurung, Sherpa, Magar, Rai, Limbu diversity) / Onta (1996) on Nepali national identity and its limits applied to diaspora / South Asian diaspora family dynamics (Maira, 2002) / intergenerational identity in immigrant families (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001).
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