Jesse Banerjee

My Father Steve Banerjee Steve Banerjee, Bengali Entrepreneur This is the story of a Bengali immigrant to the United States--an amazing Bengali immigrant entrepreneur. A self made man, he was not applauded in our circles for building perhaps the best known brand name that any Bengali in North American has ever created. His controversial life has turned him into a subject of gossip, and self-censorship in Bengali immigrant communities. While we may question whether or not we identify with him, we cannot ignore the fact that in some of the most crucial moments of his career and life, he chose to identify with us. The time has come for us to reclaim the story of Somen Banerjee, and to face the assault that the example of his tragic and triumphant life makes against some of our most cherished myths--the model minority, the politely schmoozing nerdy technology entrepreneur, the naïve, self-effacing Bengali immigrant "good boy." Anti-Hero: Why Steve Banerjee Matters Much has been written about the vaunted myth of the model minority. The loudest voices in the Bengali community in America (as with many South Asian diasporic communities) have been willing to accept the consequences of the label; internally marginalized groups (real or imagined) have been more willing to publicly challenge the concept -- but to what end? Long evenings of discussions don't mean very much as long as the terms and consequences of the debate remain unaltered. Histories like that of Steve Banerjee allow us to begin to do just this. Steve Banerjee is Bengali. Again, Steve Banerjee is Bengali. His Bengali-boy-does-good, rags-to-riches rise incorporates the same tactics and techniques that many of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, heroes of the community, use today. His success based on "culturally derived" values of hard work, ambition, care for family, etc. predates that of the more recent wave of middle-class IIT engineers laden down with stock option glory. To condemn Steve Banerjee is to condemn one who is narrowly different from our greatest heroes. Same culture, same ambition, and with even greater success -- surely the Chippendales are a more lasting contribution to the American cultural landscape than the plethora of desi-engineered technology products. To condemn Steve Banerjee is to acknowledge that model minority values are not neutrally positive, neutrally equal. While the Bengali community has been slow to identify with Somen Banerjee, the triumph and tragedy of his life has been recognized by the outside world. Barry Sonnenfield, the director of the hit film "Men In Black", plans to produce a film called "Chippendales," based on the life of Steve Banerjee and the early history of his troupe, based on Ron Sheldon's unpublished book of the same name. It's expected out sometime in 2000, from Touchstone Pictures, which is owned by Disney. (The British television network ITV showed a program on the same theme in September 1998, called "Chippendales: A Secret History.") It would be the ultimate irony if the first major Bengali immigrant character on the American big screen were to be someone we refuse to acknowledge as one of our own. Acknowledgement does not imply endorsement; as a community, we need to begin to break past our own myths about ourselves, to see ourselves as fully rounded, capable of having our own complex antiheroes. The legacy of Somen Banerjee both extends and reinforces different parts of our understanding of what it means to be Bengali in America, but we can never learn from it unless we can begin to extend our sense of community identification to acknowledge the non-politically-correct aspects of our shared history, warts and all.