Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan

I am an American who has grown increasingly disenchanted with "the American story." Everyone seems to have one. As evidenced by the biography-laden speeches at the Republican National Convention, John McCain and Sarah Palin are running an entire campaign on the promise of the power of personal narrative: McCain's tenure as a POW; Palin's "hockey-mom" origins and moose-hunting proclivities; and, of course, their opponent's supposedly inferior narrative, his insufficiently American, American story.

The Republican candidates' crass deployment of identity politics is depressing; their attempt to lay claim to "true American patriotism" unsurprising at best. But we mustn't forget that "the American story" is a theme embraced by the Democrats as well, and that the effect of their narratives is equally problematic. Barack Obama has the single mother, Michelle Obama has the city-worker father, Joe Biden has the commute from Wilmington to Washington, D.C. They're blue-collar, hardworking, working-class, value-filled folks. Their parents pulled themselves up by the bootstraps. Their successes are proof of the endurance of the American dream.

I don't mean to mock the Obamas or Biden or dismiss their remarkable personal narratives. Nor do I deny that each has made what Michelle Obama memorably called "an improbable journey." But I do want to call into question the way these narratives are deployed, the language used to tell their tales of triumph, and the erasures that happen when we allow a single, limited version of "the American story" to become the template for all Americans. Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan graduated summa cum laude from Duke University with a major in Literature. She is the Managing Editor of India Currents, a California-based monthly magazine in circulation since 1987.