New York, Aug 12 Kamala Devi Harris has deftly melded her dominant African American identity with that of her Indian background as a Tamil to create the evergreen American classic of the immigrant dream.
Born in the US to immigrants, cancer researcher Shyamala Gopalan from India and economics professor Donald Harris from Jamaica, Harris has leaped in a generation to running for a position that could put her a heartbeat away from the presidency.
She wrote in her memoir, "The Truths We Hold," that she was raised in "a place where people believed in the most basic tenet of the American Dream: that if you worked hard and do right by the world, your kids will be better of than you were."
On Tuesday Joe Biden, who is to be the Democratic Party's presidential candidate, announced that she would be on his ticket at the nominee for vice president.
Her multiracial background - which includes a layer of a White Jewish husband, Douglas Emhoff, and two step children - gives her a degree of identity fluidity to navigate American society riven by race and ethnicity.
After her parents divorced when she was only seven, Harris was brought up by her mother, whomAshe has described as "tough and fierce and protective" yet "generous and loyal and funny," and credits her for her success.
In her memoir, "The Truths We Hold," Harris wrote that the lesson "it was service to others that gave life purpose and meaning" that she inherited from her mother came from her grandmother Rajam, who had not completed high school but was a fiery protector of victims of domestic abuse.
Moving from New Delhi to Berkeley for her PhD in the tumultuous era of the 1960s civil rights movements, Shyamala Gopalan joined the protests "with a sense of justice imprinted on her soul," Harris wrote.
Her relationship with fellow-activist Donald Harris grew under the clamour of the protests and Kamala Harris recalls, "My parents often brought me in a stroller with them to civil rights marches."
In this environment, she wrote, "My mother understood very well that she was raising two Black daughters. She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya as Black girls, and she she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women."
Her sister Maya is also a lawyer.
One of her experiences from her childhood popped up in her memorable confrontation with Biden during a debate last year when she was running for president against him - and almost 20 others - in the initial phases of the Democratic presidential race.
Questioning his credentials on racism, she said that while he opposed efforts to racially integrate schools by transporting children by bus from their racially segregated areas to schools in another place to break down racial barriers, she was one of the children on those buses.
That also brought out the age difference between them. If he wins, he will be the oldest president to take office next year at 78 when she would be only 55.
Hence, one of the criteria for his vice president pick was for her to be younger, but with enough experience and capability to become president if the need arose.
