A Patchwork Shawl: Chronicles of South Asian Women in America

A Patchwork Shawl sheds light on the lives of a segment of the U.S. immigrant population that has long been relegated to the margins. It focuses on women's lives that span different worlds: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and the United States. This collection of essays by and about South Asian women in America challenges stereotypes by allowing women to speak in their own words. Together they provide discerning insights into the reconstruction of immigrant patriarchy in a new world, and the development of women's resistance to that reconstruction. Shamita Das DasGupta's introduction also acquaints readers with the psychological topography of the South Asian community. A Patchwork Shawl considers topics from re-negotiation of identity to sexuality, violence to intimacy, occupations to organizing within the community. The essays bear witness to women's negotiations for independent identities, their claim to their own bodies, and the right to choose relationships based on their own histories and truths. They bring new understanding to the intersection of gender, ethnicity, race, sexuality, and class.

Table of Contents:
Preface         Introduction SHAMITA DAS DASGUPTA Who Am I? Re-Questing Identity -     The Language of Identity GRACE POORE Being "Amreekan": Fried Chicken versus Chicken Tikka NAHEED HASNAT "We Are Graceful Swans Who Can Also Be Crows": Hybrid Identities of Pakistani Muslim Women LUBNA CHAUDHRY Sexual Exiles SURINA KHAN Naming Desire, Shaping Identity: Tracing the Experiences of Indian Lesbians in the United States NAHEED ISLAM Me and We: Family and Community -  Mothers and Daughters in Indian-American Families: A Failed Communication? MANISHA ROY Sex, Lies, and Women's Lives: An Intergenerational Dialogue SAYANTANI DASGUPTA, SHAMITA DAS DASGUPTA Marital Rape: Some Ethical and Cultural Considerations RINITA MAZUMDAR Lifting the Veil of Secrecy: Domestic Violence Against South Asian Women in the United States SATYA P. KRISHNAN, MALAHAT BAIG-AMIN, LOUISA GILBERT, NABILA EL-BASSEL, ANNE WATERS Nation and Immigration: Rethinking the "Model Minority" -  The Habit of Ex-Nomination: Nation, Woman, and the Indian Immigrant Bourgeoisie ANANNYA BHATTACHARJEE "Underneath My Blouse Beats My Indian Heart": Sexuality, Nationalism, and Indian Womanhood in the United States SUNITA SUNDER MUKHI Three Hot Meals and a Full Day at Work: South Asian Women's Labor in the United States SONIA SHAH About the Contributors Index

About the Author :
Shamita Das DasGupta is an assistant professor in psychology at Rutgers University, Newark, and author of The Demon Slayers and Other Stories: Bengali Folktales. She is also a cofounder of Manavi, the first organization in the U.S. to focus on violence against South Asian women in the U.S.

Review :
Read this moving book for the voices of South Asian women coming of age in America, telling of bodies and souls, sexual selves, the tug of generations, the struggles for social justice. - Meena Alexander (author of The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience) Powerful and unusual voices that break stereotypes and venture bravely into forbidden areas of South Asian womenÆs experience. - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (author of The Mistress of Spices) This is an important collection that will not only add to our empirical and theoretical understanding of the experiences of women of South Asian descent in the U.S., but corrects a deficiency in the growing literature on South Asian diasporas by putting issues of sexuality and domestic violence at the center of analysis. - Kamala Visweswaran (Univ. of Texas, author of Fictions of Feminist Ethnography) Eminently readable, A Patchwork Shawl with its contemplation of gender in relation to personal memories and experience, collective imaginings of community and narratives of nationhood, is relevant to both the general reader and the scholar interested in issues of gender, national identity and diaspora studies. (National Identities) The strengths of the book are many. It offers strong and explicit essays on subjects often omitted or played down in work on South Asian Americans. The essays are clearly written and by a range of women, many of them non-academics who are activists in the South Asian community. Attractively produced, A Patchwork Shawl is sure to prove a stimulating text for Asian American and womenÆs studies courses. (Journal of American Ethnic History)