From Multiculture to Polyculture in South Asian American Studies

1999 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-204
Author(s):  
Vijay Prashad
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Asian American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
South Asians ◽  
Asian American Studies ◽  
Asian America ◽  
Southeast Asians ◽  
South Asian American ◽  
American Book

In 1997, Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation (Maira and Srikanth). This was unexpected, not because of the quality of the book, but principally because of the little attention hitherto given to those who write about the “new immigrants” of the Americas (including South Asians, Filipinos, Southeast Asians, Africans, and West Asians). Prior to 1997, scholars and writers of South Asian America had been known to skulk in the halls of even such marginal events as the Asian American Studies Association and complain about the slight presence of South Asian American panels. That complaint can now be put to rest.

Muncie, India(na)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Himanee Gupta-Carlson
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
South Asians ◽  
Diaspora Studies ◽  
Asian American Studies ◽  
South Asian American ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Auto Ethnography ◽  
Racial Ethnic

The book is a study of South Asian Americans in Muncie, Indiana – the author’s hometown. Muncie is the small Midwestern city made famous for being “typical America” through the Middletown studies. The book is among the first studies of the South Asian American community in Muncie as well as small-town middle America more generally. It situates the experiences of Muncie’s South Asians within the larger context of scholarship in Asian American Studies, racial and ethnic studies, postcolonial/diaspora studies, and the Middletown archive. At the heart of the book is the question: What does it mean to call one’s self an American is one is non-white, non-Christian, and/or non-U.S. born? It uses an interdisciplinary blend of auto-ethnography, and discourse analysis to argue that a failure to account for the racial, ethnic, and religious diversity of America has left behind a false legacy of what defines an American. It shows how the Muncie South Asian American community has sustained itself through extraordinary friendship and resilience, qualities which allowed the members of the community to negotiate internal differences among Indians and other South Asians to make a home in a city – and a nation – that renders them non-American.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Himanee Gupta-Carlson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Asian American ◽  
South Asians ◽  
The United States ◽  
The South ◽  
South Asian American ◽  
Auto Ethnography ◽  
Race And Religion

The introduction introduces the central themes of the book and highlights its significance. It opens by exploring the wedding of the (a Hindu female of Indian ancestry) to a white, Christian male and places racial and religious tensions embedded in that event within the larger context of race and religion as organizing forces in American life. The introduction also describes auto-ethnography and discourse analysis, and discusses how these methods are used throughout the work. It also offers a profile of the South Asian American community in Muncie and of South Asians in the United States.

Animating Gandhi

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shilpa S. Davé
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
South Asians ◽  
The United States ◽  
White Masculinity ◽  
South Asian American ◽  
American Character ◽  
South Asian Americans ◽  
Asian History

This chapter discusses how the Indian American character is the accent or the suburban “sidekick” character to the dominant narratives of young, white masculinity that are prevalent in American culture. The representation and use of the historical figure Mohandas Gandhi in the MTV animated series Clone High revisits and challenges American representations of Asian Americans and South Asian Americans as model minorities. The use of the historical leader Gandhi as a teenage “geek” sidekick without recognition of how Gandhi fits into South Asian history and influences South Asian American communities shows how American stereotypes dwarf any other representation of South Asians or South Asian Americans in the United States.

The War on Terror and South Asian American Narrative Representation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anantha Sudhakar
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Asian American ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
South Asians ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Asian American Literature ◽  
South Asian American ◽  
Muslim Communities

The social and political conditions actuated by 9/11 have been a major catalyst for new literature, television and film about South Asians and Muslims in America. Stemming from a 2001 speech by then-president George W. Bush, the concept of the “War on Terror” has served to rationalize the domestic regulation of Muslims, while also validating the need for US imperialist and capitalist expansion. Where US government discourse highlights first-person narratives that figure America as a benevolent global protector of freedom and democracy, South Asian American fictional and non-fictional narratives posit critiques of Islamophobia and the US security state. Spanning a breadth of genres and styles, including the paradigmatic 9/11 novel, the bildungsroman, comedic satire, dramatic monologue, magic realism, documentary film, and urban fiction, South Asian American literature and media highlight narratives of interfaith and cross-racial solidarity. The imaginary worlds of these texts confront the injustices of US imperialism and the global War on Terror for Muslim communities both in the United States and abroad. At the same, South Asian American representation engaged with the impacts of post-9/11 politics and society has enriched understanding of the complex lived experiences of Pakistani and Bangladeshi Americans, as well as those of Indian Americans who are Muslim or trace their ancestry to the Sikh-majority state of Punjab. By centering the perspectives of those communities most affected by detention, xenophobia, and surveillance, post-9/11 South Asian American literature and media reveal how the exigencies of history produce new forms of narrative and cultural practice.

scholarly journals Good Girls Marry Doctors

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-134
Author(s):  
Sara Haq
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Asian American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Affect Theory ◽  
South Asian American ◽  
Liminal Spaces ◽  
Gold Jewelry ◽  
System P ◽  
Diasporic Community ◽  
Style Of Writing

From the publisher that brought us Gloria Anzaldua’s classic work Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), now comes Good Girls Marry Doctors:South Asian American Daughters on Obedience and Rebellion. AuntLute Books gives us this 2016 anthology of short stories edited by Piyali Bhattacharyathat, I envision, will strike a similar chord of deep resonance withthose who are living in the liminal spaces of mixed consciousness, mixed cultures,mixed religions – the South Asian American diasporic community andbeyond. The striking cover of the book shows a graphic illustration of a browngirl decked in traditional South Asian gold jewelry and a red sarhi, her handslipping underneath the fabric below her waist, leaving the viewer to imaginethat she is feelin’ herself.The style of writing and the range of themes allow this book to speak toa multitude of audiences. The book can easily be included in syllabi rangingfrom South Asian American studies, American studies, and Islamic studies towomen/gender/sexuality studies, cultural studies, and affect theory. WhatBhattacharya set out to do over a span of eight years in bringing this collectionto fruition is to create for herself and the women she knew a network, a community,a support system (p. v) – “we had to find our tribe” (p. viii). What Ifind interesting and useful in this collection is that it can be used as an illustrationof how gender and sexuality frame affective knowledge productionand world-making in diasporic communities ...

Nation, Diaspora, and Asian American Literature

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeehyun Lim
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Asian American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The State ◽  
Asian American Literature ◽  
Asian American Studies ◽  
Asian America ◽  
A Site ◽  
Crucial Part

Abstract Read together, Patricia Chu’s Where I have Never Been (2019), Jinah Kim’s Postcolonial Grief (2019), Sze Wei Ang’s The State of Race (2019), and Janna Odabas’s The Ghosts Within (2018) allow for a review of the state and meaning of diaspora and diasporic frames of analysis in Asian American literary and cultural criticism. Approaching these books through the 1990s debate on minority nationalism in Asian American studies shows one prominent direction that critical engagements with transnationalism have taken. While postcolonialism’s place in the 1990s debate on transnationalism and Asian America was tenuous at best, these books suggest that it has become a crucial part of envisioning the critical work diasporic Asian American culture can do. In these books, diasporic frames of analysis lead to recognizing Asian American culture as a site where the unresolved and unaccounted for violence of US nationalism and globalization surfaces and challenges to dominant ideas of race and nation appear. Both as method of inquiry and as historical understanding of twentieth-century US–Asian relations, postcolonialism in these books shows the critical potential of diaspora for Asian America.

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