How to Be South Asian in America: Narratives of Ambivalence and Belonging American Litera Edition Contributor(s): Jain, Anupama (Author) |
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ISBN: 1439903026 ISBN-13: 9781439903025 Publisher: Temple University Press OUR PRICE: $67.93 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: March 2011 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | American - Asian American - Social Science | Ethnic Studies - Asian American Studies - History | United States - General |
Dewey: 973.049 |
LCCN: 2010039653 |
Physical Information: 0.8" H x 6" W x 9" (0.90 lbs) 288 pages |
Themes: - Ethnic Orientation - Asian |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Providing a useful analysis of and framework for understanding immigration and assimilation narratives, anupama jain's How to Be South Asian in America considers the myth of the American Dream in fiction (Meena Alexander's Manhattan Music), film (American Desi, American Chai), and personal testimonies. By interrogating familiar American stories in the context of more supposedly exotic narratives, jain illuminates complexities of belonging that also reveal South Asians' anxieties about belonging, (trans)nationalism, and processes of cultural interpenetration. jain argues that these stories transform as well as reflect cultural processes, and she shows just how aspects of identity--gender, sexual, class, ethnic, national--are shaped by South Asians' accommodation of and resistance to mainstream American culture. |