Desi Dreams: Indian Immigrant Women Building Lives Across Two Worlds
AUTHOR- Ashidhara Das
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INFORMATION
- AUTHOR : Ashidhara Das
- ISBN : 978-93-80607-47-4
- Year : 2012
- Extent : xviii + 162 pp.
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Desi Dreams
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INFORMATION
- AUTHOR – Ashidhara Das
- ISBN – 978-93-80607-47-4
- Year – 2012
- Extent: 400 + 40 coloured illustrations
- 10% discount + free shipping
- Usually dispatched within 3 to 5 working days.
Desi Dreams focuses on the construction of self and identity by Indian immigrant professional and semi-professional women who live and work in the US. Some of the major issues that this ethnographic study discusses are: What are the selves and identities of professional Indian women? How is the continuity of selves and identities accomplished when these women find themselves constantly shuttling between the starkly different expectations of American society and workplace on one hand, and the Indian immigrant home and community on the other?
The focus in this anthropological fieldwork is on Indian immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area. They have often been defined as a model minority. Indian immigrant women who have achieved entry into the current technology based economy in the Silicon Valley value the capital accumulation, status-transformation, socio-economic autonomy, and renegotiation of familial gender relations that are made possible by their employment. However, this quintessential American success story conceals the psychic costs of uneasy Americanization, long drawn out gender battles, and incessant cross-cultural journeys of selves and identities. The outcome is a diasporic identity through the recomposition of Indian culture in the diaspora and strengthening of transnational ties to India.
The Author
Ashidhara Das earned her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, San Diego, and has published articles in prestigious journals, such as the Journal of the Anthropological Survey of India. Her main interest is in the Indian diaspora in the US and in gender relations within the Indian immigrant community in Northern California. She resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and currently teaches freshman anthropology at a liberal arts college.
‘Ashidhara’s work tries to lend content and meaning to one such flow of human experience, namely those of the migrant Indian professional women in America. Recapturing the lives of these women, the author also pleads for their cause by unfolding the dilemmas of their life-experience and locating it within the debates on diasporic identities’— SUPARNA GOOPTU, The Sunday Statesman
‘A member of the Indian diaspora, the author provides a much-needed insider perspective in analysing the contested self and identity of Indian immigrant women in the U.S. Interweaving anthropological fieldwork with strong theoretical insights, she presents an absorbing narrative of a less analysed aspect of the quintessential American success story of migration. Although based on the experience of Indian immigrant women in the U.S., this ethnographic work contains insights that would be useful in analysing diaspora communities elsewhere in the world… Situating immigrant women at the centre of this discourse, the book offers a fresh perspective in understanding diaspora communities and is a worthy contribution to the growing literature on gender, work and immigration.’— RAKKEE THIMOTHY, The Hindu
Desi Dreams focuses on the construction of self and identity by Indian immigrant professional and semi-professional women who live and work in the US. Some of the major issues that this ethnographic study discusses are: What are the selves and identities of professional Indian women? How is the continuity of selves and identities accomplished when these women find themselves constantly shuttling between the starkly different expectations of American society and workplace on one hand, and the Indian immigrant home and community on the other?
The focus in this anthropological fieldwork is on Indian immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area. They have often been defined as a model minority. Indian immigrant women who have achieved entry into the current technology based economy in the Silicon Valley value the capital accumulation, status-transformation, socio-economic autonomy, and renegotiation of familial gender relations that are made possible by their employment. However, this quintessential American success story conceals the psychic costs of uneasy Americanization, long drawn out gender battles, and incessant cross-cultural journeys of selves and identities. The outcome is a diasporic identity through the recomposition of Indian culture in the diaspora and strengthening of transnational ties to India.
The Author
Ashidhara Das earned her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, San Diego, and has published articles in prestigious journals, such as the Journal of the Anthropological Survey of India. Her main interest is in the Indian diaspora in the US and in gender relations within the Indian immigrant community in Northern California. She resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and currently teaches freshman anthropology at a liberal arts college.
‘Ashidhara’s work tries to lend content and meaning to one such flow of human experience, namely those of the migrant Indian professional women in America. Recapturing the lives of these women, the author also pleads for their cause by unfolding the dilemmas of their life-experience and locating it within the debates on diasporic identities’— SUPARNA GOOPTU, The Sunday Statesman
‘A member of the Indian diaspora, the author provides a much-needed insider perspective in analysing the contested self and identity of Indian immigrant women in the U.S. Interweaving anthropological fieldwork with strong theoretical insights, she presents an absorbing narrative of a less analysed aspect of the quintessential American success story of migration. Although based on the experience of Indian immigrant women in the U.S., this ethnographic work contains insights that would be useful in analysing diaspora communities elsewhere in the world… Situating immigrant women at the centre of this discourse, the book offers a fresh perspective in understanding diaspora communities and is a worthy contribution to the growing literature on gender, work and immigration.’— RAKKEE THIMOTHY, The Hindu
Table of Contents
| List OfTables | ix |
| Preface | xi-xv |
| Acknowledgements | xvii-xviii |
| 1. At Home And At Work In The Diaspora: Theoretical Approaches And A Statistical Overview | 1-31 |
| 2. In Search Of Success In The American Workplace | 32-57 |
| 3. Professional Women At Home And In The Immigrant Community | 58-93 |
| 4. The Construction Of The Self | 94-135 |
| 5. Conclusion | 136-147 |
| Glossary | 149-150 |
| Bibliography | 151-157 |
| Index | 159-162 |
