The culture-clash showdown between the bold and the dutiful Kesh: born and bred in Australia, drinks at the pub, studies feminist theory. Considers herself NRI – 'Not Really Indian'. Rupa: born and bred in Fiji, scared to leave the house, makes own roti. A full-bloom 'Bollywood Beauty'. They found it hard enough to get along as kids, but when a grown-up Rupa comes to Melbourne to stay with her cousin Kesh, it's a complete culture-clash. As Kesh and Rupa's worlds collide, they each hurtle toward answering the same question – are we ever truly what we seem? In this delicious and highly spiced novel, Shalini Akhil dishes up tears, laughter, music and food, with a truly scary dinner dance thrown in. If you've ever found yourself caught between your cultural background and a hard place, this is the read for you. "... a universally appealing novel about identity, flawed families and the struggle to be yourself ... " – The Age
The culture-clash showdown between the bold and the dutiful Kesh: born and bred in Australia, drinks at the pub, studies feminist theory. Considers herself NRI – 'Not Really Indian'. Rupa: born and bred in Fiji, scared to leave the house, makes own roti. A full-bloom 'Bollywood Beauty'. They found it hard enough to get along as kids, but when a grown-up Rupa comes to Melbourne to stay with her cousin Kesh, it's a complete culture-clash. As Kesh and Rupa's worlds collide, they each hurtle toward answering the same question – are we ever truly what we seem? In this delicious and highly spiced novel, Shalini Akhil dishes up tears, laughter, music and food, with a truly scary dinner dance thrown in. If you've ever found yourself caught between your cultural background and a hard place, this is the read for you. "... a universally appealing novel about identity, flawed families and the struggle to be yourself ... " – The Age
Drawing on the long and varied history of discourses of cultural hybridity across the caribbean, this book explores the rich and fraught cultural crossings that are often theorized homogeneously in postcolonial studies as 'hybridity'. What is the relationship of cultural hybridity to social equality? Why have some forms of hybridity been enshrined in the caribbean imagination and others disavowed? What is the appeal of cultural hybridity to nationalist and post-nationalist projects alike? What can we learn from the hybridization of Afro-caribbean and Indo-caribbean cultures set in motion by slavery and indentureship? In answering these questions, this book intervenes in several important debates in postcolonial studies about cultural resistance and popular agency, feminism and cultural nationalism, the relations between postmodernism and postcolonialism, and the status of nationalism in an age of globalization.
Desi Land is Shalini Shankar’s lively ethnographic account of South Asian American teen culture during the Silicon Valley dot-com boom. Shankar focuses on how South Asian Americans, or “Desis,” define and manage what it means to be successful in a place brimming with the promise of technology. Between 1999 and 2001 Shankar spent many months “kickin’ it” with Desi teenagers at three Silicon Valley high schools, and she has since followed their lives and stories. The diverse high-school students who populate Desi Land are Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs, from South Asia and other locations; they include first- to fourth-generation immigrants whose parents’ careers vary from assembly-line workers to engineers and CEOs. By analyzing how Desi teens’ conceptions and realizations of success are influenced by community values, cultural practices, language use, and material culture, she offers a nuanced portrait of diasporic formations in a transforming urban region. Whether discussing instant messaging or arranged marriages, Desi bling or the pressures of the model minority myth, Shankar foregrounds the teens’ voices, perspectives, and stories. She investigates how Desi teens interact with dialogue and songs from Bollywood films as well as how they use their heritage language in ways that inform local meanings of ethnicity while they also connect to a broader South Asian diasporic consciousness. She analyzes how teens negotiate rules about dating and reconcile them with their longer-term desire to become adult members of their communities. In Desi Land Shankar not only shows how Desi teens of different socioeconomic backgrounds are differently able to succeed in Silicon Valley schools and economies but also how such variance affects meanings of race, class, and community for South Asian Americans.
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