Of Silk Saris and Mini-Skirts South Asian Girls Walk the Tightrope of Culture

Dr Handa explores issues surrounding the way identity is imagined and constructed by South Asian girls, women, and South Asian community workers in Toronto. The author also examines ways in which young South Asian women are constructed and represented through discourses of race, nation, culture, and community. Handa suggests that young South Asian women find themselves caught between these fragmented aspects of the self. Using feedback from her interviews, the author discusses South Asian women's struggle with the threat of the erosion of their "authentic" cultural practices. Handa's critical theoretical perspective illuminates how South Asian women struggle to live within the boundaries of cultural preservation at the same time that they embrace aspects of the communities in which they live. She explores whether they both desire and are excluded from Canadian cultural hegemony. She also examines the theoretical implications of exclusion and, conversely, the problematic of "cultural preservation".Handa, Amita is the author of 'Of Silk Saris and Mini-Skirts South Asian Girls Walk the Tightrope of Culture' with ISBN 9780889614062 and ISBN 0889614067.