Bicultural Bodies

The book focuses on the representations of female sexuality and the body in South Asian American women's fiction. It analyzes several novels and over a dozen short stories to explore the mechanisms employed by women writers of South Asian descent to challenge the culturally sanctioned role of the female body as the carrier of cultural tradition.

The body, which is a frequently explored topic in immigrant literature, has for some reason been rather neglected by literary scholars. This book attempts to address this imbalance by paying critical attention to representations of female sexuality and the female body in South Asian American women's fiction. The key premise of this study is that the prevalent popular and critical attitude to this body of literature as operating according to binary opposites (America-Asia, freedom-repression) is somewhat reductive. The book tries to probe deeper into the literary texts under study to show what mechanisms the writers employ to challenge the culturally sanctioned role of the female body as the carrier of cultural tradition.

Autorentext

Izabella Kimak, PhD, works as an Assistant Professor at the Department of American Literature and Culture at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin (Poland). Her research interests include ethnic American literatures, gender and sexuality studies as well as representations of the urban space and urban art in contemporary American literature.

Inhalt

Contents: South Asian American Literature - Immigrant Literature - Sexuality - Body.