As more people migrate from country to country, a curious condition is taking place. Migrant women are being judged as ＂exotic＂ and ＂available,＂ although receiving societies generally say they
are merely assessed as being ＂bicultural.＂ South Asian women, in particular are being treated this way in America, where their bodies are assessed and judged as possible sexual partners before
anything else. 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
prevalent popular and critical attitude to this body of literature as operating according to binary opposites (America-Asia, freedom-repression) is somewhat reductive. Kimak probes 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, not merely as
being sexually available. Annotation ©2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
