Bicultural Bodies

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.