Book Reviews 113

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

Amita Handa
Toronto: Women’s Press, 2003. 211 pages.

Using articles from Canadian mainstream media, discussions with
Canada’s South Asian community, and interviews with young second-gen-
eration South Asian women about their relationships with school and fam-
ily during the early to mid-1990s, Handa sets out to contest the dominant
culture clash model that has been used to explain how South Asian adoles-
cents are “torn” or “caught” between the values of “traditional” (South
Asian) and “modern” (Canadian) culture. Handa argues,

... that women and youth have become symbols of the sets of values that
are seen to be in need of protection from the process of modern social
progress … certain notions of women and youth are mobilized in order to
maintain and assert specific notions of identity and belonging. (p. 19) 

Also, she points out that “South Asian cultural identities rely on particular
definitions of womanhood in order to assert a distinct Eastern identity vis-
à-vis the West” (p. 19). 

The book is organized into seven chapters. The first chapter situates the
central issues and questions she raises in her book amidst recollections of
her past experiences in Canada and her reflections on present-day changes
in Canada’s South Asian community. The bulk of this chapter focuses on
critiquing the dominant “culture clash” model in an effort to underscore its
inadequacies. This critique hinges primarily on theoretical discussions of
culture and identity, which become the theoretical framework for her work.

In the following five chapters, the author shares her findings, analyses,
and arguments. Each chapter focuses on developing one particular aspect
of her central argument, although many common subtexts and themes
thread their way through them. Some of the main themes and subtexts are
the invisibility of whiteness in relation to the ethnicity of browness; the cen-
trality of a white Canadian identity and the maintenance of white power and
privilege; and the positioning of young South Asian women by discourses
of East/West, modern/traditional, and brown/white, as well as their contin-
uous negotiation of identities. In the last chapter, Handa plants the seeds of
possibility for a collective political voice of opposition to racism built on
black and South Asian diasporic voices.



Handa’s experiences as a second-generation South Asian woman
growing up in Canada during the 1970s are the major catalyst for this
book. Many of her past experiences, which clearly are marked moments in
her life, are scattered throughout the book, often juxtaposed against the
women’s narratives or used to set the context for the issues she raises. She
skillfully writes herself into the work, leaving the reader with a clear sense
of her multiple subject positions and locations and how they influence and
speak to her analyses and arguments. It is obvious that this work is not just
an academic endeavor for the author; it seems to be a cathartic undertak-
ing as well.

The book’s major strength is the vast diversity of literature that Handa
draws on to develop and support her analyses and arguments. She weaves
together complex historical and theoretical debates and arguments from an
exhaustive array of literature, which includes colonialism, post-colonialism,
diaspora, culture, identity, youth, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and
nationalism. Handa applies this diverse literature in novel and insightful
ways to her own work on the contemporary experiences of young second-
generation South Asian women in Canada. Using the works of notable his-
torians and scholars Pratha Chatterjee, Vinay Mani, Jenny Sharpe, and
Laura Stoler, she rightly argues that:

... the positioning of South Asians vis-à-vis a dominant white/anglo pop-
ulation continues to be accomplished by drawing boundaries around
notions of tradition, culture and women related to those that operated in
colonial India. (p. 55)

A further strength is the book’s validation of the emotional and psycho-
logical trauma experienced by diasporic peoples. By highlighting women’s
agency and resistance, Handa is careful not to portray them as victims. At
the same time, she neither romanticizes their resistance nor disguises their
complicity when it comes to naming racism as cultural difference or ignor-
ing the privileges of whiteness. The author refrains from individualizing
their actions; instead, she places them within the larger political and socio-
historical context of Canadian immigration and multiculturalism, noting that
“women are constantly positioned in relation to race and racial difference,”
and that the “difficulty for them becomes naming experiences of racism
within a context that constantly tells them that race and racial difference do
not matter” (p. 21).

The book’s main shortcoming is its organization. While her arguments
are clear, they lack a particular coherence and thus leave the reader contin-

114 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 21:4



Book Reviews 115

ually revisiting many of the same themes and arguments throughout the
book. Understandably, the complexity of her analyses and arguments, as
well as the numerous subtexts and themes, make her work difficult to orga-
nize in a straightforward manner.

A large segment of the book is devoted to exploring the role that pop-
ular culture (e.g., dance, dress, and Bhangra music) plays in contesting,
redefining, and often reinforcing static and essentialist notions of identity
within the South Asian diaspora. However, a major oversight is her deci-
sion not to explore the impact of India’s movie industry (Bollywood) on
this group’s identity formations. This is a glaring omission, for Bollywood
has been, and continues to be, one of the most powerful forms of popular
culture used to create and shape South Asian identities, particularly those
of women. Bollywood’s audience is no longer confined to the
Subcontinent, but encompasses its extensive diasporas as well. Handa’s
book would have benefited from a consideration of how Bollywood rein-
forces, contests, and redefines the images and identities of South Asian
women and the impact that this has had on the identity formations of dias-
poric South Asian female youths, who constitute a major consumer of this
industry. 

Handa touches on many of the markers of difference that have divided
South Asians, including religion. She rightly notes that ongoing religious-
based conflict in contemporary India continues to play out in the diaspora.
Given that Muslim identity constitutes a major part of South Asian dias-
poric identity, the need for works that explore the interconnections of this
identity with a variety of ethnic, cultural, and religious identities in the dias-
pora becomes more pressing.

In Canada, relatively little has been written on the South Asian diasporic
community, particularly pertaining to women. Amita Handa attempts to fill
this gap by bringing to life the realities of this all-but-forgotten segment of
Canadian society. Her work, with its unique focus on this group and largely
with respect to Canada’s history of racism, immigration, and multicultural-
ism, is a valuable contribution to the existing literature and paves the way
for future works on difference and diversity in diaspora.

Zabeda Nazim
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education

The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education,
The University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada