Youth, citizenship and empire after 9/11
by Sunaina Maira
Duke University Press, 2009
Maira, a well-regarded scholar of youth culture and of Indian-American youth culture in particular, has written a powerful indictment of US imperial culture. Engaging to write an "ethnography of empire", Maira spent two years among young Muslim Americans in a small town in Massachusetts. They were recent migrants from South Asia, many of whom came to the United States after the attacks of 11 September 2001, and who, in their very social development, bore the brunt of the backlash of those attacks. Maira walks us through the essential, but buried, history of American imperialism and its disproportionate impact on the lives of racialised minorities. (Vijay Prashad)
Aging and the Indian Diaspora: Cosmopolitan families in India and abroad
by Sarah Lamb
Indiana University Press, 2009
The literature on aging in India is now well developed. Yet Sarah Lamb's book is unique in its close-hewed comparison between aging amongst Indians in India and Indians in the United States – mainly, Indians who spend their life in India, then leave to age with their NRI children. Lamb is a generous ethnographer, letting the people speak, and offering a culturally relativistic analysis of what they are saying and how they live. She concludes on this very theme, saying that there is no good way or right way to age, or to treat elders – we're just making it up as we go along. A well-written academic book, which might be enjoyed by a general reader with an interest in the subject. (VP)