Desi Dreams focuses on the construction of self and identity by Indian immigrant professional and semi-professional women who live and work in the US. The focus in this anthropological fieldwork is on Indian immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area. They have often been defined as a model minority. Indian immigrant women who have achieved entry into the current technology based economy in the Silicon Valley value the capital-accumulation, status-transformation, socio-economic autonomy, and renegotiation of familial gender relations that are made possible by their employment. However, this quintessential American success story conceals the psychic costs of uneasy Americanization, long drawn out gender battles, and incessant cross-cultural journeys of selves and identities. The outcome is a diasporic identity through the recomposition of Indian culture in the diaspora and strengthening of transnational ties to India.
About the Author
Ashidhara Das earned her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, San Diego, and has published articles in prestigious journals, such as the Journal of the Anthropological Survey of India. Her main interest is in the Indian diaspora in the US and in gender relations within the Indian immigrant community in Northern
California. She resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and currently teaches freshman anthropology at a liberal arts
college.
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