Investment In Whiteness Research Articles

Marina’s School: Education and Vulnerability in Pericles

ABSTRACT On the shores of both Pericles and modern injustice, this essay focuses particularly on the play’s account of education and the difference it makes. Reading Pericles’s escape from shipwreck alongside the COVID university allows us to see both the play’s interest in our differential vulnerability and the university’s function in maintaining that difference. In the second half, I turn to Marina. By reading moments of editorial intervention in the text of the play, I propose that the play’s investment in whiteness as property activates the settler-colonial history of my own university, at a time in which legislative efforts continually seek to obscure that history.

Lusting out loud: racialized aurality, podcast intimacy, and the uses of thirst

Abstract This article examines how the podcast Thirst Aid Kit makes Black women’s desires—often erased or distorted in media—audible. Using Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) and feminist close reading, I make three interrelated arguments: (1) The hosts’ use of regional, Black vernaculars and cultural touchstones disrupts podcasting’s Whiteness and builds intimacy with Black women listeners; (2) The podcast’s aural expressions of thirst articulate Black women’s desires rather than shield them from broader publics; (3) The show’s expression of thirst is connected to the romance genre; however, Thirst Aid Kit, ruptures the genre’s investment in Whiteness and the happy ending. This article builds from and intervenes in podcasting research, studies of Black women and media, and popular romance studies.

Whiteness Catalyzes Character Disorder and Mass Violence

ABSTRACT Whiteness, understood in psychoanalytic terms as a complex emerging in relation to an invidious object, catalyzes character disorder and mass violence. Drawing on historical analyses of the early American colonial period and a 2014 mass shooting in Isla Vista, California, I articulate a theory of the workings of Whiteness, with an eye toward the interrelationship of psychodynamics and sociocultural, structural, and ideological forces. I conclude with a consideration of how and why psychoanalysis has failed to fully contend with Whiteness because of the discipline’s own investment in Whiteness and White aggression.

The State of Black Sociology: A Critical Reflection of Joyce Ladner’s The Death of white Sociology

On the fiftieth anniversary of Joyce Ladner’s The Death of white Sociology, we write this critical reflection to explore the discipline’s historical, often explicit oversight and investment in Whiteness. The historical roots of “mainstream”, white sociology are inundated with pathologization, dehumanization, and exclusion of Black people, the Black community, and Black scholarship. From graduate program training and conferencing to peer-review processes and the academic job market, Black sociologists are expected to center white hegemonic ideals of professionalism and academic rigor. We write this critical reflection exploring the edited volume’s implications for discussing anti-Blackness as well as the methodological and theoretical significance of Black sociology past and present. As Black sociologists and doctoral scholars, this reflection serves as a call to the discipline to grapple with texts such as The Death of white Sociology, the discomfort it may cause, and how the exclusion of such work directly harms the training and careers of Black graduate students.

Toward Critically Analyzing Whiteness in Immigrant Health.

Assimilation theories dominate immigration scholarship to examine differential life chances, opportunities, and health of immigrants across three waves of immigrants in the United States. Assimilation theories are widely used in public health to explain the health status of immigrants despite the embedded White supremacist ideology while ignoring the role of whiteness. This article reviews and critiques assimilation theories to propose a critical analysis of whiteness in immigrant health scholarship. Critically analyzing whiteness in immigrant health studies allows us to recognize (a) the problematic framing of assimilation theories because of the theories' devotion to a White-European vision of upward mobility and a mainstream characterized as elite and White and (b) how a purportedly colorblind immigration law reinforces White supremacy through possessive investment in whiteness. To highlight whiteness in immigrant health, we examine the anti-immigration rhetoric and anti-immigrant policies and surveillance while providing implications for future research in the scholarship of immigrant health.

“If they were white and middle class”: The possessive investment in whiteness in U.S. History textbooks’ portrayal of 20th-century social democratic reforms

ABSTRACT The authors analyzed three Advanced Placement U.S. History textbooks’ narratives of U.S. 20th century social democratic policies (e.g. New Deal, G.I. Bill, pro-suburbanization policies) using Lipsitz’s possessive investment in whiteness as a theoretical framework. The authors found texts portrayed the exclusion of Black populations from policy benefits and, to a lesser extent, the disparate benefits conveyed to white communities. However, discussions of racial disparities were segregated from primary narratives that conveyed race neutrality in policy implementation. Additionally, texts obscured white benefits by framing the racist outcomes of the policies as unavoidable. This work contributes to ongoing critical analyses of official curriculum artifacts like textbooks and standards documents by noting how they manage to include, yet exclude, critical, structural understandings of U.S. history.

Shedding the Shards of Expectations

In my first years of contingency, I began having anxiety-ridden dreams. The most prominent one featured me with shattered mirror skin. As I removed the shards, I felt the pain of each one tearing away. In this article, I consider how my whiteness and my neurodivergency intersect to impact how I feel about my position as a contingent faculty. Within the whiteness of academia, my white skin provides me with solace, but when my neurodivergency or precarious position reveal themselves, my investment in whiteness becomes harmful. These tensions pull at me. As I pull each shard off, my body tries to mold into an academic. In Disidentifications, José Esteban Muñoz writes, “disidentification is a step further than cracking open the code of the majority; it proceeds to use this code as raw material for representing a disempowered politics or positionality that has been rendered unthinkable by the dominant culture.”1 As I reflect on the tensions between whiteness, neurodivergency, and contingency, I find ways to disidentify as a means of survival in an academia that has little room for neurodivergency.

Under a Black Light: Implications of Mexican American School Segregation Challenges for African Americans in Texas

Background/Context: School segregation scholarship underlines that litigation challenging the segregation of Mexican American students in Texas schools stressed their legal racial identity as white. The other white race strategy, as scholars call it, granted Mexican Americans the right to access resources designated for the country’s dominant racial group. Put differently, a defining feature of this argument pivoted on Mexican Americans’ non-Blackness. An emerging body of more critical history scholarship has engaged almost exclusively the concept of whiteness to interpret this legal strategy. Few to no comparative analyses, however, examine Mexican American civil rights struggles outside this lens of whiteness, raising questions about Blackness’s relationship to Juan Crow and the other white race strategy. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This historical essay examines analyses of Mexican American school segregation litigation in Texas to consider how these legal arguments affected Black Texans. Positioning these considerations in the history of education to address this historiographical silence, I emphasize four notable court cases from 1930 to 1970: the 1930 Salvatierra case, the 1948 Delgado case, the 1957 Hernandez case, and the 1970 Cisneros case. I highlight how accounts of Mexican American legal strategies against Texas school segregation implicate African Americans. This critique represents an effort to grapple meaningfully with the groundbreaking, extant scholarship on Mexican American education and suggest new vantage points and considerations that interrogate and challenge antiBlackness. Research Design: Conceptually, I couple antiBlackness with Toni Morrison’s literary metaphor of the Africanist presence to reveal that a writer’s choice to leave Blackness unarticulated does little to invalidate its existence or significance. This historical essay engages particular elements of historiography, framing that affords greater latitude for innovation than the parameters of historiography in and of itself. The chronological organization I use demonstrates links between specific cases and the legal strategy underpinning them in a way that the thematic organization expected of a historiography would obscure. Although much of the scholarship I examine is situated within the history of education, I use wider, interdisciplinary perspectives and other forms of evidence for deeper insight, support, and analysis. Specifically, I integrate primary source evidence alongside germane perspectives from other fields, including legal studies, human geography, Black studies, educational policy, and literary studies. Conclusions/Recommendations: I argue that this historiography has understated the antiBlack implications of the other white race strategy’s racial dimension, that is, the specific ways this litigation tactic excused and perpetuated African American segregation. I demonstrate that a conceptualization of school de/segregation in Texas history is more illuminating from a Black/non-Black perspective than from a white/non-white one. This emphasis clarifies how white supremacy has historically worked in tandem with antiBlackness to shape social, cultural, and political behavior and outcomes in education, even for non-Black peoples of Color. This analysis (1) clarifies the central role race and racial identity have historically played in U.S. history, (2) illustrates the possessive investment in whiteness as a valuable form of property that has historically determined access to key resources in this country, and (3) reveals the primacy of antiBlackness that has historically undergirded claims refuting discriminatory treatment experienced by non-Black peoples of Color. This examination represents a clarion call for scholars interested in justice and equity to admit, interrogate, and contest any adherence, witting or unwitting, to antiBlackness.

:Anglo-Saxon(ist) Pasts, PostSaxon Futures

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The sociology of white America: A teaching and learning guide

The sociology of white America: A teaching and learning guide

Beyond the Black and White TV: Asian and Latin American Spectacle in Cold War America by Benjamin M. Han

Reviewed by: Beyond the Black and White TV: Asian and Latin American Spectacle in Cold War America by Benjamin M. Han Victor Wu (bio) Beyond the Black and White TV: Asian and Latin American Spectacle in Cold War America, by Benjamin M. Han. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020. 216 pp. $27.95 paper. ISBN 978-1-9788-0383-1. Benjamin M. Han’s debut book, Beyond the Black and White TV, reexamines the oft-overlooked roles of Asian and Latin American ethnic entertainers in American television against the backdrop of the cultural Cold War. Because the Asia-Pacific and Latin America were two critical geopolitical spaces for the expansion of US hegemony, Han argues that the transnational circulation of Asian and Latin American performers on US commercial television functioned as Cold War cultural diplomacy that promoted American internationalism and waged ideological battles against the encroaching threat of communism in those regions. Han draws upon Marxist philosopher Guy Debord’s concept of spectacle as a “false representation of reality through the mass dissemination of images” (7) to postulate that the “ethnic spectacle” mediated by Cold War– era television fabricated a narrative of the United States as being a bastion of racial equality and democracy. Han asserts that this narrative was birthed in direct response to Soviet criticism of its anti-Black racism, which was growing increasingly visible due to the civil rights movement and was damaging the nation’s image on a global scale. Beyond the Black and White TV specifically examines the variety show as a site of transnational cultural interventionism that was informed by a “triangulation among Cold War geopolitics, globalism, and U.S. racial logics” (19). Because the variety show “functioned as both education and entertainment” (4), it was uniquely suited for America’s rebranding efforts. Variety shows often featured white hosts, who served as cultural interlocuters that interviewed ethnic entertainers about their backgrounds and sang American popular songs alongside them. This emphasis on international understanding, along with the surge of Asian and Latin American performers beginning in the early 1950s, allowed the variety show to project a false image of America as an antiracist nation. While variety show broadcasts initially only targeted domestic audiences and American military personnel abroad, Han shows how these broadcasts served as an “early itineration of global television” (19) that in the late 1950s provided [End Page 345] the blueprint for the dissemination of American Cold War narratives through transnational networks. The book is split into four modular chapters detailing four geographically separate yet unexpectedly analogous spaces where television played a significant role in America’s political agenda during the Cold War: Las Vegas, Korea, Cuba, and Hawaii. Han uses a wide range of historical materials such as television archives and oral histories to trace the development of television as well as the careers of ethnic performers such as the Kim Sisters, the De Castro Sisters, Alfred Apaka, and Don Ho. He examines not just the contexts of their careers but also the contents of their performances, interrogating the ways in which they contested and reinforced investment in whiteness. Chapter 1 looks at Las Vegas as a culturally and militarily significant locus during the Cold War. One of the earliest televised broadcasts of Las Vegas was of the atomic bomb testing on Yucca Flat in 1951, which served as Las Vegas’s introduction to the American public imaginary as a city crucial to national security. This was a far cry from Sin City’s previous negative association with crime, and entertainment personalities saw television as an opportunity to clean up the city’s image and promote American internationalism. Han posits that the later influx of Asian and Latin American entertainers in the 1950s to the Las Vegas nightlife and television scene was part of an attempt to portray the city as an integrated, family-friendly destination. And by the late 1970s, entertainment personalities were using television to capitalize on ethnic spectacle in order to “shed previous depictions of Las Vegas” (37). Consequently, the American government used these televisual images to show off Las Vegas as a racially integrated city that “was representative of American ideals and values” (33). Han explores how...

Communication's quest for whiteness: the racial politics of disciplinary legitimacy

ABSTRACT This essay examines communication's historical anxieties regarding disciplinary legitimacy as an investment in whiteness. We argue that such anxieties are predicated upon a normative ideal of citizenship. As such, rhetorics of disciplinary legitimacy enact white civil society's originary exclusion, which is antiblackness. To illuminate the ways antiblackness finds expression in these anxieties, we engage the field's lengthy archive of public musings regarding legitimacy to trace the rhetorical workings of antiblackness therein.

IN SEARCH FOR ETHICAL RELATIONS IN SOCIAL WORK WITH REFUGEES COMMUNITIES: REFLECTIONS ON THE SYRIAN REFUGEE “CRISIS”

For this conceptually oriented paper, we examine the politics of Canadian humanitarianism in refugee resettlement and its relationships to everyday social work practice with refugees. We argue that Canada’s refugee resettlement efforts have functioned to construct a particular refugee identity while confirming itself as a humanitarian nation-state. This constitutive identity construction of refugee and Canada have effectively concealed Canada’s historical and ongoing settler colonial violence, its complicity in the Middle East conflict, as well as its racist refugee policy regime. We suggest that, despite the profession’s orientation towards social justice, social work has been complicit in these problematic identity constructions. As a profession shaped by a historical investment in whiteness, social work remains complicit in the Othering as long as we hold onto our identity as professional helpers. This paper discusses the possibility of disrupting the investment in whiteness as a way to create a condition for ethical engagement with refugee populations.

The Colorblind Rainbow: Whiteness in the Gay Rights Movement

ABSTRACT Discourse on “identity politics” tends to treat political minority identities as distinct entities, discussing them as if an individual is either black or a woman or LGBT, etc. This separates race and sexuality in a way that, supported by white homonormativity and a possessive investment in whiteness, renders the LGBT community “white” despite racial diversity. This masks the ways that the policy preferences of LGBT individuals are structured along racial lines and hinders inter-minority coalition building. Utilizing a Pew Research Center dataset of LGBT Americans collected in 2013, I show that race is significantly correlated with economic policy preferences and perceptions of racial discrimination. While a majority of white LGBT Americans hold liberal positions, the significant differences between white and nonwhite individuals and the well-documented self-reports of experiences of racism by nonwhite LGBT Americans, suggest that white LGBT Americans must actively address the question of race in order to build successful coalitions.

Dealing with the ‘Wicked’ Problem of Race and the Law: A Critical Journey for Students (and Academics)

In 2014, we co-facilitated the specialist elective ‘Race and the Law’ as an LLB summer school intensive. Our pedagogical design was informed by Indigenous philosophy and knowledge (Watson, 2014; Morgan, 2012; Moreton-Robinson, 2007) and by Critical Race and Whiteness Theory (Delgado &amp; Stefanic, 2012; Goldberg, 2001; Moreton-Robinson, 2009). Our aim was to prompt students to think critically about the ongoing significance of race to law (and law to race), how systems of race structure social relations, the capacity of mainstream law to operate as a racialised system of power, and whiteness as a position of privilege. We also sought to empower students by engaging them in a reflexive praxis through which they could develop self-awareness of the significance of race and respond to its influence in their personal and professional lives. As Liptsitz argues, there is a ‘possessive investment in whiteness’ because of the close relationship between white supremacy and the accumulation of assets, or what he calls the ‘wages of whiteness’ (Lipsitz, 2006). This ‘possessive investment’ became evident in our class discussion once we turned attention to an examination of special measures, affirmative action and other mechanisms that aim to equalise opportunities and alleviate the material inequities mediated by race – that is, the wicked problem, racism. In this paper, we share our reflections on our success in using theory as a practice to challenge the wicked problem of racism in the law classroom, and within the law curriculum. In addition, we reflect on the value of team teaching in this complex and dynamic teaching space and the significance to legal institutions and the profession of engaging law students in critical learning on race and whiteness.

Engaging the White Possessive

In this issue of Kalfou, my book The White Possessive: Power, Property, and Indigenous Sovereignty receives attention from three scholars whose work I admire and respect. George Lipsitz’s The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics was seminal in conceptualizing the possessive logics of patriarchal white sovereignty, while Fiona Nicoll’s From Diggers to Drag Queens: Configurations of Australian National Identity heavily influenced my work on the formation of white national identity. Kim TallBear’s Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science has been instructive in shaping my new work on the possessive racial logics of Indigenous identity fraud. I am honored they ha

City in a Garden: Environmental Transformations and Racial Justice in Twentieth-Century Austin, Texas by Andrew M. Busch

Reviewed by: City in a Garden: Environmental Transformations and Racial Justice in Twentieth-Century Austin, Texas by Andrew M. Busch Katie Marages Schank City in a Garden: Environmental Transformations and Racial Justice in Twentieth-Century Austin, Texas. By Andrew M. Busch. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Pp. xii, 323. Paper, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-3264-3; cloth, $85.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-3263-6.) On the surface, the exponential growth of Austin, Texas, over the last few decades and its reputation for sustainability seem enviable. Yet the history of the city's development is far from idyllic. Intended and unintended environmental hazards, the by-products of the city's growth and development, have threatened minority populations and created a city deeply bifurcated by race. As Andrew M. Busch argues in City in a Garden: Environmental Transformations and Racial Justice in Twentieth-Century Austin, Texas, environmental improvements and racial discrimination have been inextricably linked throughout Austin's history. Using an approach that weaves together the historical, environmental, and cultural fields, Busch adeptly reveals the tensions and contradictions involved in making Austin a paragon of urban sustainability while also an unsustainable place for its historically disadvantaged residents. Though urban historians have demonstrated how redlining and urban renewal inscribed power relationships on the landscape and formalized racial segregation, Busch details how Austin's environment-centric development has done the same. Organized in nine chapters that roughly correspond to three chronological eras, the study analyzes the natural and social environments as two interrelated categories to reveal both continuity and evolution in thoughts about development, environment, and race in Austin. Sociologist George Lipsitz's concept of "possessive investment in whiteness" is foundational to Busch's work (p. 4). Using this idea, which posits that whiteness is a structured advantage producing rewards for white people while creating impediments for minorities, Busch argues that two distinct, racialized spaces were created in Austin—the "garden" for white people and the "shadow" for minorities (p. 3). Thus racial groups think about environment differently. For Austin's white middle-class residents, it means nature, recreation, and beauty, but for minority and low-income communities, environment is pragmatic. They [End Page 489] define it as their immediate surroundings and associate it with labor, public health, housing, and pollution. Water is as central to Busch's analysis as it has been to Austin's development and identity. Attempts to dam Texas's Colorado River from the 1890s to the 1930s, the use of water for recreation, and promotional efforts in which water was integral each address central tensions between man and nature, minority residents and Anglo residents, progressivism and racism, and environmental sustainability and environmental danger. For example, a series of dams and reservoirs built using New Deal money marked the city as modern and politically progressive but also intensified racial difference by excluding minorities from many of the dams' benefits, including construction jobs, recreational opportunities, and less expensive water and electricity. Busch highlights the knowledge economy as another vital factor in Austin's sustainable development and racial discrimination. The recreational lifestyle afforded by Austin's natural environment was used to attract companies to the city. At the same time, knowledge-based businesses helped limit pollution and preserve the natural environment by allowing the city to eschew industrial development. Yet most minority residents were not eligible for employment with these companies and thus did not share in the largesse of these new jobs. In the final chapter, Busch explores the rise of activism in minority communities, as members battled the increasing environmental risks associated with Austin's rapid development in the 1980s and 1990s. While the chapter is enlightening and continues the theme of tensions in the history of Austin's development, it begs the question of previous community activism, which is notably missing from earlier chapters. Although minority groups historically had limited agency and most likely left few historical records, it is difficult to believe that there was no activism either by minorities or on their behalf before this period. Overall, City in a Garden is an important book with wide appeal. Not only will urban and planning historians find value in this work, but...

The Dependent Origination of Whiteness

The Buddhist teachings on dependent origination describe how the process of rebirth—also known as becoming—is caused by a deluded consciousness feeding on a person’s body and mind, as well as on external objects of craving and aversion. The process of racial formation that turns European American bodies into white people who feed off of the land, labor, and life force of people of color can be seen as an example of dependent origination. This article argues that whiteness is a deeply rooted existential experience in the bodies and minds of European Americans that serves as a firewall against perpetrator guilt and trauma; it also explains why the threat white people perceive in demographic shifts triggers an existential fear of annihilation. The Buddhist teachings in this article correspond with the concepts of racial formation and racial project articulated by Michael Omi and Howard Winant, and the concept of the possessive investment in whiteness articulated by George Lipsitz. The article then uses the Buddhist antiracist lens formed from these connections to analyze past and present white supremacist behavior in the United States, as well as past and present antiracist behavior in the United States, paying particular attention to Martin Luther King’s involvement in the Chicago Freedom Movement. Although not the primary focus of this article, connections are also made between the Buddhist elements of this analysis and clinical trauma therapy in order to ground this discussion in a secular, empirical, trauma-informed context.

When whiteness creeps back in: an analytic look at whiteness in urban education school reform

ABSTRACTThis paper presents an analysis of how education reform in Denver Public Schools (DPS) fails to reach its targeted goal of closing achievement gaps between white students and Students of Colour based on its investment in Whiteness. Using a theoretical framework grounded in critical whiteness studies, we trace a history in DPS that includes legal intervention on behalf of Students of Colour and analyse how modern day school choice, specialised programme assignments and hiring and promotion tactics reproduce historical inequities by granting privilege to white students and educators through its stated doctrine and policy. This privilege is evident through testing data showing DPS white students not only outperform white state peers, but as district policies targeted at closing racial gaps take hold, white students are actually benefiting the most. This paper asserts that until DPS is willing to examine how Whiteness is entrenched in all parts of the district it is destined to perpetuate racial inequities.

Fashioning Diaspora: Beauty, Femininity, and South Asian American Culture by Vanita Reddy

Reviewed by: Fashioning Diaspora: Beauty, Femininity, and South Asian American Culture by Vanita Reddy Suzanne Enzerink Fashioning Diaspora: Beauty, Femininity, and South Asian American Culture, by Vanita Reddy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2016. Xiii + 261 pp. $84.50 cloth. $32.95 paper. ISBN: 978-1-4399-1155-6. A few years ago, a friend sent me a card so striking that it is still up on my wall today. Taken from Canadian visual artist Meera Sethi's series Firangi Rang Barangi, Hindi for "colorful stranger," the card ("Pyaari") features a woman dressed in a bright green floral headscarf, a sari blouse, geometrically patterned blue pants, bright orange pumps, and a mix of jewelry all over her body. More accurately, the card depicts the clothing itself: the woman is visible only as a trace outline. Fashion here emerges not as adornment, but as constitutive of identity. In this case, the sartorial reveals a distinctly hybrid sense of self, a combination of North American sensibilities with Indian fabrics and adornments. It is fitting that Vanita Reddy's excellent new book, Fashioning Diaspora, takes another of Sethi's prints ("Jaan") as its cover. The book traces transnational itineraries of Indian beauty, especially as it emerges in U.S. cultural imaginaries and diasporic formations. Just as Sethi does through her art, Reddy looks at beauty and fashion as wielding material and affective force, as opening up intimacies and affiliations that can put pressure on normative notions of belonging. Fashioning Diaspora opens with a spectacular moment of racial formation and such contested belonging. After Nina Davuluri was crowned Miss America in 2013, the first Indian American woman to win the competition, a fierce debate erupted that sought to both interpret her win within the U.S. racial landscape and situate her within larger diasporic framework of Indian beauty. She was both claimed as American and derided as a perpetual foreigner, celebrated as reflective of India's prominence in beauty and upheld to critique its investment in whiteness. From this starting point, Reddy compellingly outlines how episodes like this are both "symptom and provocation" of much larger forces—beauty, fashion, race, diaspora, femininity—whose interactions shape South Asian American cultural forms (4). Beauty, in particular, generates [End Page 467] emergent forms of belonging that transcend class and generational divides, and that draw on the aesthetic to address raced and gendered practices within the nation and the diaspora. Reddy posits that beauty, while often figured as commodity or commodifying (of women), more importantly needs to be understood as intimately tied to the social, as a force with material effects. As part of this focus on the material, the actual women that are so often elided in narratives of Indian beauty are brought into focus by Reddy. As she writes, circulations of Indian beauty in mass media "are not merely images but also embodied and desiring subjects, bodies with flesh and bones" (12). However, rather than through ethnography, Reddy effectively and engagingly tends to this by tracing what beauty does. Beauty (and in the second half of the book, fashion) functions as a social domain, constitutive of diasporic embodiments that challenge neoliberal forms of belonging. For diasporic subjects, "the practices associated with beauty are socializing in the way that they make possible new racialized subject formations, affiliations, and forms of diasporic belonging" (17). Reddy mines an exciting and diverse archive to show how such attachments, and South Asian racial and cultural formations, come into being. Her first three chapters hone in on literary productions, both by canonical authors like Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri and lesser-known figures like Palavi Dixit. Her final two chapters take up the visual field in which beauty and fashion operate. Chapter 4 examines experimental feminist art that constitutes "oppositional visual economies of fashion," using parody and aesthetic play to resignify markers such as the bindi (141), while the final chapter reads Shailja Patel's 2006 performance art piece Migritude. Part of what is so exciting about the book is exactly this reading together of texts that cross genres and political and theoretical leanings. Lahiri's "feminist cosmopolitics" are not Mukherjee's racial and gendered exceptionalism, though both push against the terms of...