National (un)Belonging: Bengali American Women on Imagining and Contesting Culture and Identity: Chronicling Continuity and Change

In National (un)Belonging: Bengali American Women on Imagining and Contesting Culture and Identity, Roksana Badruddoja focuses on the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, citizenship, and nationalism among contemporary second-generation Bengali American women. Badruddoja engages in a yearlong feminist ethnographic study with a nationwide sample of 25 women in the U.S. to poignantly explore perceptions about daily social and cultural practices.

Exploring the conceptual and theoretical perspectives of the social, economic, cultural, aesthetic, and political dimensions of transnational migrations, Badruddoja interrogates assimilation to depict the messy nature of diasporic movement and the resulting complexities of diasporic identities. Badruddoja demonstrates racialized identities are often part of a constellation of loyalties that are multiple, contradictory, constantly shifting, and overlapping.