Book review: fashioning diaspora: beauty, femininity and South Asian American culture by Vanita Reddy

In Fashioning Diaspora: Beauty, Femininity and South Asian American Culture, Vanita Reddy examines how beauty is a mobilising and socialising force implicated in the shaping of South Asian American identities, focusing on a range of cultural and literary texts drawn from the 1990s to the present. In showing beauty to be an active force in constructions of the social, this is a nuanced and timely analysis of the experiences of South Asian American women that bridges the gaps between fashion, racialisation, aesthetics and politics, finds Rajat Singh.