Offers fresh theoretical and methodological insights into biculturalism as a reality in many socieities. This work presents a variety of methodological strategies and techniques case studies, autoethnography, content analysis, participant observation, the national survey, and structured and unstructured interviews.

The book focuses on the representations of female sexuality and the body in South Asian American women's fiction. It analyzes several novels and over a dozen short stories to explore the mechanisms employed by women writers of South Asian descent to challenge the culturally sanctioned role of the female body as the carrier of cultural tradition.

Introduction. The politics of biculturalism: culture and difference in the formation of Warriors for Gringostroika and The New Mestizas / Antonia Darder -- Rethinking Afrocentricity: the foundation of a theory of critical Africentricity / Makungu M. Akinyela -- Chicana identity matters / Deena J. González -- Racialized boundaries, class relations, and cultural politics: the Asian-American and Latino experience / Rodolfo D. Torres and ChorSwang Ngin -- Cultural democracy and the revitalization of the U.S. labor movement / Kent Wong -- The Zone of black bodies: language, black consciousness, and adolescent identities / Garrett Duncan -- The alter-native grain: theorizing Chicano/a popular culture / Alicia Gaspar de Alba -- Public space and culture: a critical response to conventional and postmodern visions of city life / David R. Diaz -- The idea of Mestizaje and the "race" problematic: racialized media discourse in a post-fordist landscape / Victor Valle and Rodolfo D. Torres -- Working with gay/homosexual Latinos with HIV disease: spiritual emergencies and culturally based psycho-therapeutic treatments / Lourdes Arguelles and Anne Rivero -- African Americans, gender, and religiosity / Daphne C. Wiggins -- Voice and empowerment: the struggle for poetic expression / Luis J. Rodriguez -- Bicultural strengths and struggles of Southeast Asian Americans in school / Peter Nien-chu Kiang -- Language policy and social implications for addressing the bicultural immigrant experience in the United States / Alberto M. Ochoa.

Since the second half of the twentieth century, there has been a commitment on the part of women writers and scholars to revise and rewrite the history and culture of colonial and post-colonial women. This collection intends to enter a forum of discussion in which the colonial past serves as a point of reference for the analysis of contemporary issues. This volume will examine topics of women’s identities and bodies through literary representations and historical accounts. In other words, the aim is to reconstruct women’s identities through the representations of their bodies in literature and to analyse women’s bodies historically as sites of abuse, discrimination and violence on the one hand, and of knowledge and cultural production on the other. The chapters of this book will contribute to the formation of a new representation of women through history and literature which fights traditional stereotypes in relation to their bodies and identities. Focusing on female bodies as maternal bodies, as repositories of history and memory, as sexual bodies, as healing bodies, as performative of gender, as black bodies, as migrant and hybrid bodies, as the objects of regulation and control, and as victims of sexual exploitation and murder, the different articles contained in this book will examine issues of space, power/knowledge relations, discrimination, the production of knowledge, gender and boundaries to produce new identities for women which contest and respond to the traditional ones. The volume is addressed to a wide readership, both scholars and those interested in investigating the dynamics of the female body, and the social and cultural conceptualizations of our multicultural and multiethnic contemporary societies in relation to it, without forgetting the historical and colonial roots of these new representations.

Although the United States has always been a nation of immigrants, the recent demographic shifts resulting in burgeoning young Latino and Asian populations have literally changed the face of the nation. This wave of massive immigration has led to a nationwide struggle with the need to become bicultural, a difficult and sometimes painful process of navigating between ethnic cultures. While some Latino adolescents become alienated and turn to antisocial behavior and substance use, others go on to excel in school, have successful careers, and build healthy families. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data ranging from surveys to extensive interviews with immigrant families, Becoming Bicultural explores the individual psychology, family dynamics, and societal messages behind bicultural development and sheds light on the factors that lead to positive or negative consequences for immigrant youth. Paul R. Smokowski and Martica Bacallao illuminate how immigrant families, and American communities in general, become bicultural and use their bicultural skills to succeed in their new surroundings The volume concludes by offering a model for intervention with immigrant teens and their families which enhances their bicultural skills.

Society is continually moving towards global interaction, and nations often contain citizens of numerous cultures and backgrounds. Bi-culturalism incorporates a higher degree of social inclusion in an effort to bring about social justice and change, and it may prove to be an alternative to the existing dogma of mainstream Europe-based hegemonic bodies of knowledge. The Handbook of Research on Indigenous Knowledge and Bi-Culturalism in a Global Context is a collection of innovative studies on the nature of indigenous bodies’ knowledge that incorporates the sacred or spiritual influence across various countries following World War II, while exploring the difficulties faced as society immerses itself in bi-culturalism. While highlighting topics including bi-cultural teaching, Africology, and education empowerment, this book is ideally designed for academicians, urban planners, sociologists, anthropologists, researchers, and professionals seeking current research on validating the growth of indigenous thinking and ideas.

The human body has been depicted in a variety of ways across a range of cultural and historical locations. It has been described, variously, as a biological entity, clothing for the soul, a site of cultural production, a psychosexual construct, and a material encumbrance. Each of these different approaches brings with it a range of anthropological, political, theological, and psychological discourses that explore and construct identities and subject positions. This Companion examines connections between American literature and bodies from the eighteenth century through the present. It reveals the singular way that literature can help us understand the body's entanglement within social and biological influences, and it traces the body's existence within histories of race, gender, and ability. This volume details the genres, critical fields, and interpretive practices that best facilitate the analysis of bodies in the full span of American literary imaginings.