If you're looking for some solid, smart reading to kick off the new year, heads up. Renown scholar/author Vijay Prashad's Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today is now available in paperback from The New Press. Yes, you need not carry around that burdensome hardcover tome to get your knowledge on.
In his groundbreaking classic The Karma of Brown Folk, Prashad evaluated the American stereotype of South Asians as a "model minority." In Uncle Swami, Prashad follows up and expands upon this analysis to explore South Asian American history and identity in the wake of shifting cultural attitudes wrought by 9/11.
Uncle Swami traces the distinct strands of South Asian migration in America through generations and class divisions, from the first organizations of immigrant communities to the rising influence of the India Lobby in Washington to post-9/11 assaults against people mistaken as terrorists.
