Duke University Press Desi Land: Teen Culture, Class, and Success in Silicon Valley

Desi Land is Shalini Shankar’s lively ethnographic account of South Asian American teen culture during the Silicon Valley dot-com boom. Shankar focuses on how South Asian Americans, or “Desis,” define and manage what it means to be successful in a place brimming with the promise of technology. Between 1999 and 2001 Shankar spent many months “kickin’ it” with Desi teenagers at three Silicon Valley high schools, and she has since followed their lives and stories. The diverse high-school students who populate Desi Land are Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs, from South Asia and other locations; they include first- to fourth-generation immigrants whose parents’ careers vary from assembly-line workers to engineers and CEOs. By analyzing how Desi teens’ conceptions and realizations of success are influenced by community values, cultural practices, language use, and material culture, she offers a nuanced portrait of diasporic formations in a transforming urban region. Whether discussing instant messaging or arranged marriages, Desi bling or the pressures of the model minority myth, Shankar foregrounds the teens’ voices, perspectives, and stories. She investigates how Desi teens interact with dialogue and songs from Bollywood films as well as how they use their heritage language in ways that inform local meanings of ethnicity while they also connect to a broader South Asian diasporic consciousness. She analyzes how teens negotiate rules about dating and reconcile them with their longer-term desire to become adult members of their communities. In Desi Land Shankar not only shows how Desi teens of different socioeconomic backgrounds are differently able to succeed in Silicon Valley schools and economies but also how such variance affects meanings of race, class, and community for South Asian Americans. Review "An excellent, ethnographically rich study of the lives and practices of young South Asian Americans living in Silicon Valley, Desi Land lends itself to use in courses in fields including anthropology, cultural studies, gender studies, and Asian American studies. What I like best of all is that Shalini Shankar trains her lens on a particular generation's experience while providing us with a rich cultural history of life in Silicon Valley at the turn of the twenty-first century."-- Purnima Mankekar, author of Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India "In this exciting book, Shalini Shankar writes about Desi teens in Silicon Valley with deep sympathy, humor, and genuine insight. The high-school students come alive through ethnographic detail, and yet Shankar's analysis is sharp and thought provoking. Her theoretically sophisticated approach to diversity makes an important contribution to urban anthropology. I will recommend this book to everyone I know--scholars, educators, and advocates--who works with twenty-first-century youth."-- Jan English-Lueck, author of Cultures@SiliconValley "Shalini Shankar's Desi Land is a loving portrait of young people trying their best to fashion culture and life in jobless America. Thick description and rich analysis of young Desis is an eye-opener, whether you're wearing your mad tight color contacts or not."-- Vijay Prashad, author of The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World From the Back Cover "An excellent, ethnographically rich study of the lives and practices of young South Asian Americans living in Silicon Valley, "Desi Land" lends itself to use in courses in fields including anthropology, cultural studies, gender studies, and Asian American studies. What I like best of all is that Shalini Shankar trains her lens on a particular generation's experience while providing us with a rich cultural history of life in Silicon Valley at the turn of the twenty-first century."--Purnima Mankekar, author of "Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, an