“Fashioning Diaspora is an extraordinary intervention into the joint fields of Asian American studies and feminist and queer theory. Reddy makes important contributions, and her book is distinguished by fresh, original readings of a diverse archive of South Asian American public culture. This innovative constellation of texts not only enables us to see how the archive constitutes a historical source for narratives of South Asian migration but also produces a state of feeling: what she argues is the feeling of beauty.”-Bakirathi Mani, Associate Professor, Department of English Literature, Swarthmore College, and author of Aspiring to Home: South Asians in America

“Vanita Reddy has now made it very difficult to think about the South Asian diaspora without paying attention to the subjects, objects, discourses, and practices of beauty that animate it. Moving seamlessly from discussions of the ‘exceptional beauty’ of literary heroines like Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine to the transformation of Delhi and Mumbai into new fashion capitals, Reddy’s compelling readings and vast archive of ‘beautiful forms’ leave us much wiser about how aesthetic desires and demands have shaped South Asians’ everyday practices of belonging.”-Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu, Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University, and author of The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion