Our Feet Walk the Sky: Women of the South Asian Diaspora

This important collection of some 100 fiction and nonfiction pieces by and about first- and second-generation South Asians in America is relevant not only to the current academic interest in postcolonial studies. The work here is compelling and disturbing enough to stand on its own--particularly in its descriptions of destructive power imbalances between men and women who absorb the traditional South Asian beliefs about gender difference. In ``Daddy,'' Zainab Ali tells of a 15-year-old reproaching her father for his second wife, describing him as ``a half-time husband who leaves a cold, empty side of my mother's bed every other night while he sleeps at the whore's house. An emptiness that brings my mother's tears of loneliness.'' In an untitled poem Huma Dar writes of her daughter, a victim of incest (``Were you trying to block the hurting, prying fingers? / Were you trying to tell me what your father was doing to you?''). And in ``A Marriage Proposal,'' Anu Murgai recounts the hostile, domineering relationship between a bright, loving young woman and her future mother-in-law (`` `Don't laugh so loudly,' Mrs. Mehta's voice hissed in her ear . . . `a young bride should be shy' ''). The contributions--gathered around themes of gender and otherness, including lesbian love; current Indian cinema; and the strained relationship between South Asian Americans and African Americans--share an earnest intensity about the pressing nature of such injustices. (Aug.)