ABSTRACT
The author interrogates the challenges and possibilities she encounter as a South Asian woman in the US academy. She is conscious of her own interstitial location as a South Asian immigrant woman teaching currently in the Deep South, where race relations are construed mainly in terms of Black and White. Furthermore, as a scholar who writes in the area of Asian American education, she is aware of the relative dearth, even today, of literature on South Asian Americans as compared to, say, Chinese or Japanese Americans. She discusses the implications for personal and professional agency in terms of collaborating, seeking alliances, and arriving at a viable “third space” from/in which to grow, teach, write, be. She argues that the interstitial locations between different cultures and identities are useful and, indeed, critical in identifying new possibilities for personal and social transformation.
