Manolos, Marriage, and Mantras: Chick-Lit Criticism and Transnational Feminism

Critical readings of “chick lit” are typically limited to a framework that understands the popular fiction genre as a sign or symptom of “postfeminism” in the U.S. In its readings of chick lit in general, and of South Asian American chick lit as a particular women of color subgenre, this essay steps...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Meridians (Middletown, Conn.) Conn.), 2008-01, Vol.8 (2), p.1-31
Main Authors:	Butler, Pamela, Desai, Jigna
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	2000-2099 African American Studies and Black Diaspora American literature Asian Americans Austen, Jane (1775-1817) Book publishing Capitalism Chicanx and Latinx Studies Chick lit Consumer economics consumer society Consumption Criticism Cultural Criticism Daswani, Kavita Economic liberalism Electioneering Essays Females Femininity Feminism Feminism and Women's Studies Fiction For Matrimonial Purposes Gender and Sexuality Globalization Goddess for Hire Hegemony History and criticism Ideology Immigration Indian American women novelists Indian myth Literary criticism Literature Marriage Middle class Motion pictures Movie reviews Nation states Neoliberalism novel Novels Political campaigns Political economy Politics Postfeminism Protagonists Race Racism Reading Semiotics Shopping Singh, Sonia Social aspects South Asian literature Subjectivity The Americas The Village Bride of Beverly Hills Transnationalism USA
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Summary:	Critical readings of “chick lit” are typically limited to a framework that understands the popular fiction genre as a sign or symptom of “postfeminism” in the U.S. In its readings of chick lit in general, and of South Asian American chick lit as a particular women of color subgenre, this essay steps away from the framework of postfeminism that so dominates academic and popular discussions of chick lit, and instead uses critical race and transnational feminist critique to foreground questions of race, nation, empire, and political economy. Beginning with transnational and critical race feminisms in this way illuminates not only the operations of chick lit and the middle-class neoliberal subjects it produces, but also interrogates the ways in which hegemonic feminisms in the U.S. (as exemplified by chick-lit criticism) continue to disregard such questions. We analyze South Asian American chick-lit novels through sites—consumption, marriage, and realism—that are central to neoliberal subject-making, and that highlight the ways in which the novels work to produce a (trans)national, racialized, feminine subject embedded within neoliberalism, heteronormativity, and racism. At the same time, we explore contradictions in the production of such subjectivities, thus underscoring ways in which capital and neoliberalism are incomplete formations, and reimagining the possibilities and limitations for representations of subjectivity in the context of neoliberal capitalism and globalization.
ISSN:	1536-6936 1547-8424 1547-8424