Tamara Bhalla’s Reading Together, Reading Apart: Identity, Belonging, and South Asian American Community

Abstract

Tamara Bhalla is the author of Reading Together, Reading Apart: Identity, Belonging, and South Asian American Community (2016) which unravels the practice of reading as a community and how this can determine identity formation. Bhalla studies the sense of identity and belonging of the South Asian diaspora in the United States and describes the needs of the South Asian American community to align with a constructed idea of otherness that is authentic. For this, the author uses the NetSAP book club as an example of a reading group that shares class and race patterns and uses the body of literature to forge and discuss South Asian American identity.