Download or read book Negotiating Identities written by Aparna Rayaprol and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about how immigrant communities conceptualize, and indeed actualize, the process of reconstruction in a foreign land. Faced with a disjunctive crisis, a community can find in religion "a major symbolic resource" that helps to make such rebuilding possible. In this book, the community in question is South Indian, and the material representation of their coming together is the Sri Venkateswara temple in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The author examines the dynamics of gender roles within this specific occurrence of India-to-America immigration, emphasizing the ways in which both women and girls (by way of cultural and religious activities related to the temple) have created a niche for themselves with in the community.