Dr. Roksana Badruddoja, a second-generation Bangladeshi-American, received her terminal degree in sociology from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Before joining The Partnership for the Homeless as Vice President of Research, Dr. Badruddoja was an Assistant Professor in the Women's Studies Program in the College of Social Sciences at California State University, Fresno, where she taught courses on feminist research methods, women of color in the U.S., feminist activism, and representations of women. Her research in the areas of race and ethnicity, sexuality, gender, religion, and culture, and how these impact South Asian-American women has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals. These include the National Women's Studies Association Journal, the Journal of the Association of Research on Mothering, the International Journal of Sociology of the Family, and the International Review of Modern Sociology. She is the author of Eyes of a Storm: Voices of South Asian-American Women (2010) and is now working on an anthology about the South Asian Diaspora in North America, entitled We Are The Peppermint Generation…Not!

In an interview for Lokvani, Roksana spoke on the underlying theme of her book that has now gone into its third edition.

When Roksana first chose to write this book she was doing some soul searching of her own post 9/11, the aftermath in which Islam and South Asians were scrutinized more deeply than ever before by America. Till then she found no reason to question her American and Bangladeshi background that seemed almost seamless to her. Yet, reassessing it, she felt the need to reaffirm  a strong identity as a Bangladeshi as much as an American, Says Roksana,“ To me it felt almost imperative to affirm that I am Muslim and Brown. It was more as a political identity rather than a cultural and religious one. I felt the need for this response because I wanted to challenge the ways we are perceived and I also want to refute the notion that a culture divide exists for second generation South Asians in this country”.

To strengthen this notion, Roksana chose to focus on  issues faced by South Asian women within the context of race,ethnicity,class, gender, feminist and queer theories Using a research technique called Snowball, she reached out to a sample of women in the the community and received 70 responses from women who were willing to participate in her research. Out of these she chose 25 women  from the three large immigrant states of Illinois, California and New York. Over a period of 7 years, she spent hours and sometimes days in their lives, sharing, eating and talking to them on how they perceive their identities living in the US in the context of their relationships, culture and the environment and the feelings associated with being immigrants. “It became a major hub of reflection” says Roksana,” and even helped me to be comfortable with who I am”. This approach is unique as her research participant oral histories becoming a major narrative in exploration of these issues.  Her research conclusions pointed to the theory that national belonging played a key role in which South Asian women imagine their identities. In other words these women were quite comfortable taking on the traditional roles of their culture while assimilating into the mainstream without any confusion in their minds as to who they are and where they belong.

To further strengthen this assumption, Roksana also reviewed four popular literary novels, Samina Ali’s ‘Madras on Rainy days’, ‘Arranged Marriage’ by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, ‘Born Confused’ by Tanuja Desai Hidier, and Jhumpa Lahiri’s,The Namesake’. She refutes the notion that there is an ABCD conundrum and the one that exists is created by the dominant community which she calls ‘a pathological idea to stigmatize identity’. Roksana also presents language, holidays, religion, cooking and eating as the cultural spaces in which these women identify themselves.

The book ‘Eyes of the Storm’ is now in its third edition and was featured at the Smithsonian Museum and is available on Amazon and other bookstores. She is now working on an anthology about the South Asian Diaspora in North America, entitled We Are The Peppermint Generation…Not!

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