Call for Papers for a 2018 Special Issue of SAR
Growing Up in the Diaspora: South-Asian Children

In India today, more than 50% of its population is below the age of 25 (Kaushik, 2015).  Asian Indian communities settled in different regions of the world add to this statistic.  While some of the diasporic children may come from “traditional families,” with two Indian parents, others may be the offspring of diverse partnerships, including biracial, bicultural, bilingual, and/or religiously interdenominational families.  Although these youths share a common heritage, each of them encounters a different set of understanding about what it means to grow up Asian Indian. Even as cultural identity construction (Dowling, 2011) is challenging to adults, for children the process is more onerous. The diasporic youth must navigate multiple cultures, learn two or more languages, negotiate divergent religious practices, observe different rules at home, follow dietary restrictions, or adhere to distinct familial mores. Even schools that are considered safe havens can be sources of symbolic violence and micro-aggressions caused by bullying, verbal disparagements, or culturally deprecating curricula (Iyengar & Smith, 2016).
The editors for this special edition solicit scholarly contributions—creative and empirical—that explore the lived experience of Asian Indian children throughout the world. What particular challenges do they face and how do they survive? What is negotiable for them, and what is not? How do they construct their bicultural identities within the spaces where they live and grow (the school, home, temple, and the host country)?
Contribution may be studies of children’s writing (e.g., memoirs, testimonial narratives) or research studies about children (e.g. cultural studies, ethnographies, phenomenological studies). Reviews and critiques of novels, movies, and creative writing that focus on Asian Indian children are also invited for publication consideration.  In keeping with the journal’s policy, besides literary essays, the editors will consider scholarly papers on dance, music, painting, sculpture, and domestic architecture as they pertain to South Asian children.

POSSIBLE TOPICS
“Othering” and alienation; Construction of Identity; Multilingualism in Asian Indian Communities; Cultural Preservation and Cultural atrophy; Bollywood and impressionable viewers; Becoming “Americanized”; Transnationalism and Familial separation; Becoming the “model minority”; Heritage cultural practices in new contexts, (e.g., Bharatanatyam dance, Carnatic music); Bullying and micro-aggressions in school; Linguistic and cultural preservation; Community cultural wealth; Symbolic acts of violence; Curricular exclusion, and disconnection at school; Deculturation, and cultural atrophy; Aggressive neglect (at home and abroad); Scholarly analysis of literary works
Creative writing: poetry, essays, short stories

Submission Guidelines
The South Asian Review journal welcomes analytical and critical articles of 15-25 pages that are double-spaced, prepared in the MLA style, and accompanied by a brief abstract and a biographical note.  Subject line: SALA Journal. Submission deadline: December 1st, 2018

Articles must be original and hitherto unpublished.  Electronic submissions should be sent to Kalpana.Iyengar@utsa.edu.

Guest-Editors:
  Kalpana M. Iyengar, Ph.D.        &          Howard L. Smith, Ph.D.
                            University of Texas at San Antonio