VDM Brommer, S: We Walk With Them

When South Asian women came together in Northern California to help immigrant women who experience domestic abuse in a foreign culture, they faced some community enmity, hegemonic Western conceptualizations of domestic abuse, and restrictive American immigration law. These South Asian caregivers persevered by creating a social space for abused women and by recognizing the politics of culture through their caregiving models emphasizing fictive kin and empowerment. This book profiles three South Asian anti-domestic abuse organizations in Northern California at the turn of the 21st century, and, in so doing, investigates how these non-profit agencies serve abused women and reach out to the diasporic community for support, focusing on culturally appropriate intervention, fundraising and outreach activities, and legal advocacy for abused immigrant women. By examining the outreach and service provided by the organizations, this research also explores how they become a community for social change and kin-like support, politicize tradition, and contest the conventional notions of the gendered organization of public and private life.