Nation of Family and Friends?

AARTI RATNA teaches and writes about race, gender, and popular culture, focusing on the sport and leisure engagements of British Asian girls and women. They co-edited Gender, Race and Sport: The Politics of Ethnic “Other” Girls and Women and are an associate professor in the Department of Social Sciences at Northumbria University in Newcastle, UK.

"Sometimes, a book comes along that not only resonates deeply on a personal level but also serves as a rich and thought-provoking resource for analytical exploration. . . . With profound insights and a sharp sociological lens, Ratna crafts a narrative that is both deeply personal and globally relevant, leaving the reader questioning their role and complicities in challenging and/or upholding the social inequalities in the worlds of sports and the academy. Grounded in the traditions of Black, Brown and ethnic other feminisms, Ratna offers novel methodological and analytical concepts to scrutinise the potential of sporting spaces for contesting and reproducing intersecting forms of discrimination and inequalities." (idrottsforum.org) “Philosophically expansive, theoretically sophisticated, and methodologically complex, A Nation of Family and Friends? charts new intertextual terrains that elevate our understandings of South Asian diasporas, race, gender, ethnicity, class, and leisure. With incredible analytic precision, Aarti Ratna provides a must read for those interested in the politics of belonging, nationalism, and ethno-nationalism.  A brilliant book in the service of social justice!”- Stanley I. Thangaraj (author of Desi Hoop Dreams: Pickup Basketball and the Making of Asian American Masculinity) “A Nation of Family and Friends? offers a much-needed exploration into the sporting and leisure experiences of South Asian women, which has thus far lacked visibility and depth of analysis. I commend Aarti Ratna on the work put into this project and her determination to create something unique and against the grain.” - Courtney Szto (author of Changing on the Fly: Hockey through the Voices of South Asian Canadians)