Speaking the unspeakable: marital violence among South Asian immigrants in the United States

Over the past 20 years, much work has focused on domestic violence, yet little attention has been paid to the causes, manifestations, and resolutions to marital violence among ethnic minorities, especially recent immigrants. Margaret Abraham's Speaking the Unspeakable is the first book to focus on South Asian women's experiences of domestic violence, defined by the author as physical, sexual, verbal, mental, or economic coercion, power, or control perpetrated on a woman by her spouse or extended kin. Abraham explains how immigration issues, cultural assumptions, and unfamiliarity with the American social, legal, and economic systems, coupled with stereotyping, make these women especially vulnerable to domestic violence. Through the actual stories of South Asian women, we learn of their weaknesses and strengths and their encounters of domestic violence within the larger cultural, social, economic, and political context. We see both the individual strategies of resistance against their abusers as well as the pivotal role South Asian women's help organizations play in helping these women escape abusive relationships. Abraham also describes the central role played by South Asian activism as it emerged in the 1980s in the United States, and addresses the practices both within and outside of the South Asian community that stereotype, discriminate, and oppress South Asians in their everyday lives.