New Lives in Anand

"Verstappen...holds herself accountable to the often-contradictory stories that her interlocutors tell about their relationship to communal violence. The threat of violence is still present as a binding force, but processes of social change are made livable by a new aesthetics of mobility and connectedness."—Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology

"Remarkable and pioneering. The impact of communal violence on the ghettoization of the Muslims of India is assessed quantitatively and accounted for qualitatively."—Christophe Jaffrelot, coeditor of Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation

"This closely-observed, beautifully-written ethnography takes up the question of how communities learn to live together after episodes of significant violence. The answer is that, in some cases, former victims remake and reorient what have been marginal spaces into hubs of empowerment. This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of how spaces become places and of how insiders experience them quite differently than outsiders. It is an essential tool for academics, planners, and policymakers alike."—Peggy Levitt, author of Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display