“It Feels Strange Not to Have a Shrine”: Valuing Domestic Shrine Traditions as Homemaking Labor and Sustaining Religions Through Transformation

This chapter explores how second-generation Bengali American women value their domestic shrine traditions as a homemaking labor through which they construct homes, religiosities, and notions of self in the United States that remake their mother’s traditions and family-oriented identities. I focus on three second-generation Bengali American women—Tarani, Deepa, and Isha—and show how they transform their mothers’ shrine traditions in ways that both honor the familial heritage and identity these traditions express and allow them to reflect their own particular religiosity and career-oriented womanhood. Through these women’s stories, this chapter illustrates how transformation enables the sustenance of Bengali Hindu traditions and subjectivities across generations, and, therefore, further illustrates how domestic shrine traditions function as a valuable reproductive labor.