These rich family portraits convey a sense of the singular roles women played in building and sustaining a complex diaspora in what Silliman calls ''Jewish Asia'' over the past 150 years. Her sketches of the everyday lives of her foremothers -- from the social and political relationships they forged to the food they ate and the clothes they wore -- bring to life a community and a culture, even as they disclose the unexpected and subtle complexities of the colonial encounter as experienced by Jewish women.