Observing postcommunist Romania with the dual vision of a native and a scholar, Denise Roman focuses on the fluid act of identity-formation, and the construction or absence of identity-politics, in several minority or disempowered groups: youth, Jews, women, and queers. Roman shows how both aesthetic and moral judgments are born from and embedded in popular culture. Fragmented Identities is rich in observation and analysis, broad in scope, and exuberant in its account of cultural innovation and discourse wrought in response to the end of Communism and the influence of globalization.

"This book is recommended for those who are interested in transnational, feminist and queer studies, identity politics, and subject formation as well as for those interested specifically in post-communist studies, particularly Romanian....An enjoyable read, Roman's book interweaves her theorizations with vivid descriptions and colorful anecdotes to make the tensions, negotiations, and struggles for identity visceral for the reader and thought-provoking for a wide audience." - Women's Studies International Forum

"The subsequent chapters, dedicated in turn to each of these topics, provide useful, theoretically informed, and, largely accurate accounts of the empirical reality a flaneur, or flaneuse, might encounter." - International Feminist Journal of Politics, September 2008

"A good introduction to aspects of postcommunist culture in Romania.... The author, both an insider (as a native of Bucharest) and an outsider (as an American academic) has a special perspective...that gives her special insight into not only Romanian culture, but also Western European and American academic practices vis-a-vis Eastern European issues, especially the gender problematic." - Slavic and East European Journal