Category Archives: Community

To Thine Own Self Be True

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A memorial to Gaurav Gopalan via Washington City Paper

In the early morning hours of September 10th, the Desi community of D.C. was rocked when a local aeronautical engineer and theatermaker Gaurav Gopalan was found near death only two blocks away from his home. He died soon after. He was only 35. There had been confusion over if had been a hate crime (he was wearing women clothing at the time as an alter persona named “Gigi”) but there had been no visible signs of trauma. Today it was confirmed to be a homicide.

Gopalan, who was found unconscious near his Columbia Heights home in the early hours of Sept. 10, died after suffering sub-arachnoid hemorrhage—bleeding in the space between the brain and the thin tissues that cover it—”due to blunt-impact head trauma,” according to Beverly Fields, chief of staff of the D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. “The manner of death is homicide.” … The news comes in the wake of initial confusion about the case, and amid a string of shootings involving transgender women in the District. (Gopalan was wearing women’s clothes when he was found by a passerby on the 2600 block of 11th Street NW.) [citypaper]
 

Losing someone suddenly is tragic but for it to be a potential hate crime just highlights the incredible injustices in this world. Khush DC sent out a release this week:

This tragedy comes during an especially troubling time for Washington D.C.’s LGBTQQIA community.  A number of incidents involving sexual and gender minority individuals, particularly those affiliated with the transgender community, have occurred during recent months.  We stand in solidarity with all of our communities at this time, and ask everyone to exercise personal safety measures.  We also urge the MPD to fully and thoroughly investigate the incidents that have occurred. [khushdc]  

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The Fierceness of Janaki

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A Siren Theatre Project ProductionLast month protesters marched in front of the San Jose Museum of Arts, protesting the interpretation of Sita in the animated film Sita Sings the Blues and in a painting by M.F. Husain where Sita is depicted the nude. The words “shameful” and “denigration” were some those used by the conservative religious groups protesting the artwork – but the museum continued their support, stating “freedom of artistic expression.”

This weekend the Bay Area will see another form of “Sita art”, this time in the form of a theater production. Siren Theatre Project’s production of Janaki – Daughter of the Dirt will be hitting the stage at the Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco for it’s world premiere this Sept 16th -18th. This ground breaking stage production written by Virali Golkadas touches upon issues of power, sexism and classism from the perspective of Sita.

“I wrote Janaki – Daughter of Dirt to show that Hindu goddesses, just like the women in my family, are not self-sacrificing devotees,” said playwright Virali Gokaldas.  “They are complex, powerful, strong-willed examples, helping us hold compassion for others and ourselves, guiding us when making hard decisions, and above all, giving us the courage to live out our own destinies.” [sirentheatre]

 

As for the controversy in San Jose, here’s what Virali and Anirvan Chatterjee have to say:

Our ability to recontextualize the Ramayana is precisely what makes it a living story, instead of a dead one….The Ramayana is as rich and diverse as India.  If our Indian traditions allow even a 180 degree twist like Ravana being the hero, then what right do protestors have to censors new ways of expressing the story?

 

As Bay Area writers who have our own visions of the Ramayana to share, we take the attack on the tradition of diverse Ramayanas personally.  The Ramayana speaks to us, just as it did to those creators whose works were being protested in San Jose. [sirentheatre]

 

Art for arts sake or art to honor and personalize faith? Check out the play this weekend and form your own opinion. And just for our Sepia Mutiny readers, tickets are only $20, with the discount code “Sepia Mutiny” over at Brown Paper Ticket. For more information on Janaki – Daughter of the Dirt or Siren Theatre Project, visit their facebook page and their website.

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How Will We Remember?

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On this day I woke up to images of the twin towers falling on TV, eerily similar to what happened ten years ago at the same time. Deliberately, I’ve avoided the videos over the years, quickly changing the channel, images of people jumping from the building permanently embedded in my memory already. But today, I watched. I needed to be reminded, I guess. Where will we be in 300 years of remembering? This is Chee Malabar & Tanuj Chopra’s interpretation.

The video was created as a DVD insert to the Asian American Literature Review Tenth Anniversary of September 11th issue.

So many of our communities have borne witness to so much over the past 10 years; it behooves us to critically consider the moment and its aftermath—the various political, legal, and civil rights repercussions, particularly for the communities most directly affected, South Asian, Arab, Middle Eastern, and Muslim American. But how can we do so, when so many of the voices of affected communities remain unheard? [AALR]

 

You can order your copy of the AALR special issue online here now.

The Philadelphia Inquirer Covers Indian Americans: Gets it 100% Right

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Photo Credit: The Philadelphia Inquirer

Dear Editor Wischnowski,

I am writing today to thank you and the rest of The Philadelphia Inquirer team for your wonderful front-page coverage on the South Asian American community in the Sunday, July 3rd edition. The article titled “Indian population booming in Philadelphia area” certainly constitutes one of the finest pieces of research-driven feature-writing I have seen in quite some time. As one of the 477,586 Sunday readers of The Philadelphia Inquirer, I am thrilled to see that the third-oldest, eleventh-largest daily newspaper the United States continues to maintain its reputation as the Pulitzer Prize winning publication of its yore. With the advent of joke publications, such as The Onion, arriving in this town, it’s heartening to see some hard-hitting news in the Inquirer.

First and foremost, I would like to tip my hat to journalists Michael Matza and Joelle Farrell for their wonderful reporting. To echo the first quote in the article, “Stereotypes be damned.” Such breadth of interviewees! What segues! The software-developer. The dentist groom and the physician bride. The retired chemist. The civil engineer turned motel-owner. The managing partner. The real estate agent. And lest we grow too comfortable in our community’s affluence, the additional video on your website featuring the taxi driver. A moment of silence for this lone unskilled Indian American man who aspires to achieve the American dream. And a hat tip to you guys for featuring him! I bow to your benevolent reporting. Nick Kristof could learn something from you people. Continue reading →

Tapped

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AASIF MANDVI by Rob Kelly

The years after 9/11, I could have sworn there was a clicking noise whenever I used the landline at my parent’s place. It could have been a bad phone, or it could have been due to the, as Saheli said, “crappy connectivity that year.” I would half-jokingly have side bar conversations with the so-called secret eavesdroppers, letting them know “I know you are listening!” or my thoughts on Dick Cheney.

I was reminded of this as I was reading Aasif Mandvi’s Op-Ed over at Bloomberg just now (h/t Ludovic):

When U.S. troops marched into Iraq in 2003, I, like many Americans, was outraged at what I considered a senseless and unjustified military action. As I spoke to my mother about it on the phone, I noticed that the angrier I got, the more uncomfortable she became.

 

At first I thought perhaps she disagreed with me, that her awkward silences on the other end of the line resulted from her biting her tongue. Had she, like many of her fellow Americans, bought into the claim that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were simply opposite sides of the same al-Qaeda nickel?

 

When I pressed her on this, she quietly replied, “Perhaps we should not discuss this over the phone.”

 

What do you mean? I said. Why on earth not?

 

Because, she answered, “You never know who is listening to us.” [bloomberg]

 

Read the rest here. Were we out of the realms of normal to think that our phone lines could be wiretapped? I don’t think so. It was THE Muslim Witch Hunt of 2001 – the antiquated version of our modern day Islamophobia. With Homeland Security agents knocking at our door and unmarked white vans parked in front of our house, it was very realistic to think that our line could be wiretapped. Ten years later, it still seems very realistic and in fact it feels that progress has not been made but rather undone. As Mandvi states, “That moment when the world came together and shared a grief that transcended faith, nationality and politics is undone….What I hope for in the next 10 years is a War against Fear.”

It’s Wednesday

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No, it’s not Friday. It’s Wednesday!

http://youtu.be/_voojg6RKzs

What would happen if Ice Cube’s Today Was a Good Day took place in the techie days of nowadays? The video stars comedian Hasan Minhaj as the Desi South Bay-esque protagonist. Hasan can also be seen on ABC Family’s State of Georgia and can be heard on his comedy album wittily named Leaning on Expensive Cars and Getting Paid to Do It. Aziz Ansari better watch out now….

It’s Been Ten Years…

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islamaphobia poster.jpg Next Sunday marks the ten year anniversary of 9/11. Unbelievable that it’s been ten years already and unbelievable that there is a whole generation of South Asian American youth that don’t remember what life was like before this day. It’s irrefutable that the events on that tragic day have strongly shaped the narrative of being a South Asian American.

People from across the country are getting together to remember, reflect, and dialogue in their own ways this week. Design Action Collective’s Sabiha Basri is designing a series of political poster to commemorate the anniversary (image above); Wajahat Ali and the Center for American Progress released a report last week called Fear Inc. collecting data on the root sources of islamophobia; The Sikh Coalition created on online video narrative platform to crowdsource stories at Unheard Voices of 9/11; The Asian American Literary Review has released a narrative publication with contributions from Sonny Singh, DJ Rekha, Vijay Prashad, Purvi Shah, mutineer Amitva Kumar and many, many more; McSweeney’s published an oral history book from the Voices of Witness series called Patriot Act: Narratives of Post 9/11 Injustices; and SAALT has the An America for All of Us campaign, an effort to unite policy makers, politicians, and community leaders under one pledge for equity for all.


View List of 9/11 Ten Year Anniversary Events Compiled by South Asian Americans Leading Together, SAALT in a larger map

Additionally, SAALT has also put together an amazing national resource list of upcoming 9/11 events that will be going on this week. This map is also being crowdsourced so that you can add your own local events as well. Be sure to check it out to see what events are going on in your neighborhood.

I’ve listed just a few of hundreds of things going on this week. We’d like to hear from you – if you have an event, project, collaboration, or story remembering 9/11 that you think would interest the mutinous crowd this week – please list it in the comments below. Continue reading →

Another Perspective–Himalayan American

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himalayan.nasa.jpgSapana Sakya was born in Nepal, grew up in Thailand and came to the US for college. She has a background in filmmaking and journalism and works at the Center for Asian American Media. Sakya shares her thoughts on identity in an interesting post for CAAM called I Think I’m Himalayan American.

When I was 5 years old my family migrated to Thailand where I attended an American international school in Bangkok. I was the only Nepalese person in my school. To be anything other than Thai, Chinese or Indian – the majority of the student body, was to be looked down upon or considered an exotic “other” so I learned to keep my ethnicity to myself and didn’t correct people when they assumed I was Thai or Indian.

She conveys mixed feelings about using the term South Asian.

Until now, I categorized myself as South Asian but I always felt that the term South Asian represented the dominant group of that subcontinent, India. I am South Asian and Nepalese; the Nepalese language is similar to Hindi but Newari, my ethnic language, is closer to Tibetan and Burmese. So Himalayan is a more accurate descriptor of my culture and ethnicity. Continue reading →

Way To Go, Anika / A Speech for Libraries

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This is a video of 14-year-old Anika Tabovaradan giving an impassioned speech about the need for libraries in Toronto. It is 2 a.m., she hates public speaking, she’s been waiting for four hours to talk, and a bunch of Toronto officials–including Mayor Rob Ford–are watching her. AND SHE IS AWESOME.

Way to go, Anika. You reminded me how much I love libraries, librarians, and community space.

(Here’s the related article in the Toronto Star, and a tip o’ the old hat to Romesh H, who pointed out the vid in the first place.) Continue reading →

Seeing Lal

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prerna Lal.jpgThis weekend, Desi youth will be convening in Oakland, CA and Washington DC for the primary purpose of getting activated and politicized. DCDesi Summer will be holding it down for the East Coast, and I personally have been involved in getting Bay Area Solidarity Summer (BASS) off the ground here on the West Coast. Not only am I excited about the FUNraiser we have scheduled, I am particularly excited about the opening keynote speakers for the weekend – author of Desis in the House Sunaina Maira and dream activist Prerna Lal.

I met Prerna Lal last summer at Netroots Nation in Las Vegas. I quickly learned that she was a quite the firecracker. Desi via Fiji, Prerna is a founder of DreamActivist, a current law student, a writer, a SAALT Changemaker, queer, an activist and… is undocumented. Her journey as a struggling youth trying to navigate the broken immigration system is one she is very vocal about sharing, whether on blogs or on twitter. Her tenacity is one to be admired and bravery is one to be inspired by.

Just a few months ago, Prerna was served deportation papers – but being who she is, she’s not leaving without a fight. Here’s what she had to say.

Taz: What made you tweet this?

Prerna: It’s how I feel on most days. We are always asked to prove our worth to our countries. But I have yet to have America prove its worth to me.

T: What is your legal status?

P: Out of status, allegedly accruing unlawful presence that could lead to a 10 year bar from the United States if deported.

T: Where are you from? How did you end up in the US?

P: Fiji Islands. Father brought me here when I was 14, kicking and screaming.

T: Your grandmother is a citizen, your parents are greencard holders and your sister is a citizen. How is it possible that you are considered undocumented?

P: That’s simple. I aged out at 21. You see, when a visa petition is approved, a family has to wait many years to actually get a “priority date” in order to immigrate legally. I was 24 by the time my parents received their priority date. Regardless of the fact that my name was on the original visa petition filed for my family, I was automatically castigated and separated from my family. My parents were no longer considered my “immediate relatives.” I find it morally repugnant, but I’m sure there are many young adults who have experienced the same horror of family separation due to an arbitrary age out of our control. Continue reading →