As a Master’s in Devel­op­ment Prac­tice can­di­date at Emory Uni­ver­si­ty, I am always inves­ti­gat­ing the ‘devel­op­ment’ of gen­der empow­er­ment, hous­ing, dis­as­ter response, envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, among oth­er top­ics. A com­mon mis­take made in devel­op­ment, specif­i­cal­ly inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment, is that a good idea or method of imple­men­ta­tion is assumed to work in every con­text and in all com­mu­ni­ties. As a gay South Asian male, I want to under­stand devel­op­ment issues in the con­text of the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty. Is the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty mak­ing the mis­take of using a uni­ver­sal method approach in under­stand­ing who we are?

“Com­ing out” came up in many con­ver­sa­tions dur­ing my expe­ri­ence with SAALT’s 2014–2015 Young Lead­ers Insti­tute (YLI), which focused on LGBTQ issues. Some stu­dents were “out,” some were in the process, some had not even thought about it, and some don’t plan on “com­ing out”. At dif­fer­ent times in their lives, peo­ple explore com­ing out and its impacts in dif­fer­ent ways. At eight years old, I came out to my mom after watch­ing a tele­vi­sion episode of Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal when one of the char­ac­ters came out to his mom after acknowl­edg­ing his homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. I told my mom, “Hey Maa, the son is gay just like me!” My mom chuck­led, as she knew I loved relat­ing tele­vi­sion shows to my own real­i­ty. I chuck­led as well, but some­where in me I knew I was gay just like the son in the soap opera. My first kiss was with a boy just like his was. I would get ner­vous around my guy crush just like he did. And I want­ed to tell my mom that I am gay just like he did. At that time, how­ev­er, it seemed like it was not the right time for me to come out to my mom. Maybe because her chuck­le meant that she wasn’t ready. Maybe because she told me that I was too young to know if I was gay. Maybe because I was scared of los­ing my fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty even though I grew up know­ing oth­er LGBTQ South Asians who were always so kind and wel­com­ing. Maybe, just maybe, I was scared think­ing back to a par­ty where I over­heard some Indi­an aun­ties and uncles hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion about the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty say­ing, “They do dis­gust­ing stuff, very dis­gust­ing.” Then, an uncle point­ed his fin­ger at me say­ing, “Stay away from them, Sumon, stay away from them.” How could I stay away from them when I was just like them?

It wasn’t until 14 years lat­er that I felt it was right for me to tell my mom I am gay by sim­ply say­ing, “Maa, I have been attract­ed to Ricky Mar­tin since his debut of Livin’ La Vida Loca.” At that moment, I knew it was right for me to tell my mom about a part of me that I want­ed her to know about and under­stand. Iron­i­cal­ly, this was around the same time Ricky came out pub­licly as a gay. Over­all, I am hap­py with my deci­sion to come out as it allowed me to under­stand a part of my iden­ti­ty and embrace the oth­er iden­ti­ties and real­i­ties of my life.

Through­out YLI, I heard many sto­ries of what it means to be part of the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty. Each young leader that I met fol­lowed their own way of express­ing who they are, even though they all had their doubts and ques­tions when iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as we all do. They all had a time, or times, in their devel­op­ment where they dis­cov­ered that there is no one true def­i­n­i­tion of what it means to be LGBTQ.

From YLI’s phe­nom­e­nal stu­dents, I learned that I am tru­ly liv­ing who I am when I embrace the mul­ti­ple iden­ti­ties that make me who I am. I live life as a gay male, a South Asian, a grad­u­ate stu­dent, a Hin­du, a son, an nephew, a sib­ling, a friend, a vol­un­teer, and so much more. My roles and who I am devel­op by many fac­tors in life and the respon­si­bil­i­ties I take on. See­ing myself through the lens of only one iden­ti­ty pre­vents me from hon­or­ing my full self and from expe­ri­enc­ing all of my qual­i­ties and strengths. When I see the inter­sec­tions with­in my life, I live my real­i­ty and I allow myself to ful­ly expe­ri­ence life’s jour­ney. I have learned that sex­u­al orientation—and explor­ing the role of “com­ing out” in my life—are impor­tant parts in the devel­op­ment of who I am, but this is not the only determinant.

I thank SAALT, the 2014 YLI stu­dents, Trikone Atlanta, Rak­sha, Inc., my aunt, fam­i­ly, and friends for help­ing me to under­stand that the devel­op­ment of “who you are” is not one path, but many paths that lead to this moment and the many more that lie ahead.

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Sumon Ray
Young Lead­ers Insti­tute Fel­low, 2014

Peo­ple are sur­prised to find out that I’m not actu­al­ly from here. The stan­dard con­ver­sa­tion after the hol­i­days goes: “You went all the way back to Bangladesh? So, your entire fam­i­ly is there? Oh, you lived there till you were 19?” And then of course: “But you speak Eng­lish so well!” My brown skin and third world cit­i­zen­ship hide the inter­na­tion­al school edu­ca­tion that I was priv­i­leged to receive. A child­hood of Scoo­by Doo and Friends makes my accent famil­iar enough to go unno­ticed. Alas, pass­ing priv­i­lege does not an Amer­i­can make. Right?

I was thrilled to learn that a group called South Asian Amer­i­cans Lead­ing Togeth­er (SAALT) was host­ing a LGBTQ-themed sum­mer lead­er­ship insti­tute. It bog­gled my mind that I might actu­al­ly meet oth­er queer and gen­der vari­ant deshi stu­dents inter­est­ed in cre­at­ing change. But sure­ly I would­n’t be eligible—many semes­ters as a stu­dent work­er in the career ser­vices office had taught me to expect a “U.S. cit­i­zens and per­ma­nent res­i­dents” clause hid­den in the eli­gi­bil­i­ty sec­tion. Imag­ine my sur­prise when the Young Lead­ers Insti­tute (YLI) explic­it­ly wel­comed “diver­si­ty in regard to [among oth­er things] immi­gra­tion sta­tus.” As I hur­ried­ly pulled togeth­er the appli­ca­tion, I asked myself for the first time: Did this put me under the umbrel­la of South Asian Amer­i­can?

Was it enough to self-iden­ti­fy as American?

Legal papers are a poor mea­sure of iden­ti­ty, but I had only ever con­sid­ered this line of rea­son­ing in the con­text of undoc­u­ment­ed Amer­i­cans who have lived here for years. My accep­tance into a col­lege (and the finan­cial aid that came with it) gave me the priv­i­lege of a legal avenue of entry to the Land of Oppor­tu­ni­ty not afford­ed to them. I was not com­pelled by cir­cum­stances at home to risk arrest by ICE, or worse, incur the wrath of my punc­til­ious father. Yet, after five very for­ma­tive years in the Unit­ed States, the process of my inte­gra­tion was well under way. I could no longer dri­ve on the left side of the road, I grew an invis­i­ble lay­er of per­son­al space, and I could even sing most of the words to Jour­ney’s Don’t Stop Believin’. Yet, I knew that I could “hold on to that feel­in’” only for so long.

There will come a time when my Dura­tion of Sta­tus will come to an end, and I will need to go back. When I share my appre­hen­sion about this legal dead­line on my stay with friends who have grown up here, they are right­ly con­fused about the log­ic behind it. As a stu­dent of eco­nom­ics, I know that the poten­tial gain to world GDP is much high­er from elim­i­nat­ing bar­ri­ers to immi­gra­tion than bar­ri­ers to trade, yet it is my body that is stopped at the bor­der for fur­ther screen­ing while iPods and Big Macs hop across with ease. There’s some­thing a lit­tle hyp­o­crit­i­cal about insist­ing on an imper­me­able bor­der while cul­ti­vat­ing a glob­al con­sumer base for all things Amer­i­cana. I know, how­ev­er, that the way to move for­ward is not through a bat­tle of wits but by lis­ten­ing to each other’s stories.

Sto­ries are a pow­er­ful thing. They allow us to see our shared human­i­ty with those dif­fer­ent from us, and to see beau­ty in diver­si­ty. Sto­ries are also a way for those of us liv­ing at the mar­gins to claim space for our­selves. It is no sur­prise to me that many of my fel­low YLI par­tic­i­pants have cho­sen to take on projects that cel­e­brate sto­ries of peo­ple like us.

My YLI project per­for­mance is an effort to share my sto­ry. I draw upon my own lived expe­ri­ences to trace the cracked lines between being a Bangladeshi cit­i­zen, a queer deshi, and an Amer­i­can. I have strug­gled to find a way to tell my sto­ry with any degree of hon­esty, when I know that the lived real­i­ty of LGBQ and T* South Asians are invis­i­ble, or worse, erased. Yet, that is exact­ly why it needs to be told. As I toe the line between that beau­ti­ful spec­ta­cle of exhi­bi­tion­ism that is Amer­i­can per­for­mance art, and my deshi impulse to keep skele­tons hid­den deep inside my clos­et (pun intend­ed), I remind myself of the com­fort I have found in the voic­es of queer and trans peo­ple of colour. In turn, I hope that my sto­ry may offer some solace to my younger broth­ers and sis­ters and sib­lings (and cousin-broth­ers and cousin-sis­ters and cousin-siblings).

Wher­ev­er they are from, I hope that they feel that they belong.

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Shabab Mirza
Young Lead­ers Insti­tute Fel­low, 2014

With­in min­utes of enter­ing the hotel, the ques­tion came up: “So what did you tell your fam­i­ly?” We had only just met, but we didn’t need to know each oth­er to know that fam­i­ly was a ten­der top­ic. We had come togeth­er for SAALT’s Young Lead­ers Insti­tute (YLI), but our con­nec­tions ran deep­er than a pas­sion for engag­ing South Asian com­mu­ni­ties in jus­tice and activism. This was a con­nec­tion that many LGBQ and trans­gen­der South Asians expe­ri­ence when we come together—a shared ache to rec­on­cile what we knew about our­selves and what those around us have been taught. Espe­cial­ly achy is rec­on­cil­ing what our  fam­i­lies have been taught about who they think we are. My room­mate and I, exhaust­ed from our trav­els but exhil­a­rat­ed by this rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to swap sto­ries of fam­i­ly expe­ri­ences with anoth­er queer desi, stayed up late the night before the first day of YLI shar­ing sto­ries about what brought us here.

LGBQ and trans­gen­der South Asians are taught that our fam­i­lies will nev­er accept or acknowl­edge us in our entire­ty. While some of our expe­ri­ences affirm this, these scare tac­tics leave us stuck and unable to hope for or envi­sion a dif­fer­ent fam­i­ly expe­ri­ence. The idea that we have no future as our whole selves is not only harm­ful to us, but also to our fam­i­lies. These fears fuel their anx­i­eties and, in turn, widen the gap we feel between us and our fam­i­lies. How do we move toward a future where fam­i­lies have room to grow, learn, and accept us? How do we move toward a real­i­ty where being an LGBQ and/or trans­gen­der South Asian is not syn­ony­mous with a famil­ial dis­con­nect? How do we move toward a truth where we give our fam­i­lies the care we hope they can give us?

One exer­cise we did dur­ing our YLI train­ing real­ly hit home for me. We were asked to make a “queer fam­i­ly tree” trac­ing the peo­ple in our lives who have made room for us to be who we are more freely. At first, this felt impossible—the stereo­type of South Asians being homo­pho­bic and trans­pho­bic runs deep enough to cloud what I know to be true. I remem­bered con­fid­ing in a cousin of mine about my queer­ness and the light­ness I felt when she respond­ed with such kind words. Were there more expe­ri­ences with fam­i­ly that made me feel free? Maybe if I looked at this anoth­er way, I would find more. I thought about all the peo­ple in my fam­i­ly who might share my feel­ings about family—stress, sad­ness, frus­tra­tion dis­ap­point­ment, shame, a sense of stuck­ness. Though they may not be queer, there were oth­ers in my fam­i­ly who are nego­ti­at­ing the idea of “fam­i­ly,” fam­i­ly expec­ta­tions, and fam­i­ly real­i­ties in a com­plex way. And there were those few who sup­port­ed them. Just by being who they are, these folks are mak­ing space for me to be me. They endure gos­sip, shame, fear, just because they don’t meet an expec­ta­tion. Our seem­ing imper­fec­tions give hope to oth­ers who are also told they are imper­fect. Think­ing about fam­i­ly in this way real­ly affirmed my shift­ing approach to fam­i­ly; it reminds me to be gen­tler and more com­pas­sion­ate. It also remind­ed me that these sto­ries don’t come to mind eas­i­ly, that these folks are often writ­ten out of fam­i­ly his­to­ries. In turn, I won­dered where I stood in the future of my fam­i­ly history.

We are all sto­ry­tellers, from the fic­tions we devise that allow us to access queer and trans­gen­der com­mu­ni­ty, to the way we share the fine bal­ance of our lives—storytelling is inher­ent to how we live and sur­vive. My YLI project, an anthol­o­gy enti­tled “Mov­ing Truth(s): Queer and Trans­gen­der Desi Writ­ings on Fam­i­ly,” cap­tures a snap­shot of how LGBQ and trans­gen­der South Asians relate to fam­i­ly through sto­ry­telling and explores how we get to a point where we can move for­ward. In hon­or of the vision for build­ing ally­ship among each oth­er and our fam­i­lies, my team and I devel­oped a com­mu­ni­ty-based pub­lish­ing plan. Instead of expect­ing our con­trib­u­tors to write in iso­la­tion, we accept­ed appli­ca­tions of inter­est rather than sub­mis­sions. Know­ing how com­plex the top­ic of fam­i­ly would be, we cre­at­ed a guid­ed writ­ing process, a 10-week online writ­ing work­shop that would sup­port writ­ers in focus­ing which sto­ry to write about, to help in pro­vid­ing con­text, to work on edit­ing and gram­mar, and, most impor­tant­ly, to pro­vide emo­tion­al sup­port as we processed our expe­ri­ences with fam­i­ly. Our goal dur­ing the writ­ing and draft­ing process was to cre­ate some­thing that felt true to us and our expe­ri­ences, and to cre­ate some­thing we are proud of. Some of our includ­ed sto­ries deal with con­flicts of belief and action, rec­on­cil­ing iden­ti­ties, and learn­ing more grace­ful, gen­er­ous, and gen­tle ways to relate to our­selves, our fam­i­lies, and our communities.

Our labor of love will be pub­lished Spring 2015. To learn more about and sup­port this project, please: http://igg.me/at/movingtruths.

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Sasha Duttchoudhury
Young Lead­ers Insti­tute Fel­low, 2014

I decid­ed to explore more of my racial and eth­nic iden­ti­ty in my first year of col­lege when the term “South Asian” was still rel­a­tive­ly new. By read­ing any­thing I could find and observ­ing race and eth­nic­i­ty in my sur­round­ings, I grew more inter­est­ed in the role of race and eth­nic­i­ty in health and health care. I learned of “pub­lic health” and oth­er terms used to describe health con­di­tions I wit­nessed my whole life, such as health dis­par­i­ties and neg­a­tive health out­comes. Based on my per­son­al inter­ests and expe­ri­ences, I decid­ed that I want­ed to focus on repro­duc­tive and sex­u­al health care for South Asians and oth­er peo­ple of col­or. For the past two years, I have approached this work with a repro­duc­tive jus­tice frame­work and have seen how main­stream repro­duc­tive and sex­u­al health orga­ni­za­tions have often neglect­ed mar­gin­al­ized pop­u­la­tions, such as women of col­or, queer com­mu­ni­ties, peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, and all their intersections.

A year ago, I took an LGBT health course, where I learned about LGBTQ health dis­par­i­ties, such as the high rates of breast can­cer among les­bians and increas­ing rates of depres­sion among trans­gen­der peo­ple. This course served as my first aca­d­e­m­ic expo­sure to LGBTQ health from a pub­lic health per­spec­tive. Quick­ly, I real­ized that there is still much research to be done on LGBTQ health, that there is even less research on LGBTQ and peo­ple of col­or health, and that most peo­ple did not even know words like “queer,” “cis­gen­der,” and “trans­misog­y­ny” exist. Know­ing this, I still had repro­duc­tive and sex­u­al health as my pri­ma­ry areas of inter­est, but could not fail to include LGBTQ health in my scope of pub­lic health. As my actions became more LGBTQ inclu­sive, I noticed that oth­er stu­dents and pub­lic health pro­fes­sion­als won­dered why I used gen­der-neu­tral lan­guage, dis­cussed health dis­par­i­ties at any giv­en moment, and “brought up race and sex­u­al­i­ty too much.” Despite the com­ments and stares, I still main­tained my LGBTQ (and oth­er demo­graph­ic fac­tors and iden­ti­ties) inclu­sive stance and con­tin­ued my work.

I heard about SAALT back when I was research­ing South Asian com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment, and I heard about the Young Lead­er­ship Insti­tute from a for­mer par­tic­i­pant. This past sum­mer, I was for­tu­nate enough to attend SAALT’s annu­al Young Lead­ers Insti­tute (YLI), which, in 2014, focused on LGBTQ jus­tice and ally­ship. While attend­ing YLI, I learned about South Asian queer his­to­ry, queer peo­ple of col­or his­to­ries, and the tra­jec­to­ry of South Asian, LGBTQ, and South Asian LGBTQ communities.

Based on my work and the train­ings at YLI, I start­ed to crit­i­cal­ly think about inte­grat­ing dom­i­nant pub­lic health prac­tices and LGBTQ health. Though I am lim­it­ed in my capac­i­ty to enact sig­nif­i­cant changes in pub­lic health prac­tice, I want­ed to start engag­ing more inter­sec­tions of sex­u­al­i­ty and race into pub­lic health dis­cus­sions and in the scope of pub­lic health. My YLI project is to incor­po­rate LGBT health in med­ical and pub­lic health dis­cus­sions. I plan on host­ing a pan­el of health pro­fes­sion­als to dis­cuss the neces­si­ty of LGBTQ com­pe­ten­cy with cur­rent med­ical and pub­lic health stu­dents. An exam­ple of LGBTQ com­pe­ten­cy among health pro­fes­sion­als is not assum­ing some­one’s sex­u­al­i­ty when screen­ing for past sex­u­al history.

In addi­tion, I plan to inte­grate LGBTQ health and use LGBTQ inclu­sive lan­guage in my cur­rent prac­tices in repro­duc­tive and sex­u­al health. For instance, when I con­duct work­shops or com­mu­ni­ty dis­cus­sions on these top­ics, I explain LGBTQ inclu­sive lan­guage to par­tic­i­pants and my ratio­nale for doing so, espe­cial­ly in regards to the spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ty to which I am address­ing (such as the South Asian com­mu­ni­ty, grad­u­ate stu­dents, a col­lec­tive com­mu­ni­ty of col­or, etc.). Incor­po­rat­ing LGBTQ inclu­sive lan­guage is need­ed in order to reduce the mar­gin­al­iza­tion of LGBTQ peo­ple and pro­mote acces­si­bil­i­ty of LGBTQ-friend­ly ser­vices. I plan on imple­ment­ing this project this semes­ter and want to con­tin­ue inte­grat­ing LGBTQ health and LGBTQ inclu­sive lan­guage in my work as a pub­lic health practitioner.

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Sadia Arshad
Young Lead­ers Insti­tute Fel­low, 2014

As some­one who holds queer, gen­der devi­at­ing, Mus­lim, and first gen­er­a­tion Bangladeshi-Amer­i­can iden­ti­ties (among oth­ers), being con­sid­ered unusu­al is com­mon. Hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions that include the state­ments, “Yes, a per­son can be Mus­lim and queer at the same time,” or “Of course, South Asian trans­gen­der peo­ple exist,” are a reg­u­lar part of my life. Though these exchanges can be try­ing at times, I have come to real­ize that they are a huge neces­si­ty. Only by con­nect­ing with one anoth­er through under­stand­ing of each other’s truths can sol­i­dar­i­ty between indi­vid­u­als be forged. Only by edu­cat­ing one anoth­er can com­mu­ni­ty be built.

Thus, edu­ca­tion is often on my mind, though not in the most obvi­ous sense. I think not of the insti­tu­tions typ­i­cal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with edu­ca­tion, not the schools or uni­ver­si­ties, but the idea of spread­ing knowl­edge and under­stand­ing through pop­u­la­tions in less struc­tured envi­ron­ments. I won­der how sto­ries can be shared and com­mu­ni­ty built with­out the sup­port of larg­er sys­tems to cre­ate chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. As ref­er­enced above, indi­vid­ual con­ver­sa­tions can be pow­er­ful tools for com­mu­ni­ty build­ing, but as some­one who is a both part of and works with­in South Asian LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ties, I am often search­ing for ways of reach­ing more peo­ple, more efficiently.

Enter the Young Leader’s Insti­tute (YLI), host­ed by South Asians Lead­ing Togeth­er (SAALT), which I attend­ed in 2014. The oppor­tu­ni­ty is one that that I don’t often come across; I was able not only to gain prac­ti­cal knowl­edge on doing advo­ca­cy work in mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties, but was also con­nect­ed with pro­fes­sion­als involved in jus­tice work and giv­en space to share expe­ri­ences with peers. It was deeply ful­fill­ing to be in an inten­tion­al space with a clear focus on LGBTQ jus­tice and ally­ship. After var­i­ous train­ings on issues rang­ing from the effect of colo­nial­ism on gen­der norms in South Asia to meth­ods for com­plet­ing projects, the impor­tance of par­tic­u­lar issues became clear to me.

Shar­ing truths, cre­at­ing under­stand­ing, and reach­ing across dif­fer­ence were themes that came up again and again over the three days of the Insti­tute. Here, it seemed, was the issue with which I had been grap­pling: how to spread aware­ness and bet­ter serve com­mu­ni­ties by under­stand­ing their spe­cif­ic needs. With the guid­ance of SAALT staff and in part­ner­ship with Satrang, a South Asian non­prof­it that serves LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ties based in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, I decid­ed to focus my efforts on build­ing ally­ship train­ings focused on the needs of South Asian LGBTQ-iden­ti­fied people.

The ally­ship train­ings are a series of six to eight work­shops that will be held over a six month peri­od, and will tar­get pro­fes­sion­als and oth­er groups that work with South Asian LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ties, such as immi­gra­tion lawyers, social work­ers, jour­nal­ists, med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, and pos­si­bly stu­dent groups. The train­ings con­sist of an overview of South Asian LGBTQ his­to­ry and rel­e­vant cur­rent issues with­in these com­mu­ni­ties and a more gen­er­al sec­tion on LGBTQ-relat­ed ter­mi­nol­o­gy and con­cepts. The idea is to give peo­ple work­ing with Desi LGBTQ-iden­ti­fied peo­ple the tools to bet­ter under­stand their needs and ulti­mate­ly bet­ter serve these com­mu­ni­ties. In con­junc­tion with the train­ings, I am work­ing to devel­op a resource toolk­it. Resources, such as lit­er­a­ture on gen­der iden­ti­ty and needs assess­ment research on South Asian LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ties, will be both hand­ed out at train­ings and avail­able on Satrang’s web­site so they are acces­si­ble to those who are unable to attend trainings.

Thus far, the project has proven both chal­leng­ing and reward­ing as I focus on devel­op­ing the train­ing cur­ricu­lum. Reach­ing out to indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions involved in LGBTQ jus­tice work has proven very help­ful, not just in com­plet­ing the project but in help­ing to devel­op my own approach to ally­ship. Often, when one thinks of ally­ship, the gist is to sup­port indi­vid­u­als with dif­fer­ent iden­ti­ties than your own. How­ev­er, I have come to real­ize that it is impor­tant to be an ally to one’s own com­mu­ni­ty. For me, that means edu­cat­ing myself on the needs of folks in my per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life and using what­ev­er skills I pos­sess to improve con­di­tions for oth­ers. Though I can’t work in immi­gra­tion and the media and the med­ical field, I can give the peo­ple who do work in those fields and those who reg­u­lar­ly work with South Asian LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ties a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how to do so. And that, I believe, can ulti­mate­ly make a real impact.

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Pia Ahmed
Young Lead­ers Insti­tute Fel­low, 2014

This sum­mer, I had the plea­sure of par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Young Lead­ers Insti­tute (YLI) host­ed by SAALT in Wash­ing­ton D.C., where the focus of the Insti­tute was to engage around LGBTQ jus­tice and ally­ship. My entry point into this activist-based lead­er­ship train­ing pro­gram was a cul­mi­na­tion of numer­ous fac­tors, but main­ly due to the inter­sec­tion of sev­er­al of my iden­ti­ties: queer, Mus­lim, and Bangladeshi. In addi­tion, I don’t view my gen­der as falling with­in the bina­ry gen­der spec­trum. Grow­ing up in Bangladesh for 19 years in a pre­dom­i­nant­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Islam­ic soci­ety and then attend­ing a fem­i­nist lib­er­al arts women’s col­lege paved the way for my ulti­mate entry into a social jus­tice are­na where I can con­sis­tent­ly immerse myself in gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty top­ics from an inter­sec­tion­al perspective.

The pre­lim­i­nary idea for my YLI project, Project Band­han, came about through my con­ver­sa­tions that were gen­er­at­ed via a South Asian cau­cus at the 2013 Nation­al Queer Asian Pacif­ic Islander Alliance (NQAPIA) con­fer­ence. Project Band­han is a video cam­paign that will con­sist of a series of 2–5 minute videos or pho­tovoice inter­views show­cas­ing var­i­ous desi queer and gen­der non­con­form­ing folks and their rela­tion­ships with their respec­tive par­ents or parental fig­ures.  I reviewed sev­er­al of the videos that were being gen­er­at­ed through the It Gets Bet­ter Project and I was struck by the dai­ly raw life strug­gles and bar­ri­ers that queer, trans*, and gen­der self-iden­ti­fy­ing peo­ple of col­or con­tin­u­ous­ly face with­in the Unit­ed States—an under­served and often invis­i­ble com­mu­ni­ty with­in the larg­er LGBTQ move­ment whose pri­or­i­ty focus may not be mar­riage equal­i­ty as an end in itself in the larg­er fight for queer lib­er­a­tion. The LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty in Amer­i­ca is diverse in its pop­u­la­tion demo­graph­ics and needs, where the pri­ma­ry episodes of vio­lence orig­i­nate from a lack of access to health care and hous­ing, along­side con­stant inci­dents of police bru­tal­i­ty, prison lock­ups, and home­less­ness. The root issues that the larg­er LGBTQ pop­u­la­tion needs to address imme­di­ate­ly lies with­in an eco­nom­ic, gen­der, and racial jus­tice frame­work, and not with­in the insti­tu­tion of mar­riage, which is in fact, a tool for a social and colo­nial con­trol. Through­out the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States, the align­ment of priv­i­lege and white het­eropa­tri­archy has always prop­a­gat­ed the strug­gles endured by queer and sim­i­lar­ly mar­gin­al­ized pop­u­la­tions. The lega­cy of these strug­gles tends to get dis­missed in a major­i­ty of main­stream media por­tray­als around sex­u­al­i­ty and gen­der pre­sen­ta­tion. I essen­tial­ly want­ed to cre­ate a video-based plat­form for my peo­ple (queer South Asians) to infor­mal­ly dis­cuss their non-het­ero­nor­ma­tive desires and tribu­la­tions with­in the con­text of their parental upbring­ing. Through this plat­form, inter­vie­wees can engage and con­verse with the cam­era appa­ra­tus with­out the con­stant need to envi­sion a ‘bet­ter’ future or to find an imme­di­ate solu­tion for their hardships.

This brings me to the rea­son of why I chose to under­take this some­what ambi­tious project, a project that wish­es to go against the doc­u­men­ta­tion of the sin­gle-issue LGBTQ lives that tend to per­vade our news and media out­lets. For me, my awk­ward­ness and shy­ness are char­ac­ter­is­tics I’ve strug­gled with for a sig­nif­i­cant peri­od of time.  My sense of pro­pri­etor­ship and human­i­ty orig­i­nates from the ways my desi and Islam­ic upbring­ings have caused me to down­play my intro­vert­ed­ness, espe­cial­ly in a cul­ture where intro­verts are, to a cer­tain degree, seen as dis­pos­able. I felt my anx­i­ety around out­lin­ing the mis­sion state­ment of Project Band­han was a hur­dle in itself, where I would, at times, feel that I don’t pos­sess the con­fi­dence or intel­lec­tu­al acu­men to bring such a unique project to a suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion. How­ev­er, I want­ed to own my awk­ward­ness and oth­er inter­nal­ized self-dep­re­cat­ing feel­ings that I’ve been told to har­bor for a large por­tion of my life.

Through the explo­ration and own­er­ship of my emo­tions, I am able to com­mu­ni­cate my lived real­i­ty in order to seek out com­mon­al­i­ties and sol­i­dar­i­ty with the inter­vie­wees’ lived expe­ri­ences. Our expe­ri­ences as queer South Asians pro­vide us with a unique angle of vision. As mem­bers of an oppressed group, each of us pos­sess­es crit­i­cal insights into the con­di­tions of our spe­cif­ic oppres­sion. Through my 3‑day inter­ac­tion with my fel­low peers at YLI who are all work­ing to chal­lenge oppres­sive struc­tures, I real­ized the immense val­ue of hold­ing our emo­tions as a col­lec­tive, rather than as an indi­vid­ual. Being intro­vert­ed and awk­ward and mak­ing those qual­i­ties work for, rather than against, one’s social jus­tice and future goals are ele­ments that were embraced with­in the YLI space. As a result, the val­ues that were impart­ed to me through the Insti­tute will also be deeply entrenched with­in Project Bandhan’s final prod­uct where queer and gen­der self-iden­ti­fy­ing South Asians will be able to explore the shift­ing ter­rain of par­ent-child inter­ac­tions. YLI was indeed one of the most ful­fill­ing train­ing sem­i­nars that I’ve attend­ed so far, and the friend­ships and edu­ca­tion that I’ve gained through the Insti­tute will stay with me through­out this lifetime.
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Farhat Rah­man
Bryn Mawr College