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 past summer was the most enlightening learning period in my life. Not only did I learn that cats have 32 muscles in each ear, but I also learned that LGBQ & T* issues today, especially in the South Asian context, have common threads that make individual stories relatable to the broader community. Through SAALT’s Young Leaders Institute, I was able to spend three days with twelve brilliant people from across the United States learning about LGBTQ issues and allyship. Throughout the weekend, we participated in many workshops, trainings, and discussions all focused on making individual voices heard and recognizing each story’s importance. One session that still stands out in my mind was on the second day of training, when we all sat around a table and told stories that deeply impacted the way we approached our LGBTQ identities. Through each story, there was a reoccurring red flag: when trying to explain a queer identity to family (especially in a different language), there were often no specific words or phrases available in that language to describe the identity and experience. Also, many stated that it may have helped their coming out process had they been able to see and hear positive portrayals of LGBTQ South Asian Americans in the media and in their communities.

This session further inspired my Institute project and confirmed for me its critical need. In order to provide tech savvy and modern LGBTQ youth a place to see South Asian queers and allies on screen, fellow YLI participant Sumon Ray and I decided to create a web-series about LGBTQ South Asian siblings living in the United States called “The Queerious Kapoors.” The story revolves around a brother and sister who are both queer and live with their parents. One of them is out of the closet while the other isn’t…yet. We hope to provide a place where queer and questioning South Asians can see themselves in this story, a situation they may one day face, if they are not facing it already. Mainstream media already does a poor job of displaying queer people in a non-stereotypical light, and, even then, the actors are mainly Caucasian. In theory, this web series will be a “day in the life” portrayal of a pair of siblings who are born and raised in the U.S., are queer, and are trying to live life like everyone else. It is my hope that we are able to reach parents as well because, as I mentioned earlier, some South Asian parents who already don’t like to talk about culturally taboo subjects with their children also don’t know the necessary language to understand that their child is queer. Through acting, I think there is a lot that can be said about attraction, love, and the pain it creates when those closest to you don’t understand what you are going through.

We hope to build bridges between generations and make communicating about LGBTQ issues easier for those in the future.

My YLI peers and SAALT staff taught me so much in those three days. Their journeys serve as a daily reminder of how much work there is to be done in this world. *****************

Lalita Balakrishnan
Georgia State University

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