Representation helps us unlearn. This year, I grappled with my perspectives about celebrity, integrity, and accuracy because of the U.S. state of affairs. I asked myself how much representation really mattered or how much it could really change things. I became increasingly critical of mainstream TV shows and cinema. I lost faith in the power … Read More
These words run across your heart. When Alvina Bokhari was growing up, especially in high school, when the misery of many determines the next few years or decades, she felt like an outcast. “If you saw my high school pictures, you could see I was like screaming. I wasn’t in an environment where I felt … Read More
Code-Switched, a new show by, for, and about young South Asians just released its pilot episode. Starring Sonal Aggarwal, Sabeen Sadiq, Saurabh Pande, Vikram Pandya, and Stephen George as a bunch of young South Asians dealing with work, family, and love in Chicago. Kajal spoke with show creator Karan Sunil about representation, brown folks in … Read More
The Good Immigrant, a collection of essays by Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people from across different creative and professional fields in the UK, was a critically lauded breakthrough hit when it came out in 2016. The book, edited by Nikesh Shukla and ushered into being through a successful crowdfunding campaign, tackled issues related … Read More
Thank you, come again. It’s been a phrase, innocuous at first take and humiliating in practice, that has followed South Asian kiddos around their childhoods. If you lived through the 1990s, you became a stand in for The Simpsons‘ Apu in every conversation with a non-brown person and you’ve had this phrase repeated directly into your … Read More
For most of my life, I saw myself akin to the characters in Disney’s Aladdin. I would dress up as Jasmine for primary school dress up days, and even until college thought of my own culture reflected in the imagery and cultural symbolism of Aladdin. As people of color our ethnicities and racial identities are … Read More
Why are brown men so infatuated with white women onscreen, BuzzFeed writer Imran Siddiquee asks in his essay of the same name. Why do they overlook and underrepresent women of color in order to date white women, is the question I ask. While Sidiquee eviscerated the genre of “Diaspora South Asian Dude Does Rom-Com” in … Read More
On October 3rd, let us all together say “Damn, Africa.” It’s been a long time since Mean Girls came out. As I dwell on the fact that I am 12 years older than when I first saw it with my parents, both confused and amused in equal measure, I am forced to confront the fact that … Read More
An art show where all the artists are brown but it’s not like a big deal. London-based art collective The White Pube is putting on a show this Friday entitled “Zayn Malik Zindabad.” It will feature only South Asian artists. But as the founders Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente say, “that’s not a thing. Like … Read More
Lack of representation for South Asians in television and the media is a persistent problem. The Mindy Project and New Girl, two popular comedy shows on Fox, show us how Indian characters are treated. The Mindy Project is about an Indian doctor named Mindy Lahiri, played by Mindy Kaling, who is an OB-GYN and her adventures … Read More
