During Ally Week, the GSA at EGHS hosted a very special guest speaker, Krupa Patel. Krupa talked to us about their experiences growing up as a queer individual and how they overcame the obstacles, many times faced by LGBTQ communities. During their visit, they introduced us to many LGBTQ South Asian figures that have inspired many to be themselves and to fight and stand up against oppression. Here are some of these figures: Richie Shazam Khan He, him, his. “I don’t know if I identify as a boy or a girl, but I want to wear a dress if I feel like it. Or I want to wear pants and a tuxedo jacket. I know what it is like to bullied. I know what it is like to be tormented. It has driven me to be courageous.” Richie Shazam Khan is a Guyanese model from the West Indian community of Queens, New York City. To read more about his life and experiences growing up queer, please go to: http://www.vogue.com/13477521/richie-shazam-khan-model-instagram-star-ashish-rachel-comey-fashion-week-interview/ Mohammad Fayaz He, him, his. “Years later, he now identifies as queer and his work has evolved to exclusively focus on queer people of color (qpoc) having a great time! Each piece contains a stylized caption to make it feel like a genuine snapshot of queer life which you can literally respond to, “Right?!” Though these people seem like they could all easily be people you know, they are figments of Mohammed’s imagination. A statement to his mastery, he uses no direct reference material. These subjects simply represent his people- people he would identify with, party with, or even date. People he wants to see. And the captions? They are his own past tweets! Specially paired to take you there.” Mohammad Fayaz, aka MoJuicy, was born and raised in Queens, New York. Mohammad is a self-taught illustrator invested in visibilizing narratives of queer people of color in New York. To learn more about Mohammad, please visit: http://www.browntourage.com/magazine/the-ultimate-queer-party-curated-by-mohammed-fayaz/ Sonalee Rashatwar She, her, hers. “I am an Indian, Hindu, non-Dalit who has finally come to understand the unique complexities of my family’s casteism as an adult child. My parents are an inter-caste love marriage, the only one of their kind in both families. My mom is high caste and my dad is lower caste. I have no idea what that makes me. Our blend of north and south Indian adds friction to how my parents view savarna folks. My dad’s family makes Brahmin jokes in safe spaces, despite arrange marrying their children into Brahmin families. All the while there are zero discussions of caste in my mom’s upper caste family. It’s like they aren’t even aware caste exists. Privilege is bliss. Regardless of these differences, each of my parents wishes for their children to marry only within their birth castes: Kayastha and Shimpi.” Sonalee Rashatwar is a social worker, a sex educator, and a queer fat anti-caste feminist activist from the east coast. To learn more about her, please visit: https://medium.com/@Bahujan_Power/pioneering-a-survey-of-caste-in-the-diasporas-6e5a27cd82ef#.s9qtg8i12 Vivek Shraya She, her, hers. “In writing a love story, I realized I first had to write about hate. How my experience of hate and discrimination has embedded itself within my body and psyche, and often prevented me from experiencing love. In thinking about my body, I found myself thinking about Hindu mythology, which is rich with stories about different gods and how they came to have bodies. Reimagining some of these myths became a counterpoint to the contemporary love story narrative.” Vivek Shraya is a transwoman living in Canada. She works at a Canadian university by day, and by night she is a writer, singer, performer, and visual artist. Her recent books include, She of the Mountain and God Loves Hair. To learn more about her, please visit: http://www.leopardskinandlimes.com/vivek-shraya-2/ DarkMatter They, them, theirs. “Fashion is a huge part of both our aesthetic and political projects. Alok's personal style is something like kindergarten teacher alien evil grandma socialite. Janani's is roughly kindergarten surrealist villainess. For us, fashion is a way of breaking binaries — not just of man/woman, but also beauty/ugly and real/unreal IRL/URL — and opt instead for imagination. Fashion helps us imagine the type of world we're creating: one in which we actually celebrate difference and commit to understanding ourselves outside of the norms we have been filtered through.” DarkMatter is a performance art duo of two trans South Asian artists, based in New York City. To learn more about Alok and Janani, please visit: http://www.papermag.com/dark-matter-alok-vaid-menon-janani-balasubramanian-1637094887.html Khushboo Kataria Gulati She, her, hers. “Gulati said the relationship between feminine energy and creativity has played a part in her life since childhood. Eight-year-old Gulati inhaled the pungent fumes of henna as her mother darkened the tips of her daughter’s fingers with the plant-based dye in preparation for a nighttime ceremony. Largely due to her mother’s influence, she became fascinated by the artistic elements of her Punjabi heritage, like the adornment of bare hands.” Khushboo Kataria is a queer femme artist from Los Angeles, California. Her art is about queerness, South-Asianness, trauma, healing, respecting ancestors, and envisioning better galactic futures. To learn more about her, please visit: http://dailybruin.com/2016/02/15/femme-art-witch-blends-activism-into-work-to-embrace-punjabi-heritage/ Fatima Asghar She, her, hers. “I think poems are urgent. I think poems are necessary. I think there is too much shit happening in the world to turn a blind eye to political events and pretend that poems and art are above politics. Poems can save lives, they can change the way we see the world and the way we define ourselves. I’ve seen poems read at marches and rallies as a way to mobilize. I’ve seen poems read at funerals. Poems read at weddings. Poems passed between lovers. Poems that remind us we can be free. Poems that make us want to love harder, to be better, that give us courage to fight.” Fatimah Asghar is a queer poet, residing in Chicago, IL. She is a Pakistani, Kashmiri, Muslim American writer. To learn more about her, please visit: http://www.theblueshiftjournal.com/single-post/2015/06/14/Interview-with-Fatimah-Asghar Sikh Knowledge He, him, his. “But what really made an impression on me was Sikh Knowledge’s confidence in pursuing his life. At the age of 20, he decided to stop being what other people wanted him to be, dropped out of engineering school and re-started honestly. “I dropped out, came out, and rearranged my whole life,” he stated. “I reapplied and did my undergraduate degree in music with a minor in linguistics. It was the happiest time of my life. I felt good about the decisions that I made.” He’s currently pursuing his Master degree in speech language pathology while having the dual career of mixing some of the ill-est beats in North America. You read right, Sikh Knowledge is an out and gay hip hop tattooed turban wearing artist. “I’ve definitely lost friends along the way,” he said. “Working relationships have gone sour. But at the end of the day, those artists that choose to work with me… not because of how I can brag, but because of what I do. They’re working with an underdog. That just proves to me that I’ve got something to offer.” Sikh Knowledge is a Sikh, Punjabi Canadian singer, rapper, music producer, and DJ. He is famous for his collaborations with other promoinant Punjabi hip hop artists like Mandeep Sethi and Humble the Poet. To learn more about him, please visit: http://sepiamutiny.com/blog/2010/12/29/the_absolutely/ Leah Lakshmi Samarasinha-Piepzna She, her, hers. “I am really focused as a writer around writing to document and witness queer and trans of color lives, femme lives, working class lives, survivor lives, mixed lives, Sri Lankan lives. That moment in that poem was about accompanying a close friend, someone who was chosen family to me, to his free MRI through San Francisco’s health care for poor people program, taken to manage a chronic illness. I wanted to document a very queer people of color with disabilities experience: going with your friend to their appointment that will take all day, and having to dress to pass as respectable and lie that you are biologically related. Stories create the world. Seeing stories that look like your own, that you’ve never read written down before, or that are stories you’ve never thought of before that change your whole idea of what is possible, are a big revolutionary deal.” Leah Lakshmi Samarasinha-Piepzna is a queer, sick, and disabled non-binary femme writer and cultural worker of Burger/Tamil Sri Lankan and Irish/Roma ascent. Her books include, Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home, Consensual Genocide, and Love Cake. To learn more about her, please visit: http://jaggerylit.com/in-conversation-with-leah-lakshmi-piepzna-samarasinha/ Special thanks to Krupa Patel for compiling the list of these awesome individuals and sharing it with the GSA at Elk Grove High School.
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January 2017
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