Despite Our Shared Heritage, I Don’t Feel Represented By Kamala Harris
Harris’ acknowledgment of her Indian identity seems opportunistic and rooted in little more than a desire to pander to the diaspora for its vote, and its deep pockets. By Madhuri Sastry After months of thumb-twiddling, dillydallying, and Twitter punditry, the Biden campaign
“Master of None” Brings Diversity and Empathy to Entertainment
Master of None promotes a vision of America that is enriched by the complexities of its immigrant communities, instead of persistent racist narratives.
In Aziz Ansari’s Master of None, Dev Shah is an aspiring actor living in New York City. He’s cute, charming, and a gourmand obsessed with pasta. His love life is equal parts adorable and painful. Oh, and he’s also an American of Indian origin, a fact that shapes how Dev moves through the world, but only becomes a big deal when we look at the serious lack of diversity in television today. Like the Wachowski Sisters’ Sense8, the diversity in Master of None is thoughtfully presented as a natural matter of course of life in NYC. Dev’s best friends are a white dude (Eric Wareheim), a black lesbian (Lena Waithe), and a first gen Chinese-American man (Kelvin Yu). He and his Desi actor buddy, Ravi (Ravi Patel) commiserate over their stereotyped casting calls and auditions. Dev dates women of all ethnicities and types, and through his relationship with Rachel (Noël Wells) becomes a feminist ally — basically, he’s a freaking unicorn. A brown dude as not just a lead of his own show, but a romantic lead at that, is groundbreaking for the South Asian American community. Master of None just aired its marvelous second season on Netflix and it is some serious balm for the troubled soul, in many ways especially because of how compassionately it tackles the issues of being an immigrant in the United States. Like the actor portraying him, Dev Shah is a first generation immigrant who has only known life in the USA, unlike his parents who came over from India with great difficulty. While every immigrant family has a unique story, Master of None thoughtfully shows the threads that bind these disparate life experiences. Related: 9 Desi Feminist Activists You Need to KnowDesi-Founded, Women-Run Luminoustudios is Fighting the Film Industry’s Patriarchy Problem
"At Luminoustudios, we’re very passionate about shattering the glass ceiling and giving more opportunity to women in the film industry." Meet Reema Dutt, one-half of the powerhouse Desi duo behind all-woman-helmed independent production company Luminousstudios. She drinks her coffee black like
The Complicated and Sometimes Racist History of Referring to South Asians as “East Indian”
"East Indian" is a remnant of archaic geopolitical Eurocentric positioning and shouldn’t be used at all in a modern context, unless you are talking about people from the eastern part of India. Once upon a time, in the year 1492, a
Explaining the Seemingly Bizarre Indian-Americans for Trump 2016 Movement
During this most insane of election cycles, I wake up every day thinking that things can’t possibly get any more surreal or bizarre -- and somehow, each evening when I watch the news, I find myself surprised at what new rabbit hole