migration and sexuality
When rumours of the Partition spread, many families began leaving their homes and moving out. How the Hindus and Sikhs behaved there (in what was to be India), Muslims did the same things here (in what was to be Pakistan). They would say, ‘Let’s go loot!’
By Surbhi Dewan
September 1, 2016
Often, these marriages are performed in great haste as the groom comes to India for a short holiday. In their enthusiasm to clinch, what appears to be a highly desirable marriage alliance, which will open up new opportunities, exposure and happiness to their daughter, the parents may throw caution to the wind and seal the match.
By Flavia Agnes
September 1, 2016
September 1, 2016
The migrant has come to represent threat on many fronts, with sexuality and sexual behaviours storming the front of fronts. This is because sexuality is in itself so threatening to so many; as a word, as a concept, it is untidy, unknown, uncontainable, like that alien substance bubbling out of its pod in the film ‘Prometheus’. Or ‘Alien’.
By Shikha Aleya
September 1, 2016
The nurse looked me up and down and asked about my last period. I responded that it had been recent and regular and that I wasn’t there about a reproductive issue but rather a potential stomach bug. “Mmm hmmm,” she responded, with more than a hint of dubiousness in her voice, and said, “Take this cup, pee into it and bring it back to me. We’ll run a pregnancy test.” I stared back at her. “I’m not pregnant!” She responded, “Well, we’ll see about that. Is that your mum outside? Young girls like you are always coming in like this.”
By Sheba Remy Kharbanda
September 1, 2016
September 1, 2016
September 1, 2016
“Yo existo. I exist,” asserts Julio Salgado’s self-portrait drawn with wings that give him identity. Salgado was eleven years old when he crossed the border from Mexico to the United States where he remains an undocumented resident. Risking arrest and deportation if detected, Julio makes art about his experiences of being a queer and undocumented person of colour.
By Curated Content
September 15, 2016
The British went to South Asia with their preconceived notions of sexual normalcy stemming from enlightenment and Christian ideals. If anything, it was the British who were the prudes and sexually repressed venturing into India, rather than the sexually liberated souls they claim to be today.
By Curated Content
September 15, 2016
September 15, 2016
To all the American daughters of South Asian immigrants: Have you ever felt that you just can’t be a Good Girl? Your parents and South Asian community have likely tried drilling in you that Good Girls follow the path of academic excellence, a well-paying job (doctor, lawyer, or engineer), marriage to a well-paid Desi man (preferably a doctor), and then a happy house with kids. Obedience to parents, no dating (at least not while a student), and virginity until marriage are absolutes.
By Curated Content
The women she draws, flanked by a mix of traditional South Asian motifs and totems of youthful American culture, are not hiding their stubble. They sit, stand and kneel in poses that do anything but hide their hair, as they smoke cavalierly behind a box of ‘mithai’ or cruise across a roller rink. More often than not, her female subjects are seen legs and arms outstretched, faces calm, cool and collected amid a backdrop of saturated purples, greens and oranges.
By Curated Content
September 15, 2016
Emmi Kurowski (Brigitte Mira), a widow in her sixties, walks into a bar to take shelter from the rain. She is met with hostile stares by a mixed group of Moroccan immigrants and Germans. As a joke, one of his friends challenges Ali (El Hedi ben Salem m’Barek Mohammed Mustafa), a young strapping Berber man, to ask her for a dance. He agrees, and thus begins a romance across the taboo lines of race and age.
By Syed Saad Ahmad
September 15, 2016
