Today is Tanuja Gupta’s last day at Google. She helped organize the Women’s Walkout in 2018, and she has now been retaliated against for trying to organize a DEI talk on caste discrimination. I look at her, and I see what I could become— what I want to become. I want to be someone who…
Powerless
I first notice power when I am 8 years old and trying to make friends in my class. One Pokemon book and suddenly I am the accidental ringleader of my group. I coerce them into joining my Save the Earth club but I don't know how to make them care. (I haven't yet learned the…
How did I get here?
A week and a half ago, my therapist asked me to think about where my worldview came from, or how it was formed, and how I got my values. I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the last few days, especially as I’ve been forced to interact with people whose ways of viewing the…
Third Generation Pathos
I envy the people who joke about running away as if that’s an option. “Let’s move to Europe,” they say, as if the racism across the sea is any better, as if the color of my skin will change on the flight over. “Let’s move to Canada,” as if Canada wasn’t built on same the…
Four Years and 40k Later
I've written and rewritten and spoken aloud and revised and bitten my tongue and tried again on this blog post more times than I can count. And now, I'm trying again. It's hard to find the words to describe my college experience. College for me has been more like a feeling, or perhaps a series…
Beto, Our Lord and Savior
There was a lot of enthusiasm for Beto O'Rourke. A lot of people (both in and out of Texas) treated him like The One who would save us from the tyrannical regime of people like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. I know there are a lot of complicated reasons why he lost: voter suppression, lack…
On Political Engagement
People have always wondered why I believe that it is so important to be politically engaged. I’ve had friends tell me that I take politics too seriously, that I shouldn't let political opinions influence my relationships with others. To be frank, I don't have the tolerance to be that forgiving anymore, and now, in the…
An Impassioned Plea for Ethnic Studies
A plea to my STEM friends: take a single ethnic studies course before you graduate college. If you're Asian American, as many of you reading this probably are, take a single Asian American studies course. Just one. It will change your life, I promise. You will have your mind opened and stretched in unimaginable ways—…
On Finding Safe Spaces
The post you are about to read has been sitting in my drafts for a year and a half. Up until now, I never had the guts to post it because I have always felt that my complaints as someone who occupies many “middle identities”— identities that face oppression, but not to the extreme (cis…
Indian or American?
I have always existed at the periphery of the Indian American community. I have never felt a strong connection with the problems that my Indian American peers face, and I don't know how to speak any of the languages. I don't have any Indian clothes with me at college because I didn't think I would…
Angry Twindians 