by Priya Mukhopadhyay – Stony Brook University Have you ever felt as if you were in a tug of war between two worlds?  Or even questioned traditions and customs that you at first grew to accept without really enquiring whether there is any validity behind them?  Maybe you worked your hardest to...

by Shritin Patel – Houston Baptist University I can still remember the feeling of embarrassment and contempt I felt at my culture when my 5th grade teacher refused to take any of the food I made because she thought I had a disease that afflicted my hands. That “disease” was my henna. Growing...

by Priya Patel – University of Florida Directed by: Nina Paley, Sita Sings the Blues. 2009. 82 min I’m not usually a fan of animation. If Pixar is not involved, I generally don’t give it another glance because I tend to automatically associate animation with the child-orientated cartoons that...

by Shivangi Ramachandran – University of Oregon I spent this last weekend at home with a good friend of mine. Over drinks, we talked about a variety of different things, from school to our jobs to our mutually reclusive dating lives. We lingered over that last one for a while there. We’re...

by Komal Thakkar – George Washington University When my parents used to tell my brother and me that we would be attending a pooja later that night, we would groan with disappointment and the protests would begin. “We just went to one last weekend, and we don’t even understand what’s going...

by Syeda Hasan - University of Texas at Austin When I suggested to my mom that I be allowed to wear a sari to her cousin’s wedding in Pakistan this summer, I was surprised to see such a puzzled expression on her face. “A sari?” she said with a chuckle. “We’ll go clothes shopping together when...

by Sunita Dharani photographs by Thuy Ly The bonds of family-especially a South Asian family-are as tightly woven as the beads on the fabric of a designer sari. It comes as no surprise that our immediate and extended family members are bound to contribute (perhaps interfere is a better term) in every...

by Sunita Dharani photographs by Thuy Ly The end of the school year can bring about high levels of anxiety for college seniors-professors stacking exams and projects back-to-back, decisions arrive for graduate programs and job interviews, and the ever imminent graduation itself. It is within the past...

Dev Patel and Freida Pinto on the Oscar Red Carpet for Slumdog Millionaire. by Fauzeya Rahman This year’s Academy Awards will be like any previous year.  We’ll see the usual red carpet scene, celebrities either looking fierce (or not so much) and awards will be given to the top movies of...

by Sunita Dharani The life of a typical South Asian young woman in the States is filled with attending classes, juggling a job or two, perhaps a few extracurricular activities and hobbies to fill the downtime, and of course, nagging from the parents. It appears that once a woman hits that brink of post-high-school...