When you think of communities subjected to gentrification and a typical gentrifier who may be complicit in displacing people from these communities, who comes to mind? Chances are, whoever you have in mind makes up only one part of the story.  Historically, the model minority myth has been used as a racial wedge – to minimize the role racism plays in the lives of other racial groups, such as Black Americans, and to pit non-white racial groups against each other. It also serves to flatten the diverse experiences that Asian Americans from very different backgrounds encounter, into one singl ..read more

CW: psychosis, depression, mentions of hospitalization, parent minimization of mental illness Hello! My name is Kirpa, I’m a 23-year-old author and social worker in San Francisco and I’ve been living with Schizoaffective Disorder since I was around 12 years old. You can hear more of my story on S3E4 of the Brown Taboo Project, and also read a bit about it in my fictional book, Reality Check. When you live with psychosis, a condition that puts your reality through a kaleidoscope, you become an unreliable narrator in your own story. You’re constantly second-guessing what is real, who to believ ..read more

I don’t sleep anymore.  Looking back, I don’t think I ever really enjoyed sleeping. In high school, it’d always be such a flex to walk into homeroom that morning and say, “I’m so tired, I only slept 2 hours last night,” to which someone else would say, “You got to sleep 2 hours? I haven’t slept in 2 days.” Only thing is, it’s been 8 years since then. I don’t remember the last time I was genuinely excited to sleep.  I’m reminded of that episode of The Fairly OddParents on Nickelodeon when Timmy Turner wishes nobody needed to sleep. Annoyed that he was missing out on all the Dimmsdale ..read more

My therapist hands me a journal and tells me to write it in it every night. The first seven pages in the journal are filled, the eighth has substantially less words, I forget to fill the ninth, and when I pick up the journal again it’s day 27. I knew there was power in reflection, but the additional 10 minutes of sleep was too enticing to give up as a sleep-deprived college student. Five half-filled journals later… The flood of thoughts that I assumed I had filtered through and solved seeped back into my mind during COVID-19. The pandemic’s flood of time alone and anxiety from encountering pe ..read more

Hi! I'm Ria and I'm 15 years old. I am from the UK and have been battling anorexia for the last 2 years. This topic is quite personal to me, and I really believe that it’s important to start raising more awareness now than ever. Eating disorders need to be talked about more openly, as they are very often misunderstood. Imagine this: someone you know has just been diagnosed with cancer. It’s treatable but they are really unwell. Everyone goes rushing to the hospital, showering their love, support and understanding. This scenario is often different for mental illnesses, with less support and un ..read more

By: Revathy Rajan “I’m not interested in having a physical relationship with anyone because it disgusts me.”  In a nutshell, that’s pretty much how I came out as asexual to my parents. I did not want to. I was not ready. I believe that every person should be able to pick the moment that’s the most comfortable and safe for them to come out. However, I can’t help but feel like I was robbed of that.   The two dreaded words that prompted this moment: arranged marriage.   The discussions were ongoing, and it was getting serious. My parents were just about rea ..read more

By: Shrutikona Das We’re familiar with how they depict us on TV: the dichotomy between the images of sexless Indian men versus sexually repressed ‘exotic’ Indian women are pretty much imprinted into our brains. However, ancient texts such as the Kama Sutra, which is a guide on the philosophy of love and other pleasure-oriented faculties of human life, subverts these representations. There is now a global focus on gender and sexual liberation, but what has changed in the past two-thousand years that shifted South Asia towards sexual conservatism? While colonization clearly had an impact on gove ..read more

Hi, our names are Bisleen and Navan. We are 4th year naturopathic medical students and our goal is to advocate for mental health in our South Asian communities. Mental health is very close to our hearts and we want to work to BREAK this stigma down in our communities regarding mental health. Talking about mental health and accepting its presence is one of the biggest taboo topics with us South Asians. But we can change this! If we work together and educate each other, and those older and younger than us, we can work to accept and normalize our mental health. Living in South Asian families, we ..read more

Original poetry collection by Simran Singh Jain There is a monster thrashing in my belly and stolen soil pushed under my fingernails ancestors running between my earlobes God crouching behind my eyelids. I touch this poem and feel it pulsate I put words on a page and let them breathe without me. Let them scream without me. America’s roars burn pits in my stomach, I cannot sleep with all this noise. Police killings and deportations and shooting guns are too loud to be drowned out by poetry and we cannot sleep with all this noise. My mother has not slept since 9/11. My brother has not slept sin ..read more

Hi there! My name is Alana Lukens. I am a 20 year old student activist and the  founder of the Empowerment Project. I am entering my final year as a social work student at the University of Chester. Additionally, I am an International student from the U.S and a president of our University’s International Society. During the start of the Covid-19 outbreak, my plans to return home were interrupted by the new restrictions put on air travel and changing rules and regulations. As a result, my mental health and positivity began to deteriorate.  After sitting in my room for way too long, I ..read more