Gopinath discusses the importance  and meaning of queer diasporic critique by studying queer diasporic cultural forms and the way the cultural forms redefine ‘home’ as different to the traditional (blood, purity (chaste and cis), authenticity, patrilineal descent). Heteronormativity is the structure of colonialism and nationalism and influences the way cis-hood is valued over queer-ness. Therefore, studying sexuality and the absence of it, particularly in euro-Bollywood films, is central to the anti-imperialist and anti-racist project.

South Asian bodies in Bollywood films are seen purely as spectacles and entertainment, while South Asian communities in the U.S. are experiencing representational violences, such as seen after 9/11. They are in either criminal and anti-national or multicultural and assimilationist. It is the absence of queer-ness in Bollywood films that allows for assimilation.

The paper emphasizes the importance of queer diasporic critiques in order to understand the racist violence South Asian bodies are experiencing in a hegemonic cis-heteronormative narrative.

Mississippi Masala explored the aftermath of colonialism in Africa. The forced removal of South Asians in Uganda is complicated because while you don’t want South Asians displaced, their presence is a sign of colonialism and the influences of the Western nation. In the South Asian communities there is a lot of anti-blackness and so it is no wonder that Africans would want to go back to pre-colonial times when there was no anti-black sentiment in their homes by their South Asian neighbors.

Black and South Asian interactions are also explored in “Flipping the Gender Script” in the hip hop community. While there is already limited space for women in the hip hop industry, non-black women and South Asian women in particular have an even harder time navigating the space. They constantly have to “prove themselves” which is exhausting and unfair. MIA is a successful representation of South Asians in the hip hop community, producing songs that have to deal with death, disease, terror, and more.

The readings and videos this week gave the most heart wrenching feeling through out; this deep sense and theme of outside looking in transcended across each piece hurt me every and I could not imagine the actual lives of queer diasporic South Asians as they navigate themselves through colonization and de-colonization.

The experiences of brown queer men living in a world that tells them queer is to be white, rendering them invisible, yet still a part of the “community”. Are they in or are they out? This place of outside/in between resonates feelings of diasporic living as queer brown mens’ identities that they cannot let go of.

I felt personally connected to a line in “bodymaps” that mentions the panic of leaving and not being able to return–the sense that you don’t belong neither here no there. Where do you belong? How do you come to peace with your situation?

But, “Corporate Tax” by Darkmatter has left a lasting impression on me, as I have archived it and will hopefully watch it periodically through out my life. I want to do this as a reminder to remain resistant, to stay true to myself, to not allow others, societies, anyone’s interpretation of me to define me, to not allow goals to be set for me, to not let anyone determine or guide my life for a purpose outside of myself. I do not want to lose myself.

Both Mohanty and Nagar’s articles touch on the nuances of the category “woman”. In Mohanty’s piece, the universalization of woman was used as a means to push liberal, western feminism onto women in the global south. Non-western women were then inherently in need of saving via a transformation of their culture into western culture. This universalization ignores the nuances of different women across the globe, erasing the unique struggles that each woman in their time period experiences. Nagar’s piece highlights the different instances where politics, economics, and social structures that influence different ideas of purity and honor affected the ways in which migration patterns were formed. Thus, the same connection to nuance can be made in the examples that Nagar gives in that given the circumstances of the time different migration patterns emerged and a universal conceptual view of women in India and Tanzania negates women’s unique history.

In the film Fire, there is also the absence of a different kind of woman beside the normative role. Thus, when Sita and Radha spark up a relationship they do not even have a name for it. There is also lots of mention of purity from traditional stories in the film.

My thoughts cannot stray away from Mala Ramchandin, as I have now just finished reading Cereus Blooms at Night. A book like this, one that doesn’t so plainly explain its purpose and meaning, always leaves me feeling the most. What that feeling is, I am not entirely sure of. But, as I read I tried to think critically, alongside absorbing the beautiful prose. My budding ideas and thoughts of the book have me going in circles about the reasonings and motivations of some characters actions. For instance, Chandin Ramachandin and Ambrose E. Mohanty could not love anyone else besides those they had fallen for as children. I think, why? Is there even a point to ask why? Then, there is the state of liminality, or more so, of an unknown in between, brought up in regards to queerness. Tyler is neither man nor woman. His position in life does not have any name to it. Which makes you think about the importance of language and words. I think that was a theme in this book–language–but I can’t exactly grasp it. Overall, this was the first book of its kind of which I’ve read with such trauma and violence and it has definitely affected me greatly. The fact that Pohpoh and Asha’s mother, Sarah, and Lavinia too, could leave them behind like that angers me to no end. With frustration, I often put the book down and exclaimed, “How could a mother leave her children behind in an effort to escape for herself alone!” Yet, I know that I can’t see it that simply. And, that there are people on the earth who live with such horror, as Mala and Asha did, now and in the future, is a tragedy. But, I am glad that, in the end, Ohto was able to churn Ambrose’s thoughts into those of self-reflection. I don’t know why this brings me comfort, given that it does not exactly change the events of the book. But it does. I am excited to discuss the book in greater detail and learn its deeper meanings.