May 2, 2023
How do you identify racially and ethnically?
I am Asian. South Asian. Indian. South Indian. Telugu. English-only speaker. Brahmin caste. Dravidian. Brown. Dark-skinned. U.S.-born. Second-generation. Born to two Andhra Pradesh-born people who emigrated to the United States, by way of Canada, in 1981. Raised beside (and often in the care of) an older brother who was born in India but scooped up by our parents to move across the Earth when he was 6-months old. A brother who had to prove his citizenship as a teenager, which baffled my birthright child brain. I was born in Bangor, Maine which has become a successful two-truths-and-a-lie response because it sounds so implausible. I became a person in Santa Clara, California. I became an adult in Baltimore, Maryland, by way of Salem and Portland, Oregon and Chicago, Illinois. I identify as anti-racist, anti-casteist, and as an Asian for Black Lives.
Usually I just say “Asian-Indian like from India,” though.
rajani gudlavalleti 