As an adult, I slowly came to know power in an intimate way. It honestly did not occur to me that as an immigrant woman, I could have power. Often the minority in the room, it can be easy to forget that I do have agency and influence.

I didn’t always see myself this way. 

I am—ten years old. It is our first performance at the local middle school. We have KFC fried chicken waiting for us after in the school lobby. Jason, one of the few bandmates who actually speaks to me, asks if I have eaten yet. We just finished the performance, in which I squeaked my violin in time to the music others were playing. Jason convinced me to try a drumstick. “It’s delicious, you gotta try it,” he says. I have never had fried chicken. It is the first time I realize that American food is good, even delicious. I eat it fast, gulp it down. When Jason sees me again, I have a clean bone in my hand, hungry to chew the bone, and fearful that this will show him my truth; that I am really an Indian immigrant. As if it is not written in the way I speak, the way I dress, the way I walk.

Jason looks at me surprised. “You ate it to the bone,” he says and I glance at the bone and back at him. Was I not supposed to? Do Americans eat meat to the bone? I walk over to the trash can and survey the trash as I toss my bone in looking to see what others have done, how they have eaten their fried chicken. I notice most of the trash has bones but not cleaned fully of meat. I promise myself to never eat meat to the bone again. It seems like the wrong thing to do. People don’t like bones here. I retract into my shell from that day onward. Hide the fact that–I eat to the bone, I like to chew bones, I eat with my hands. I am an outsider, hiding safely inside my shell from the truth. I am ten years old, it is 1990. I have given power to America, buried my immigrant agency.

At ten, I yearned to be American. Thought if I dressed a certain way, talked a certain way, pretended to like foods like pizza, this was enough to be American. It wasn’t.  In 1990, my world was Black or White. Indian was not an option. I could be “white” with my White classmates or be “black” with my Black classmates. So I became a chameleon. I changed my register depending on whom I was around. It was a tiny way of taking back power. I learned mannerisms, slang, pop culture references and if I didn’t know, I nodded in silence. This remained true in college when I auditioned, over and over again for plays. Directors did not think past White or Black in the late nineties. So I lived safe in the dark inside my shell, shaming myself for not being more this or that, trying to change myself and body, losing my dreams one by one. I am Indian, I cannot be an actress, no one cares about seeing me on stage. I am Indian, I cannot be a writer, no one cares about reading my stories. I am Indian, I am not American, no one cares about my thoughts. All of which I translated into: I cannot be an artist, not in America and like a practiced athlete, I repeated this message back to myself. 

I am—twenty-six with a graduate degree, the only Indian teacher at a predominantly Black school. It is my first year. A head filled with theories, my hands with zero experience. I have my predominantly Black students research how media portrays Black people, Black males in particular. I want to empower them, help them see the complexities of this experience and it is fucking brilliant. We put television on trial and find it guilty of inaccurately portraying and stereotyping Black males in the United States. 

My colleagues, also predominantly Black, tell me I am wrong for teaching this unit. “I do not have the right to teach it.” “I should not have taught it.” I want to push back, but I retract. I am an outsider here too. An immigrant teaching about an experience she does not know, she does not own, will not ever fully know. I do not have the qualifications in their eyes. I am causing damage. Unnecessary damage. Powerless, I berate myself. Have I hurt my students with this unit? Will they recover? Will this scar them?

I am not a complete American in that way, not in their eyes, not in mine. I was not born here, did not do all my schooling here. A foreigner in a land trying to teach Americans about the complexities of America.

I am different. I have always felt different, even while assimilating and forcing my parents to stop talking to me in Telugu and Marati. I speak with an American accent, and teach mostly American kids, but I do not know all the pop culture references my colleagues ask me about. When I was younger, I pretended to know and prayed that no one would ask me more. But now, I have to say over and over again, “I don’t know that reference.” There are still times I give America power over my identity because even though I say “I don’t know”, internally I am an outsider in every one of those moments. I am reminded regularly that I do not have the experiences of my peers because I came here in the fifth grade and will forever lack the inclusivity of the cultural references of that time period. The story of my American identity is a truncated one; I gave the land power over my narrative.

I am—forty-two, a teacher of sixteen years, a founder and editor in chief of a zine about American women, overseeing writers, illustrators, and editors. I have power in my actions, my work, my thoughts, my words, my publications. I fight for justice in every place I land, in every conversation I have, in every lesson I plan, and  in every decision I make. “With liberty and justice for all” is a memorized line I said most of my life as a student, never internalizing it. But now, this is my mission as an Indian-American woman, a naturalized citizen. I know there are going to be instances where others cannot see past my skin and my culture and into my heart to know that I am pure and true and will fight for love. In the face of that, my power is to NOT retract back into my shell and believe the words others say to me. As un-American as I may look to some, my heart bleeds red, white, and blue; I believe in freedom and democracy and the power of the people.

With all my heart, I give you our newest issue: A Woman’s Power