Anonymous asked: okay this a totally honest/earnest question not meant to be offensive, or as inoffensive as a question like this can be....
do you ever get tired of being so conscious of race relations/the brown man/down man's struggle? like aren't there times when you wanna just throw in the towel. I feel like everything you produce has some sort of racial tinge to it and that this somehow pigeonholes you as an artist. Do you ever feel this way or am i totally off base?
all the time. i am constantly fatigued by not being able to think in other terms. like most diasporic people of color my identity shit is schizophrenic as fuck. i would love to not think of things in these ways. it would make life a lot easier. it would make me a lot less crazy. i may even be more appealing to women. but i always see things through these lens. brown/white. indian/american. hindi/english. and in my world the eastern side of my brain says make money and the western says make art and be spiritual. not the other way around.
i was raised speaking english all day at school and learning one set of values and then coming home, speaking hindi, and being taught, essentially and correctly if you ask me, that all of the values i was being taught were wrong. to not be “too american”.
i think my constantly talking about race might pigeonhole me to white people that feel uncomfortable because they dont think of themselves as white people but just people. i wouldnt do what i do if i felt there was already a working-class voice in postcolonial south asian american art, music, or literature that met my standards. i’ve yet to meet these standards myself and thus i’ll continue to do how i do.
feel me?
