SAADA

Two years ago—in 2022—as we approached SAADA’s 14th anniversary, we asked our community to share their ‘Dreams for SAADA’ with us. We received pages upon pages of responses, and I was personally surprised to see how many dreams mentioned wanting a physical space for our community’s stories. I’m excited to share that this summer, we are embarking on the journey of making this dream into reality. With a grant from the Luce Foundation, we are beginning the strategic planning process for the first-ever SAADA Storytelling Center in New York City—a physical space to access and share our community's stories. This dream can’t happen without your support! Please make your gift now in honor of SAADA’s Sweet Sixteen—our sixteenth birthday—and give us a boost! Every gift is deeply cherished and makes a meaningful difference in our ability to preserve and share South Asian American stories. Together, we are ensuring that South Asian Americans are recognized as an essential part of the American story. 🏛️ Make your gift now to help us turn our community's dreams into reality: saada.org/donate

Today we celebrated SAADA's Sweet Sixteen—our 16th birthday! 🎂 We were joined by members of the SAADA community to reflect on how far we've come together—and share an exciting new direction for SAADA's future! So much of SAADA's journey over these past sixteen years has been to create the resources that simply have not existed for our community. Recognizing that if we do not do it ourselves, no one will do it for us. In 2008 there was no archive to preserve and share South Asian American stories. So we created the archive—and it is now the world’s largest publicly accessible collection of South Asian American stories. There was no book about South Asian American history for high school and college-age readers. So we published the book, Our Stories, which is now in more than 3,000 schools, libraries, and homes across the country. There was no evidence of South Asian American history in Phiadelphia, where SAADA is based. So we started a walking tour, Revolution Remix, to share over 250 years of our community's history here in the city. And there were few opportunities to center the voices and perspectives of groups that have been historically marginalized in the South Asian American community. So we launched the Archival Creators Fellowship Program, which has supported 24 fellows over 5 years in sharing stories from Dalit, LGBTQ+, Indo-Caribbean, working class, and other communities that are excluded from dominant narratives. Today, we're starting the process of creating a new resource for our community—one that so many of us have craved, but that simply has not existed: a physical space for our community—the SAADA Storytelling Center—a space for us to access our stories, and to share our stories. We'll share more in our next post, but for now, we need your support to make this new direction possible! Please make a gift now in honor of SAADA's 16th birthday, so that the next sixteen years can be even better than the first. 💕 Make your gift in honor of SAADA's 16th at saada.org/donate

Last week, we hosted 21 educators from all over the nation at SAADA HQ in Philadelphia for our first-ever NEH K-12 Institute, “The Missing Stories: Reclaiming History through Community Archives.” Throughout the week, educators engaged with content about South Asian American history, the work of community-based archives, and oral history methodology. Educators also joined us on our Revolution Remix walking tour of Philadelphia and a group field trip to Jackson Heights, where we visited local community leaders.⁠ ⁠ We want to extend an enormous thank you to the incredible speakers, organizers, and community storytellers who shared their work with us, as well as our amazing cohort of educators for joining us last week and bringing so many thoughtful conversations to the table. ⁠ ⁠ What brought us all together is a shared commitment to ensuring that marginalized communities are represented in our nation’s classrooms. To know that SAADA’s work and our community's stories will be carried back into classrooms across the country, many of which have substantial South Asian American student populations, is deeply meaningful. 💙

In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey destroyed Danny Chand’s childhood home. In the aftermath, Danny, now a professor of political science at Kent State University, flew back to his hometown of Lumberton, Texas, to salvage what he could of his family’s possessions. In the midst of the destruction, Danny found a document that opened his eyes to an entirely new story about his grandfather, Pandit Mehar (P.M.) Chand, one of the first South Asians to move to Texas. P.M. Chand immigrated to the U.S. in 1913. After first arriving in Tampa, Florida, and spending time in California’s Imperial Valley, he traveled to Texas, along with a fellow South Asian immigrant, Kayaun Sing, or “K.S. Joe.” There, P.M. met his future wife, Eulalia “Lola” Torres, an immigrant herself from Torreón, Mexico. P.M. and Lola married and settled in Beaumont, Texas, having children and establishing their lives together. Shortly thereafter, however, their lives took an unexpected and difficult turn. As Danny writes: “Shortly after applying for citizenship, P.M. received the shock of his life when law enforcement officers arrived at his store to arrest him and K.S. Joe. They were charged, along with three Black men already in jail, with participating in an interstate conspiracy to sell cigarettes stolen from railcars.” 📖 What happened next? Read Danny Chand’s full essay at saada.org/pmchand to find out and see P.M. Chand’s materials, including his presidential pardon, in the archive. 📰 Sign up for our newsletter for more stories like this in your inbox every week at: saada.org/subscribe P.S. If you have a family story to share, we’d love to hear about it! Reach out to us about it at story@saada.org, and visit us at saada.org/familyalbum to learn about how to preserve your own family documents and stories.

Today, we’re revisiting a moment from SAADA’s own organizational archive! Here’s a photo from 2012, from the second-ever SAADA event, four years after our founding in 2008, where we met with South Asian American artists in Chicago to talk about how SAADA could work with artists from the community. These conversations eventually led to projects like “Where We Belong: Artists in the Archive” and our collaboration with musical artists for the soundtrack to Revolution Remix. Since then, we’ve been able to host events all across the country and collaborate with South Asian American artists, musicians, and writers–and on July 10, we’ll be celebrating SAADA's sixteenth anniversary! 🎉🎉🎉 Join us online to celebrate SAADA's Sweet Sixteen with SAADA staff, board, collaborators, and fellow members of the SAADA community! In honor of SAADA's 16th, we'll be announcing an exciting new direction for SAADA's future and introducing the artists who designed our new SAADA merchandise collections, inspired by community stories from “Our Stories.” We hope to see you there! 🎂 🌟 RSVP to SAADA’s Sweet Sixteen on Wednesday, July 10, at 1pm ET / 10am PT at: saada.org/sweetsixteen

This Pride Month, we’re revisiting Mustafa Saifuddin’s article for TIDES, which delves into queer South Asian organizing in America through the eyes of Ifti Nasim. Kareem Khubchandani collected an oral history interview with him in 2009, two years before Ifti passed away. This excerpt shares a selection of Mustafa and Kareem’s favorite moments from the conversation. In the full interview, Ifti Nasim describes growing up gay in Pakistan where he dreamt of becoming a dancer before being shot while performing poetry in college. He shares colorful stories of cruising at bathrooms at a YMCA in Manhattan after immigrating to America and performing as a dancer at gay bars in a predominantly white queer scene. Ifti also describes the feelings and motives surrounding the foundation of Sangat, his work as an activist during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, and his connection to poetry in Urdu, Punjabi, and English. On the founding and naming of Sangat, one of the earliest South Asian LGBT organizations in the U.S., Ifti said: “Sangat mean[s] togetherness. When somebody is playing sitar, and tabla is playing—it’s called Sangat, all the music fusion are called Sangat. If it’s together—it’s sangeet, sangeet sathi, friend. So I said, why don’t we call it Sangat.” 📖 Read the full article or listen to the oral history at: saada.org/cyberqueens 📚 Explore more from South Asian American authors in our online magazine, TIDES, at: saada.org/tides

We're hiring! SAADA is seeking a Social Media & Website Coordinator to support us in our mission of ensuring that South Asian Americans are recognized as an essential part of the American story. This role will call upon strong writing, design, and editing skills to help us execute a social media and communications strategy that boosts SAADA’s brand identity and awareness. We’re building a team that is dedicated to SAADA’s work and to each other, and we’d love for you to join us! 💼 Learn more about how to apply at: saada.org/jobs You can send any questions you may have about the position to jobs@saada.org.

Just 2 days left to sign up: our open call for SAADA Models ends this Sunday, June 16! Join us as we launch brand-new SAADA merchandise collections this summer in collaboration with three incredible South Asian American artists, Kruttika Susarla, Ro Maharjan, and Shurjo Mukhi, who have created designs inspired by our book, "Our Stories: An Introduction to South Asian America." Now, we need you to be a part of the process! Partner with us to become a SAADA Model and help share South Asian American stories. As a model, you’ll be among the first to receive a brand new SAADA t-shirt. 📸 Learn more and sign up at: saada.org/model 👕 Browse our past lookbooks and merchandise collections celebrating South Asian American stories at: saada.org/models

Introducing Kruttika Susarla, an illustrator and cartoonist featured in our upcoming SAADA Spotlight merchandise collection! We can’t wait to share her artwork for a new t-shirt later this summer, designed in collaboration with SAADA and inspired by the story of jazz musician Bardu Ali as told in our book, “Our Stories.” Be among the first to see and wear her new t-shirt design by becoming a SAADA Model, and help us share South Asian American stories! 📸 Learn more and sign up by June 16 at: saada.org/model 👕 Browse our past lookbooks and merchandise collections celebrating South Asian American stories at saada.org/models.

Introducing Ro Maharjan, a freelance illustrator and animator featured in our upcoming SAADA Spotlight merchandise collection who draws inspiration from their Nepali heritage. We can’t wait to share their artwork for a new t-shirt later this summer, designed in collaboration with SAADA and inspired by the essay, “Finding Love, Forming Family,” by Vega Subramaniam and Mala Nagarajan in our book, “Our Stories.” Be among the first to see and wear their new t-shirt design by becoming a SAADA Model, and help us share South Asian American stories! 📸 Learn more and sign up by June 16 at: saada.org/model 👕 Browse our past lookbooks and merchandise collections celebrating South Asian American stories at saada.org/models.