![]() Rao started a Facebook group and, in 2017, officially established Desi Rainbow, centred around the large South Asian community in New Jersey. “As I began to meet more and more queer South Asian groups, I began to realize the intense need for elders in the community to be visible,” she says. To try to fill that hole, Rao, with the help of the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance, began reaching out to South Asian families and talking to groups across the U.S. From a South Asian perspective, there was literally zilch.” ![]() “But I couldn’t find a single Indian family who had a trans kid. “I tried to find resources within my own community,” she says. Manjula Balakrishnan, co-president of Desi Rainbow, who lives near Seattle, experienced a similar vacuum when her child came out as a trans woman in 2014. “But I told myself, ‘I really cannot be the only Indian-American parent dealing with this.’” Being with Japanese mothers or Chinese mothers was very similar to desi mothers. ![]() “I finally found a lovely PFLAG group in New York City for Asians and Pacific Islanders. And even though I’m used to being the only brown person in all-white spaces, it felt different for emotional support,” Rao says. “I found myself the only brown immigrant mother in the whole space. But she says she felt out of place at many of the group’s meetings. Rao googled everything she could find on LGBTQ2S+ topics, and found PFLAG. “I told myself, ‘I really cannot be the only Indian-American parent dealing with this.’” I had never met a person of colour who was queer or trans.” “Even though I considered myself quite liberal, that was for other people’s kids. “It was really a blow to the stomach,” she says. Rao, who lives in New Jersey, didn’t know how to react. Rao’s child Leo came out to her in 2015 at age 17.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |