About indian girl

As a female growing up in an Indian-American community there were numerous expectations placed on me. Most came in the form of offhand comments delivered by my parents and relatives. Despite knowing that these “rules” were wrong, I started to accept them as the norm. I accommodated. Yet, when I surrounded myself with people who grew up similarly, I realized how we all molded ourselves to fit a criteria of “societally acceptable” in our respective communities. The molds are rubber - strong enough to keep us contained but flexible enough to stay alive. It was time to break my mold.

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Process​

Through a series of photographs and captions I wanted to depict the reality that is a the life of a young female living in an American/Indian society while highlighting how she can break her mold if she so chooses. And that there’s nothing wrong with that. The photoshoot was taken at night to create a dark mood. The captions were phrases that have been said to me by adults in my community. To combine the writing and the visuals I used a website called ipiccy.com, allowing me to layer text on images that were uploaded onto my laptop. 

The time you felt the most powerful

Before meeting my mentor, Christy, I had never written poems about my American/Indian heritage. I always separated my culture and my passion for writing. However, Christy’s consistent encouragement prompted me to create an audio poem where I spoke about the reality of arranged marriages. Branching off of this idea I created a photo essay that displayed the struggles that American/Indian females face on a daily basis which won a Silver Medal for the Scholastics Art and Writing Contest. Therefore my proudest moment as a mentee was deciding to embrace my heritage and including aspects of it in my writing.