#OurStoriesInVividColor

Running for office at 18 was one of the most significant experiences that has shaped me who I am today…growing up, I was often bullied… but I am thankful for the political community in Colorado giving me a space to grow. I am who I am today, more confident, unapologetic, conquering the world, because I was able to defy the odds. No matter a win or loss, I was the first Indian American woman who stood up in front of White Conservative Christians during the Rise of Asian Hate. 

My Experience: Injustices in Different Communities

Ayonnah Tinsley

I am a 17-year-old advocate for STEAM education and my biggest achievement was publishing my first children’s book titled, “This Is What an Engineer Looks Like”. My book shows younger students more diversity in STEAM careers to inspire them to pursue careers they might not often see themselves in. A movie played during my first trip to the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) when I was in third grade linked aeronautics with music, art, and nature. It was at this moment that I knew I wanted to get involved with STEM. I realized I wanted to be an advocate for STEM education when I saw that there are engineers who are women, black, etc., but this isn’t represented in social media which can deter many students from this career path.

What motivated me to create my own role in being an advocate for STEM education was the lack of resources and representation that I had growing up. I always had the intention of being an engineer but even as a senior in high school, I am continuously learning more about the aspects behind the career and the fact that there are city engineers, graphic design engineers, etc. In middle school, I started attending more events and doing more projects about aerospace engineering which exposed me to see that there are scientists that have my hair texture or wear flashy clothes. This shocked me and I wanted to figure out how to show this to more students, especially younger students so that they can grow up knowing that their career options are endless. This is when I changed the direction of my blog from travel reviews to STEM resources. I’m making a difference in my community and in history by focusing my advocacy towards elementary school students and wanting more students to see education/STEM in a new way.

Yasmine Bolden

I reshape the world by healing intergenerational wounds in ways that my ancestors were not given a chance to. I honor their memory and the future of those who will come after me by bearing witness to history-in-the-making, embracing my role as a memory-keeper and storyteller who highlights the journeys and impacts of radical BIPOC activists and dreamers past and present. I work to help turn sites of pain, suffering, and unending labor into spaces that center rest, mindful education, respectful acknowledgement of the multitudes of love, and loss within our collective past, and the affirmation of BIPOC emotions and experiences. I nurture the voices of and create accessibility for young BIPOC involved in the writing and the performing arts. Through my involvement in the arts, I am dedicated to the past, present, and future.

Anna Le

A college mentor of mine once told me to “raise hell…when needed.” Emphasis on the “when needed part,” and I’ve been living by that ever since. In every space that I make for myself or take, I present my most genuine and true self and use the platform I have to raise some much-needed hell. I dedicated my career to conservation, so it’s very much a European-descent man’s world—a good ole boys club almost all of the time. I try my best to look through different angles and perspectives on how people view the world and what tells us how we can be stewards of our land, water, and air. After participating in activism work and raising awareness about environmental issues alone, I realize it takes a collective to fight. As a biologist and educator, it’s important that the people’s voices are being heard, and they also understand science. To put the sense of community back into the change-making and to do that, you need to start raising some much-needed hell.

In between

Growing up, I would always get asked “So, which team would you support in a cricket match? India or Australia?”. “Both!” I would answer, laughingly because I enjoyed the concoction of my identity.

I enjoyed surprising the auto-rickshaw driver when I switched to speaking Hindi mid-conversation as he gawked and asked me how I spoke so fluently and remarked “But you don’t look Indian at all!”. I enjoyed bargaining with the shopkeepers and quickly making them realise I was not a tourist and was not going to pay triple the price for those pair of earrings.
But then one day I just got tired.

For as long as I can remember, I loved having a mixed Indian-Australian background and I perceived it as a strength but fatigue caught up a lot quicker than I anticipated and soon I became tired of constantly feeling in between. Tired of being told I wasn’t “Indian enough” or I wasn’t “Australian enough” and having my classmates call me “Firangi” (or ‘foreigner’) every time I walked into a room. Soon I started turning this self-love into a part of me that I wanted to neglect; a conversation I would try my best not to have to have. But this is me. Blue eyes and pale skin with dense, black body hair and a devout love for Bollywood. I am learning to unlearn the hate I created towards this feeling of “in betweenness” — this feeling of never being enough of “something” and instead becoming enough of “me”.