Deaf South Asian Americans: Smita’s First Days
The Disability Visibility Project loves it when people reach out to us and share their projects on disability history. Sarika D. Metha is a Producer for APA Compass on KBOO 90.7 FM, specializing in issues concerning race, ethnicity, and culture. She has a Bilingual/ELL Education, Deaf Studies, Early Intervention, etc. Sarika spent a decade serving linguistic minority communities, internationally in Costa Rica and India and domestically in Chicago, Champaign, SF Bay Area, Washington, DC and now, Portland.
Sarika has been documenting the stories of Deaf South Asian Americans. How cool is that?!?
Here is one story: Smita’s First Days in America
August 10, 2013
Smita Kothari was born and brought up in Mumbai, India. She finished her college degrees in Business and in Education in India, never having had interpreters. Smita moved here two years ago after getting married, and has fantastic stories in comparing how mainstream society regards her, as a deaf Indian American woman, both in India and in the US. You can learn more about Smita in this video.
This is another video in a series of stories I’m collecting, documenting the experiences of the Deaf South Asian American community in Washington, DC. These stories are a part of the permanent collection with the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA). While these interviews do not represent the entire community, they certainly offer some insight.
This story is part of SAADA’s project launch, “First Days” in which South Asian Americans describe their unforgettable experiences upon arriving and settling in the US.
In this video, Smita talks about her first days and first impressions, landing in the United States to a land full of cars, closed doors and empty roads, and meeting her in-laws in upstate New York.
The entire post is here:
http://sarikadmehta.com/2013/08/10/deaf-south-asian-americans-smitas-first-days-in-america/
Sarika D. Mehta
Website: http://sarikadmehta.com
Check out all the videos of Deaf South Asian Americans: http://sarikadmehta.com/category/video/
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