CONTENT WARNING: This blog post contains mentions of sexual violence and uses language and examples that could be upsetting. Please read with discretion. 

Potentiality Statement: My name is Audrey Gatewood, and I am a senior-year Social Work student at UMBC, and field intern at the Women’s Center. In this blog I am writing about the relatively new position of an Intimacy Coordinator on film and theater sets. I describe the need for intimacy coordinators, what they do, how they are being used, and the larger cultural implications of creating this new role. I have an educational background in theater and film production and work as a photographer. Additionally much of my academic focus has been around sexual and gender based violence. The implementation of intimacy coordinators on sets is an exciting move towards safer and more equitable work environments for actors. Please note, I am not an intimacy coordinator, and I have never worked with or interviewed one. I am writing from research I have done, and general observations and understandings around production environments and rape culture. I will be talking about actors in film and theater interchangeably, though there are nuanced differences in their work circumstances, history and experiences. 

Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar Jones during the filming of Normal People.Photography Enda Bowe/BBC/Element Pictures/Hulu . Image shows a bedroom film set, with two white people laying together in a white bed, undressed covered by sheets. They are surrounded by camera and lighting equipment, and two film crew members directing the scene. 

In the 1972 drama, Last Tango in Paris, actress Maria Schnieder was 19 years old and new to the film industry. So, when she arrived on set and was told, unbeknownst to her previously, that she would need to shoot a graphic scene where her character would be raped, she felt she couldn’t say no. Schnieder was working with esteemed Hollywood star Marlon Brando, 48 years old at the time, and director Bernardo Bertolucci, 31. She spoke on the incident in an interview in 2007: 

“ They only told me about it before we had to film the scene and I was so angry. I should have called my agent or had my lawyer come to the set because you can’t force someone to do something that isn’t in the script, but at the time, I didn’t know that. Marlon said to me: ‘Maria, don’t worry, it’s just a movie’, but during the scene, even though what Marlon was doing wasn’t real, I was crying real tears. I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci. After the scene, Marlon didn’t console me or apologize. Thankfully, there was just one take” https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2018/11/26/story-behind-filmmaker-bernardo-bertoluccis-last-public-controversy/ 

Actors may find themselves in challenging, harmful or unethical work situations where their boundaries are blurred. Not many other jobs pose the risks associated with having to simulate scenarios that could involve violence, emotional turmoil, physically demanding stunts, nudity and vulnerable intimacy. This can be paired with power dynamics, the high stakes of a professional acting role, and the expectation that the actor should be willing to do anything for the character, like we see in the case of Maria Schnieder.   

That being said, if you ask someone if there should be a stunt coordinator on an action movie, they might say “of course.” What about someone to choreograph a fight? Of course, you wouldn’t just tell an actor to swing swords at each other, or jump out of a building, would you? 

While stunts and fights are understood as explicitly risky, scenes which involve intimacy generate risk as well. If done unethically, sex and nudity in productions can be traumatic experiences for actors, who may be expected to just ‘know how’ to portray intimacy, be comfortable being exposed, and endure the blurring of their personal boundaries versus the wants of the director. Intimacy coordinator Clare Worden says, “It ranges from the just really awkward and uncomfortable, to finding tongues in your mouth when you don’t expect a tongue in your mouth, and it all goes all the way up the scale to, you know, full-on sexual assault.” Intimacy coordinator and the associate director and co-founder of Intimacy Directors International (IDI) Alicia Rodis says, “ “[…] violent scenes we could choreograph, we could talk about. But when we got to intimate scenes, no one really knew how to approach it, or really have a common language about [them].” Stunt coordinators and combat choreographers have been staples on large productions for decades. And though intimacy has been featured in film and theater for just as long, it’s only recently that a new position has been established: An intimacy coordinator.  

An intimacy coordinator brings professional skills and ethical perspectives to choreographing intimate scenes in theater and film. Their job is to work with the director and actors to map out the specifics of a sex scene, so that boundries are clear and informed consent can be granted. The actors will rehearse the scenes with the coordinator present, creating a safe technical foundation for the actors to work from. Special protective cups, modesty garments, tapes, and other tools are included, as well.  “My motto is no surprises- we should have a very clear plan before we get to set about what’s going to happen,” says intimacy coordinator Lindsay Somers. “[We discuss] the degree of nudity, wardrobe, and choreography for the scene, and the performers personal boundaries are included in the choreography. They aren’t puppets or chess pieces to be moved around.”  

A major benefit of having an intimacy coordinator on set is that they can act as liaisons and advocates for actors’ boundaries. They are informed about actors’ contracts, workplace safety rights, specifics of the script, and consensually decide on choreography, making them theoretically unwavering to boundary-violating suggestions. Consider Maria Schnieder’s experience, and how it could have been different had there been an intimacy coordinator on set to help her say no in the face of two powerful, older men. 

More and more productions are employing intimacy coordinators, perhaps in response to highly publicized social movements and controversies. For example, Hollywood had a reckoning in 2017 through the ‘#MeToo’ movement, branching off of earlier work done by activist Tarana Burke, in which people who had experienced sexual violence shared a solidarity hashtag, ‘metoo,’ on social media. Hollywood actors joined the movement, and in the process exposed predatory figures in the industry, most notably producer Harvey Weinstien, who had more then 80 allegations of sexual assault and rape against him. This cultural moment set off a public discourse about sexual assault on sets, and perhaps created an environment where more actors felt empowered coming forward.

Infographic from Consent Wizardry

Emilia Clarke, famous for playing Daenerys Targarye on HBO’s Game of Thrones, is one in a growing list of actors who have publicly stated they felt pressured or disregarded during filming on intimate scenes on set. Clarke said she found herself vulnerable to the demands of the directors, noting that she initially acquiesced to such explicit on-screen nudity because she was 23 years old and fresh out of school, working on her first major film set. “I’ve had fights on set before where I’m like, ‘No, sheet stays up,’ and they’re like, ‘You don’t wanna disappoint your Game of Thrones fans.’ And I’m like, ‘F*** you.'” 

Perhaps as a response to the negative backlash HBO and GOT faced from Clarke’s comments, and the overall shift from #MeToo, not only HBO but Amazon Prime and Netflix now require intimacy coordinators on their sets, and many other recent productions have employed them as well. Bridgerton, Euphoria, and I Will Destroy You are just a few of many recent productions that utilize intimacy coordinators. 

In 2019, The biggest U.S. actors union adopted new guidelines for nudity and simulated sex scenes. It seems the relatively new implementation of the intimacy coordinator is here to stay on film and theater sets. 

Intimacy coordinator Alicia Rodis on set. CBS NEWS. Three people film a scene outdoors;  a Black woman with long locs lays on the ground on a tarp like material with a white, shirtless man kneeling above her. An additional person, Alicia Rodis, squats to the right of the actors, speaking and gesturing towards the woman. Camera equipment is visible in the background

As Alicia Rodis points out, violence and stunts have been comfortably choreographed on sets for years, but productions have been unequip for forthright and equitable conversations about sex, intimacy and nudity. Culturally, we are adjusted to displays of violence as entertainment, but view intimacy both as so sensitive that we struggle to be transparent about it, and yet entertaining enough to feature in tons of media. Without a clarified professional or process on set, who is guiding the intimacy? 

I would argue it’s our broad, cultural understandings around sex running the show, which is a potentially dangerous thing. Unfortunately, our larger culture around sex is often not healthy or transparent, rather it dictated by what scholars call rape culture. The term rape culture refers to a setting in which the normalization of rape, assault, and coercion are intertwined with common attitudes about gender and sex in general. This can show up in more subtle, daily occurrences, such as how the news covers instances of sexual violence using minimizing language, and the aligned social commentary that follows. For example, the following is a headline from The Sun, a Brisish tabloid news paper, covering the rape and murder of 20 year old India Chipchase by Edward Tenniswood : “Woman ‘drank six Jagerbombs in ten minutes on the night she was raped and murdered.” The staff’s attempt to pin blame on Chipchase for drinking creates a direct, common scapegoat: she was asking for it. 

  Rape culture also shows up, for example, in how a friend may talk about a date they went on, where they saw how their date was dressed as a form of consent. Studies show that college students frequently do not have a consistent definition of consent, and displayed varrying attitudes and experiences around sex based on gendered expectations. Rape culture can appear as victim blaming, sexual objectification, ‘slut-shaming,’ trivializing sexual harm, and more- all of which is influenced by media that doesn’t approach intimacy with a safe, consent-based framework. 

Even as there is an increase in the prevalence of intimacy coordinators, there is still a skepticism attached to the role. Intimacy coordinator Elle McAlpine says, “When we go on set, we’re sometimes called the fun police. It’s not about that; it’s about educating people about this work.” This displays both a misunderstanding of the coordinators job, and a telling indicator of rape culture. What does it mean that when someone being deliberate, negotiating and enforcing boundaries, and being explicit and intentional about intimacy, is considered ruining the ‘fun’? 

It seems that the use of intimacy coordinators is only going to increase from here on, which could indicate a positive collective shift in how we are viewing intimacy and consent. The amplification of intimacy coordinators as critical crew members will hopefully continue to bring conversations around consent and autonomy to the collective forefront, and make sets a safer place for actors to work. 

Additional Reference

Baldwin-White, A. (2021). “When a Girl Says No, You Should Be Persistent Until She Says Yes”: College Students and Their Beliefs About Consent. Journal of Interpersonal Violence

CBS Interactive.  How intimacy coordinators are changing the way intimate encounters are filmed. CBS News. 

Hilton, E. (2021, May 13). Let’s talk about simulated sex: Intimacy coordinators two years on. The Hollywood Reporter. 

Izadi, E. (2018, November 26). The story behind filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci’s last public controversy. The Washington Post.

Lewis, S. (2019, November 21). Emilia Clarke says she’s been pressured to film nude scenes after “Game of thrones”. CBS News.

SAG, Standards protocols for the use of intimacy coordinators .

The Multicultural Leadership Experience (MLE) is a collaboration between Campus Life and Initiatives for Identity Inclusion & Belonging (i3B), that seeks to: 

Engage participants in a multicultural development and leadership learning program; 
Enhance participants' understanding of their social identities, leader identity, as well as their capacity to lead; 
And enable participants' development through authenticity, self-awareness, relationships, and capitalizing on difference. 

The sessions are as follows:

- Monday, February 13th, 3 - 4:30pm 

- Monday, February 27th, 3 - 4:30pm 

- Monday, March 13th, 3 - 4:30pm 

- Monday, April 17th, 3 - 4:30pm 

- Monday, May 15th, 3 - 5:00pm 

***All sessions will take place in The Commons 2B23 | The Mosaic: Center for Cultural Diversity***
 

Participants will be exploring the concept of Authentic Leadership, Legacy Building, and Breaking Barriers of White Supremacy within Leadership. We will do this in a leadership learning cohort by: 

• Enhancing participants' leader identity and leadership capacity using an identity-conscious lens and student development theories;
• Increasing participants' awareness of their personal abilities, identity development, and intersections that shape their story through authenticity, self-reflection, and cultural humility;
• Exploring the role they play in developing relationships while building intra/intercultural connections; 
• And capitalizing on their differences, specifically in relation to their racial, ethnic, national, and other salient identity social groups. 

The purpose of all MLE programs is to provide a space for students and student leaders who identify within diverse or marginalized backgrounds to discover their own capacity to lead, while also promoting a better understanding of their experiences, issues, strengths, and outcomes in navigating their own collegiate careers. However, ALL students are welcome to apply!   

Registration is due Monday, February 6th, 2023 at 11:59pm. If you are interested in signing up to be a part of our Spring 2023 cohort, you can sign up using this form. Both undergraduate and graduate students are eligible to participate. In order to be accepted into the program you must commit to all 5 sessions. Please answer all of the questions before submitting your registration. Any questions can be sent to campuslife@umbc.edu and i3b@umbc.edu.

Women's Center Winter 2022-2023 Hours of Operation:

Through the winter, the Women's Center staff will be working remotely and in-person. We encourage campus community members to contact us through email at womenscenter@umbc.edu or via phone at 410-455-2714. Staff will generally be most available between the hours of 10am - 4pm. We appreciate your patience in our response to your email or returning your phone call.

December 14th to December 20th: Finals Week Reduced Hours

On Study Day (Wednesday, 12/14), 12/15, 12/16, 12/19, and 12/20 the Women's Center lounge will be open from 11 am to 3pm. 

December 21st to December 30th: Closed

January 3rd to January 26th: Winter Hours

During the Winter Term, the Women’s Center Lounge will re-open on Tuesday, Jan 3rd and will be open from 10am to 3pm Tuesday through Thursday. The Women’s Center will be closed on Fridays. 

Women's Center staff will be working remotely on Mondays and while our lounge will be closed, staff are still available to support the UMBC community - please reach out to a staff member directly or through our shared email or phone.

Our normal Spring hours will resume on January 30th with the beginning of the Spring  semester.

The Women's Center lactation room continues to be available by reservation. For details, contact us at womenscenter@umbc.edu.

Individualized Support Meetings:

Women's Center professional staff are available for individual meetings and support which we can provide via phone or video chat and in some cases in-person; to schedule an appointment, email womenscenter@umbc.edu or call 410-455-2714. If you are already working with a specific staff member and need to set up additional meetings, feel free to reach out to the staff member you have been working with directly (via email or even g-chat!). 

Visit our website for all the ways we can provide support.

If you haven't already, follow us on social media where we're sharing resources and communicating with our community!

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Please also feel free to communicate with us through any of these channels.

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Other Helpful Resources:

To report and seek services for incidents related to sexual violence, relationship violence, and all other sexual misconduct, complete the online form located on the Office of Equity and Inclusion's website. TurnAround's 24/7 helpline is 443-279-0379. For a full list of off-campus resources, visit Retriever Courage.

For UMBC community members who need access to healthy food and other essential supplies visit Retriever Essentials or the myUMBC Retriever Essentials group for up-to-date information on how to access food and toiletry items.

For information about Academic Success Center's services and support (tutoring, Writing Center, SI Pass, academic advocates, etc.) visit their website.

For access to health and human services information, visit 2-1-1 Maryland or dial 2-1-1. 

For UMBC-related COVID-19 updates, visit covid19.umbc.edu or email covid19@umbc.edu.

Image description: [Photo shows Rachael dressed in black attire, one of the Women’s Center interns, smiling in front of one of the UMBC buildings.]

Content Note: This post is written by Rachael Joslow, a third-year student at UMBC. I am a transracial adoptee adopted from Vietnam who grew up in Georgia for most of my childhood and adolescent life. I hope to highlight my experience growing up as an adopted child discussing my personal feelings on adoption and the ambiguous loss that I experience. I would like you, as the reader, to acknowledge and learn the realities of adoption through my experiences.

In my previous blog, I discussed my personal experience with being adopted and included some other stories of adoptees (My Personal Experience with Being Adopted). Within that blog, I addressed common questions those would ask of me if I mentioned that I was adopted. These questions being: “What was it like being told that you were adopted?” or “Is it hard being adopted?” My focus from my last blog was to give awareness on the topic while being vulnerable about my own experiences and those of other adoptees who have shared their stories online.

I wanted to recap some aspects from my last blog, because many have come forward to ask me more about what it is like being adopted and how those experiences have shaped me. As it is touched on from my previous blog, many positive adoption experiences from adoptive parents overlook the negative and traumatizing experiences of many adoptees, specifically transracial adoptees. Some adoptees learn that their adoptive parents carry a savior complex over their adoptive children, especially for transracial adoptee cases where they are from foreign countries and the parents are a different nationality/ethnicity. Unfortunately, it does come up in adoption very often, especially when adoptive parents believe they are “saving us” from the situation that we’re in. And to be clear, it’s not that adoptees are not grateful—it is valid for us to feel uncomfortable being paraded as trophies for adoptive parents to receive a gold star on their “good deeds” list.

A quote from an article titled “What We Lost” resonated with me about the frustration adoptees feel towards society telling us that we should be grateful for everything and not express our sadness or negative feelings towards being adopted.

“Society’s narrative of adoption tells adoptees, in no uncertain terms, that if we were given to a loving home, we shouldn’t feel this pain, this chasm, this rip, this tear. We were saved, after all. We’re so much better off. We’re the lucky ones. Our parents must be such wonderful people. We must feel so grateful. How lucky. How special. We were meant to be together. Everything worked out just the way it was supposed to in the end.”

This quote calls out people who don’t take adoptees’ feelings into consideration when we, adoptees, talk about our feelings on adoption. People tell us constantly how we should feel instead of giving us a moment to speak about our lived experiences. There is no time for us to pause or talk about it as a whole. In addition, these experiences contribute to this sense of loss that I’ve been bearing over the years that is specific to adoptees. It is constantly brought up in different ways how I’m adopted and I have no connection to my birth parents. Because this is an extremely vulnerable topic for me to discuss, I’ve had to take extensive time to write this blog in order to give myself space to take breaks until I felt ready to come back to it. However you feel about adoption, a common experience that many adoptees share would be the sense of loss from identity, as well as the relationships we have missed out on.

Ambiguous Loss Felt in the Adoptee Experience

Ambiguous loss is a type of grief that lacks closure and information regarding the loss of a loved one or the loss of a connection with a loved one. Ambiguous loss is common in cases when we have no contact with somebody even though we know where the person could be or what has happened to them. Examples include divorce, estrangement, immigration, a loved one who is incarcerated, and of course, adoption.

Thinking about my birth parents feels weird. I visited Vietnam back when I was eleven years old and struggled with finding my connections back to my culture, the country I was born in. From my perspective, I’ve experienced a lot of ambiguous loss ever since I was able to understand that I was adopted, as early as five or six years old. There are no names on my original birth certificate on who my biological parents are. I don’t know the language nor have I experienced Vietnamese culture growing up. I considered myself white-washed for a long time because I did not have what others might consider key Asian experiences. It felt like I did not deserve to call myself Vietnamese because even though I was considered Vietnamese in appearance, I do not have those interpersonal connections to my ethnicity. I’m Asian but I’m also not Asian. 

What I mean by that statement is that I lack the cultural background that a Vietnamese-American/Vietnamese person might experience normally. It was made apparent to me growing up through middle school and high school that I was different from other Asian peers. I don’t know a lot of cultural foods and I did not grow up with the same household items. Even out in public, it is made apparent by strangers where people don’t realize that I’m standing next to my mom. It’s a weird paradox to be seen as Asian in some settings and not Asian in others. There’s also an internal loss where I feel left out from being Asian.

From the same article, ”What We Lost,” this next quote resonates with me on what ambiguous loss feels like and expressing heavy feelings towards what it’s like to not have a relationship with one’s birth mother as an adoptee.

“Adoption loss is an ambiguous loss. While it changes shape over time, it is often life-long. It is without end. I have lost my entire family and yet, there are no bodies to bury, no socially acceptable ritual or process meant for me to understand this loss and how to live with it. My mother went on living, became someone else’s mother, while I lived my young life with only the presence of her absence and the fracturing unknown. Maybe she’s alive; maybe she’s dead. Maybe she loves me; maybe she has forgotten me. Maybe anything.”

It’s difficult to put it into words. I have no idea where my biological parents are, if they are still in Vietnam or even alive. I’m constantly mourning over the loss of everything in those relationships that I never had with my birth parents. However, it’s not like I’m sad–it feels empty. I have spent most of my life pondering whether or not I cross their minds. These feelings of mine are real and okay for me to feel. On this note, I can still be grateful to my mom and love my mom while appreciating her for everything. While she has given me so many opportunities throughout my life, she also does not hold it above my head that I should be grateful because she adopted me.

It feels nice to put these feelings into words and share them, because not many people are aware of what adoptees go through in their lives. This is my experience with adoption and ambiguous loss and I hope that I’ve left you as the reader with some things to think about. And as always, please make space where you can and listen to adoptees’ feelings and voices when they share their experiences. 

The article I attached is where I got the two quotes from. It is a heavy read as it talks about the writer’s personal experience with being adopted and meeting her birth mother. It is important to be in a clear headspace before reading this story:

What We Lost: Undoing the Fairy Tale Narrative of Adoption

Articles that talk more on white saviorism:

A Savior No One Needs: Unpacking and Overcoming the White Savior Complex

What Is White Savior Complex–And Why Is It Harmful?

The following post was written by Ojuswani Phogat, a third-year student at UMBC. 

Positionality Statement: The letter below is a message from me to my immigrant parents. It is reflective of only their experiences and mine but is being shared with you all with an understanding that the immigrant experience can be a wild, scary, intense, fulfilling, and beautiful one. And that someone, somewhere, may relate to this story on more than just the surface. 

To My Immigrant Parents

Dear Mumma and Papa, 

It is rare for me to think of the lives you led before I was born. To think of you as children, young adults, or parents of a singular daughter, instead of two. I cannot fathom a world where I do not exist, despite the remnants of your past lives that hide in the crevices of our home. The ones you pull out of dusted boxes underneath your bed and from the back of cabinet corners to show to me from time to time. The pictures of you both wearing school uniforms, eyes shining, and faces plastered with bright smiles showing off two missing front teeth. The sindhoor¹ your mother gave to you the day of your wedding, tucked away into a patterned cloth nestled inside of our household mandir. The ceramic chai cups, lovely little things, adorned with arrangements of blue flowers your cousins gave to you on your 24th birthday. I do not consider these mementos of your life's most cherished moments until I do. Until I see them with my eyes, smell them in all their aged glory, feel the weathered edges of the containers that store them, and sip chai from them, and it dawns on me that there is a whole part of your story that I do not know the intricacies of. And yet it defines my very existence. 

I can't imagine the courage it would take to leave behind...a culture, a language, a home. 

To say farewell (or at the very least see you in a while)... 

To the very khets² of green that sustained your childhood, where you gulped down sugar cane juice and stole neighborhood fruit off of tall, lusciously beautiful trees as your grandmother called for you to return home. 

To the patches of dirt where you gathered with your friends to play cricket and kabaddi³, laughing and bonding for hours.

To leave behind everything you have ever known. 

To leave behind a community enriched with thousand-year-old traditions rooted in a fundamental understanding of what it means to be Brown and thrive in a place with people who look just like you. 

The experience of leaving home must be undefinable. It seems, in a word: scary. In a few words: completely, utterly terrifying. An experience that I am almost certain you would never allow of me. And yet, here I am, existing in a land completely new to the both of us. One we navigate with excitement and curiosity but mostly caution for a hesitancy of the unknown.

In reflecting on my time in this place, I think of the hill just a few feet behind our old house, my own khet² of radiant grass and luscious trees on which you took my sister and I to fly kites at the age of 4. The same one that I glared at through my bedroom window with my eyes stinging with tears as I spent my freshman year of college cooped inside a house that was wholly consuming my sanity. I think of the gravel-covered playground in our community that we went to each year on the last day of summer, spending hours swinging and playing games. The same park I watched with a feeling of despair as I sat in our green minivan packed to the brim with clothes, appliances, and toys. As we drove away from friends, family, and the community you created for us towards our new house in New Jersey, where a second such community would never be built. 

In leaving your home, you have rendered me without a concrete one. I exist in this place but have not found the ability to claim it as my own. It is not mine, despite my residing within it. How can one belong to a place when their physicality, spirituality, and culture remain under speculation, only being accepted in bits and pieces when it suits the visions of the white man? 

It is here in this environment that I exist within two distinct worlds. I am an American, born and raised, but what marks my presence in this place is my othered identity. It is the Desi part of me, the one defining my brownness, that I am legible through. It is here where I exist in limbo between the cultural and social markers of my two communities. It is in this middle ground is where I am accepted by neither community. 

You would think then that in reconnecting with your home, I would be accepted as one of the pack. I would be revered as one of the community, a missing piece of the puzzle that renders it complete. However, the gap between you and me and, by extension, me and them is one that cannot be closed by sheer will. It is not solely a gap of distance; it is one of the mind: of experience, of speech, of perspective by which physicality is completely transcended. Such a gap, while marked physically by the Atlantic Ocean, is one that I am ridiculed for despite the role I did not play in its creation. My removal from my location and also the location of my ancestors is what renders me without a base. It leaves me without a place I can cherish and savor with my whole being. 

It is understandable that your instinct is to protect those who you have created. That in lieu of favoring our exploration of this place, you have prioritized the notion of safety. A notion you then fed to us: it is not you we don't trust; it's others. This phrase, a manifestation of the fear you have undertaken to live within your reality. The fear that you have for your own safety and mine. And while that itself does not excuse the excessive control you have chosen to operationalize within our relationship, there can be an acknowledgment of the fact that you are more like me than I have ever thought before. That you are human, and your instinct to protect kept me alive in a way you found my instinct to build community and thrive in a place I considered my home never could.   

1: vermillion-colored cosmetic powder made out of saffron and red sandalwood. Is worn in a long stroke on the top of the forehead and into the hair part by married South Asian women 

2: plot of land typically with crops (a field or farm) 

3: South Asian sport

The following post was written by Ojuswani Phogat, a third-year student at UMBC. 

Positionality Statement: The letter below is a message from me to my immigrant parents. It is reflective of only their experiences and mine but is being shared with you all with an understanding that the immigrant experience can be a wild, scary, intense, fulfilling, and beautiful one. And that someone, somewhere, may relate to this story on more than just the surface. 

To My Immigrant Parents

Dear Mumma and Papa, 

It is rare for me to think of the lives you led before I was born. To think of you as children, young adults, or parents of a singular daughter, instead of two. I cannot fathom a world where I do not exist, despite the remnants of your past lives that hide in the crevices of our home. The ones you pull out of dusted boxes underneath your bed and from the back of cabinet corners to show to me from time to time. The pictures of you both wearing school uniforms, eyes shining, and faces plastered with bright smiles showing off two missing front teeth. The sindhoor¹ your mother gave to you the day of your wedding, tucked away into a patterned cloth nestled inside of our household mandir. The ceramic chai cups, lovely little things, adorned with arrangements of blue flowers your cousins gave to you on your 24th birthday. I do not consider these mementos of your life’s most cherished moments until I do. Until I see them with my eyes, smell them in all their aged glory, feel the weathered edges of the containers that store them, and sip chai from them, and it dawns on me that there is a whole part of your story that I do not know the intricacies of. And yet it defines my very existence. 

I can’t imagine the courage it would take to leave behind … a culture, a language, a home. 

To say farewell (or at the very least see you in a while)… 

To the very khets² of green that sustained your childhood, where you gulped down sugar cane juice and stole neighborhood fruit off of tall, lusciously beautiful trees as your grandmother called for you to return home. 

To the patches of dirt where you gathered with your friends to play cricket and kabaddi³, laughing and bonding for hours.

To leave behind everything you have ever known. 

To leave behind a community enriched with thousand-year-old traditions rooted in a fundamental understanding of what it means to be Brown and thrive in a place with people who look just like you. 

The experience of leaving home must be undefinable. It seems, in a word: scary. In a few words: completely, utterly terrifying. An experience that I am almost certain you would never allow of me. And yet, here I am, existing in a land completely new to the both of us. One we navigate with excitement and curiosity but mostly caution for a hesitancy of the unknown.

In reflecting on my time in this place, I think of the hill just a few feet behind our old house, my own khet² of radiant grass and luscious trees on which you took my sister and I to fly kites at the age of 4. The same one that I glared at through my bedroom window with my eyes stinging with tears as I spent my freshman year of college cooped inside a house that was wholly consuming my sanity. I think of the gravel-covered playground in our community that we went to each year on the last day of summer, spending hours swinging and playing games. The same park I watched with a feeling of despair as I sat in our green minivan packed to the brim with clothes, appliances, and toys. As we drove away from friends, family, and the community you created for us towards our new house in New Jersey, where a second such community would never be built. 

In leaving your home, you have rendered me without a concrete one. I exist in this place but have not found the ability to claim it as my own. It is not mine, despite my residing within it. How can one belong to a place when their physicality, spirituality, and culture remain under speculation, only being accepted in bits and pieces when it suits the visions of the white man? 

It is here in this environment that I exist within two distinct worlds. I am an American, born and raised, but what marks my presence in this place is my othered identity. It is the Desi part of me, the one defining my brownness, that I am legible through. It is here where I exist in limbo between the cultural and social markers of my two communities. It is in this middle ground is where I am accepted by neither community. 

You would think then that in reconnecting with your home, I would be accepted as one of the pack. I would be revered as one of the community, a missing piece of the puzzle that renders it complete. However, the gap between you and me and, by extension, me and them is one that cannot be closed by sheer will. It is not solely a gap of distance; it is one of the mind: of experience, of speech, of perspective by which physicality is completely transcended. Such a gap, while marked physically by the Atlantic Ocean, is one that I am ridiculed for despite the role I did not play in its creation. My removal from my location and also the location of my ancestors is what renders me without a base. It leaves me without a place I can cherish and savor with my whole being. 

It is understandable that your instinct is to protect those who you have created. That in lieu of favoring our exploration of this place, you have prioritized the notion of safety. A notion you then fed to us: it is not you we don’t trust; it’s others. This phrase, a manifestation of the fear you have undertaken to live within your reality. The fear that you have for your own safety and mine. And while that itself does not excuse the excessive control you have chosen to operationalize within our relationship, there can be an acknowledgment of the fact that you are more like me than I have ever thought before. That you are human, and your instinct to protect kept me alive in a way you found my instinct to build community and thrive in a place I considered my home never could.   

1: vermillion-colored cosmetic powder made out of saffron and red sandalwood. Is worn in a long stroke on the top of the forehead and into the hair part by married South Asian women 

2: plot of land typically with crops (a field or farm) 

3: South Asian sport