How to navigate a bicultural identity

Welcome back to It’s All Desi - a monthly newsletter dedicated to spotlighting South Asian entrepreneurs and brands making big waves in American culture. If this is your first time reading, remember to hit that subscribe button for future editions!??

A convo with Sahaj Kaur Kohli?

As part of the events surrounding AAPI month, LinkedIn helped organize an interactive workshop this past week with Sahaj Kohli - writer, speaker, and founder of Brown Girl Therapy - a mental health and wellness community organization for children of immigrants.?

It was an awesome workshop that highlighted some of the unspoken expectations and challenges faced by adult children of immigrants. As an Asian American who moved to the Western world when I was a kid, this workshop really hit home for me. For anyone that can relate to being _____-American and the mental/emotional load that comes with carrying this identity, I wanted to share a few of my takeaways from Kohli’s workshop that I found helpful:?

• With a bicultural identity, we are always trying to manage how others see us - this can come from an inherited practice to make sure our parents/relatives are always seeing us doing well
• There is a lot of intersectionality in our culture and values beyond just the two cultures we grew up with. For example, Kohli described herself in the workshop as Indian, a woman, a second generation immigrant, first in her family to be born, fair-skinned, married to a white man, master’s degree, two-income household, “no accent” English proficiency, able-bodied and living in a city.
• Acceptance and belonging continues to be a challenge for immigrants - about 24% of Americans say immigrants burden the country by taking jobs, housing, and health care (Pew Research Center)?
• We also can’t assume that everyone knows how to speak English - a study from 2018 showed that 47% of immigrants 5 and older were not proficient English speakers

More from May

• For folks in NYC, The Shed is launching an exhibit/concert experience from June 9-July 7 called Sonic Sphere, with multiple live/recorded sets, including one from electronic music producer and drummer Madame Gandhi
• Highlighting one of my favorite creators on TikTok at the moment - Ashwin is a content creator that breaks down some of his favorite brands, marketing techniques, and creative sparks
• Lots of awesome fashion sightings amongst celebrities this month - hip hop artist Amine wearing a full Karu Research suit for his latest album release and Lebron James was seen rocking a vintage Bodhi jacket from Kardo
• If you’re into film, you’ll know that the Cannes Film Festival was happening over the last week - not only did it have a ton of South Asian representation, but we also saw Indian sari highlights on the Cannes red carpet
• This weekend, I had the awesome opportunity to check out a Desi + House event hosted by No Nazar here in NYC - check out one of my favorite parts:?

Thanks for reading and please share feedback/leave comments about other cool things I should be checking out!?