Young Arundhati Roy, My Avatar

Role models and role modeling have always been important to me. As I grew up, especially in high school, I found myself latching on to particular people to model behavior for me, people usually a couple of years older than I was. When I came to college, I began to research scholars and academics and see them as role models in the same way. My avatar is a famous South Asian activist and academic, Arundhati Roy, back when she was in her mid-twenties. She has done incredible work for South Asian communities and has inspired me constantly, along with other South Asian academics. I have spent a long time looking for my queer South Asian/poc role models mainly because they are so erased within our white, Western framework of education. I am so proud of and happy about the work that they do.