A Letter to Farrokh Bulsara

Dear Farrokh, You and I share so much of our cultural heritage that it’s almost laughable. Your parents were Parsi (ethnic Persians) Zoroastrians from Gujrat and my parents are Muslims from Gujrat. Your family lived in Zanzibar and my dad was born in Zanzibar, in fact, he was born in the exact same district that…

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Dinner parties and seeing your culture through the lens of white people

The spicy potatoes are crackling on the stove and the house smells wonderful from the baingan, cholle, and roasted brussels sprouts I cooked earlier. I’m waiting for my friend Afsa and Nidhi to arrive for the first dinner party I have hosted since moving to San Francisco. This party feels significant for several reasons. The…

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Dating as a bi-cultural person

I wasn’t allowed to date or even talk to boys growing up. This was a cultural ethos backed up by religion and the custom of arranged marriages and no premarital sex under any circumstances. My father was a very serious and very strict man and his number one priority was to protect his family. He…

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Internalized racism

I always wanted to be white. It all may have begun with the show WKRP in Cincinatti. This was one of the few shows that was broadcast on the very limited TV channels we had in Mozambique, a communist state at the time with programming that was mostly state-sponsored. I remember in addition to WKRP in…

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