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Connecticut exhibit celebrates South Asian American identity
Students learned about their family’s life in India and immigration to the US through oral histories.
The exhibit was titled ‘My Story Our Future: South Asian American Youth Voices in Connecticut’ / Greenwichhistory.org
The Indian Cultural Center (ICC) of the University of Connecticut’s Asian and Asian American Studies Institute (AAASI) presented the second annual student-curated exhibit at the Historical Society Museum Lobby in partnership with the Greenwich Historical Society.
The exhibit titled ‘My Story Our Future: South Asian American Youth Voices in Connecticut’ highlighted personal oral family history and artifacts. “My grandparents lived in India, and they made a lot of sacrifices to be sure my father would have a better life in America,” Mihir Shah, a sophomore at Greenwich High School, told Greenwich Time.
Shah and other students carried out an extensive oral history project, interviewing family members, and collecting special items and objects to display at the exhibit.
‘My Story, Our Future’ was launched on February 4 in the presence of families, community members, and several government dignitaries, according to Greenwich Sentinel. It opened to the public on February 13 until February 25.
ICC founders Nisha Arora, Mudita Bhargava, and Meera Gilbert were guest speakers at the opening reception. They explained the mission and work of ICC to educate and engage the community in Indian culture. Arora highlighted the contributions people of Indian descent were making to American society and how they were leading major corporations like Google, Microsoft, IBM, Starbucks, etc.
The exhibit aimed to collect and contribute stories about South Asian American youth identity in Connecticut in support of the state’s mandated K-12 Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) curriculum.
Student participants spent the fall of 2023 learning to interview family members on their experiences as immigrants to North America from South Asia, under the guidance of faculty from the AAASI at UConn.
Students also reflected on their identities as South Asian Americans and discussed how their family’s stories of life in India and immigration to the US shaped those identities. The interviews, which were central to the ‘My Story Our Future’ project, will also help shape the K-12 AAPI school curriculum, which is scheduled to roll out in 2025.
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