Welcome to Trailblazers! We bring you trailblazing by and for South Asians every other Monday. Subscribe and find us on IG, FB, and LinkedIn.
Catching Fire 🚀 your must-sees
📺 Netflix axes Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj
Our Homecoming King has been dethroned. For six seasons, the host tackled the complex and controversial, from Supreme to student loans. He did smart comedy so well that sometimes, entire countries banned his episodes.
The show itself was actually a political statement. The eponymous law, the USA Patriot Act, was swiftly signed into law 45 days after 9/11 by President George W. Bush. USA PATRIOT stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. For two decades, it has stirred controversy for infringing on rights meant to protect civilians from being surveilled and tried without due process. Hence… why people have asked that in addition to cancelling this Patriot Act, they cancel the real one.
We’ve lost a paragon of comedic political savvy and South Asian representation from talk show land. On some bright side, Lilly Singh earned a primetime spot as the star of a new NBC comedy sketch series. Long may she reign.
🇺🇸 Kamala. Devi. Harris.
The first Black and (South) Asian American woman to be on a major party ticket, need I say more? My favorite read: from the LA Times.
Since the announcement, we’ve heard Tamil spoken on a prime-time stage for the first time ever. Joe Biden wished Brown folk a ‘Happy Ganesh Chaturthi.’ Oh, and this seemingly 20-foot sign cropped up in Tamil Nadu:
Current mood: little girl on the bottom right.
📰 On British colonialism and Partition from VICE
Happy (Belated) Independence Days to my Pakistani and Indian readers. While it’s cause for celebration, our independence is also fraught with the trauma of Partition. Check out this piece on the legacy of British-instituted railroads on the two countries.
Hot off the Pod 🎧 Riya Collective
My conversation with Riya Collective co-founders Sarina & Arian. Riya Collective is a YC-backed social shopping platform that’s been featured in Vogue and dubbed the Rent-the-Runway of South Asian fashion.
Sarina and Arian are college classmates turned serial entrepreneurs who always knew they wanted to be in business together. In this episode, they share their experiences launching Riya from their living room and navigating headwinds brought on by the pandemic. They discuss innovating by and for South Asians, and the ways in which they found and maintained conviction in their ideas. Tune in to hear their inspired vision for the platform.
Fireside Chat 🔥 with Sujata Day
Sujata Day is an actress, model, screenwriter, and newly-minted director. She is best known for her starring role as CeCe in Issa Rae’s series, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. Over the course of her career, she’s appeared in an array of TV shows from Greek to The Secret Life of the American Teenager. In 2017, she produced and sold a short film titled Cowboy and Indian. More recently, she directed her first film, Definition Please, a South Asian dramedy which recently premiered in the film festival circuit.
The latest and greatest with you is your directorial debut with Definition Please which just premiered a few days ago. And you didn't just direct the film; you wrote it, starred in it, and produced it. How did this story and project come to fruition?
Wow, how did it come to fruition. The first nugget of the idea that I had was in a UCB sketch class about four or five years ago. I wrote a four page sketch. I was always fascinated by how the spelling bee winners were South Asian American and me having been my fourth grade class spelling bee champion and going to Regionals and losing on the word ‘radish’ by spelling it with two d’s instead of one. I always felt really connected to it so in that sketch I explored the question. Here's the thing: the spelling bee winners always grow up to be physicists that work for NASA, or they're designing robots. I'm sure they're looking for the COVID vaccine right now. And so I asked the question: ‘What if one of these spelling bee winners grew up to not achieve the success that they had achieved at a young age?’ And so when I wrote the sketch, it was obviously very comedic and there wasn't a lot of drama to the story. And then fast forward just a few years later and it was about mid-2017, and I had just went to my first Sundance Film Festival. And my friend Justin Chon, had his film, Gook, premiere there. And I was just floored by the movie, and at the after party I was asking him questions about it and he was like, ‘Girl, I just made the movie. You just need to go out and make your movie.’ And I was like, yeah. So then that's when I took that small, tiny idea that I had about the spelling bee winner and developed it into a feature film.
What's the best piece of advice you've ever received over the course of your career?
Issa Rae saying, ‘I’m writing my Black girl story, you have to write your Brown girl story.’ And I wrote it. I did it!
Stay tuned - the full interview drops in the next issue!
Opportunities and Events
Third Eye Collective - Design Fellowship | For visual and UI/UX designers
South Asian Medical Students Association | Newly-formed for med students
The Young Center - Child Advocate | For immigration advocacy
Pardesi - Women’s Health Event (9.01) | For South Asian women’s empowerment
Visit our socials for more opportunities and events!
For questions or comments, email us at trailblazersmediaco@gmail.com. Until next time!