PABITRA BENJAMIN (SHE/HER)

My journey of self has always been wrapped around understanding my multi-cultural identity. I was a product of a mixed-caste relationship in the 1980s (mixed-caste relationships are taboo to date). My family is Dalit, which is at the bottom of the caste system in Nepal. When I was four, my mother married a white American, and I immigrated to the U.S. South when I was six, having to learn English as one of the few immigrants in my school. I moved around my whole life, always having to explain who I was and my family while learning to trust and earn trust from people around me quickly. In the U.S., we grew up working class; my mother was a waitress, and my father was a bus driver graduate student. In my teens, we moved back to Nepal, where my dad worked for USAID, and we lived a very privileged lifestyle for a few years while my broader family in Nepal were working-class Nepalis, many living in one room for a family of 5. I had to learn how to work with this privilege to earn the trust of my family grappling with the privileges of class and being an American. Then, after my dad lost his job when I was a teenager, we moved to rural Wisconsin where I came out as queer in the 90s, leading me to a youth group for “underprivileged” kids where they taught me to organize. It saved my life.

From an early age, I had to acknowledge the privileges of having a white father, and the complexity of being Asian in predominantly Black and white spaces while also understanding what it was to be an outsider and of a working-class family. All of this taught me to relate to people where they are and communicate with diverse individuals while still being all of who I am. In college, this grew into an understanding of power and organizing to better relate to people in order to organize folks to build power for social justice. I carry these identities and learn to organize, opening myself to not holding on to the identity but consistently learning of self and also in relationship to others. This I find builds more trust with others. Today, as a queer parent in a multi-racial relationship with a Caribbean Latina, the relationship to identity has grown while raising a child. I find that learning to trust is a continuous process that grows, and the most important aspect is to present myself to myself and others around me. To read not just what people are saying but how they are saying it, and allow space for relationships and opinions to evolve.