A Quest for Home Upside Down Edition
A Quest for Home Upside Down Edition
Access the Zine here
A Quest for Home Upside Down Edition was a series of workshops with Roohi Choudhry over the summer of 2020 that contributed to a Zine that was launched on Dec 12, 2020.
What does belonging look like? For those of us who grew up in the South Asian diaspora, it’s a feeling of floating in between, unsure where to land. Those of us who grew up in South Asia have a different understanding of South Asian identity today and what it means to be rooted to your homeland. Trying to balance ancestry and future, the journey to find home is filled with desperation and hope. At times, it feels like a never-ending cycle.
The Arts & Democracy team came together over Zoom and decided to organize a second installment of the Quest for Home writing workshop series. People from all around the world applied. We received applications from our home in Kensington, Brooklyn, to Malaysia, Pakistan, India, Texas, Alaska, and more. We eventually chose 15 participants from across the globe who had a desire and passion for storytelling. Through our writing workshop sessions, we were able to momentarily escape the world and scribble our thoughts away.
We wrote about the places and people we longed for, and talked about maps and counter-maps and imagination as a kind of knowledge. We drew each other’s faces and made clay with flour and water. Holding our hands up to our screens, we showed each other the objects that contained our deepest stories. This way, we built kinship and community when it seemed that finding tenderness wasn’t possible. We formed lifelong friendships that we will cherish for the rest of our lives. Though it was broken up into little squares, we made a kind of home.
The Arts & Democracy team came together over Zoom and decided to organize a second installment of the Quest for Home writing workshop series. People from all around the world applied. We received applications from our home in Kensington, Brooklyn, to Malaysia, Pakistan, India, Texas, Alaska, and more. We eventually chose 15 participants from across the globe who had a desire and passion for storytelling. Through our writing workshop sessions, we were able to momentarily escape the world and scribble our thoughts away.
We wrote about the places and people we longed for, and talked about maps and counter-maps and imagination as a kind of knowledge. We drew each other’s faces and made clay with flour and water. Holding our hands up to our screens, we showed each other the objects that contained our deepest stories. This way, we built kinship and community when it seemed that finding tenderness wasn’t possible. We formed lifelong friendships that we will cherish for the rest of our lives. Though it was broken up into little squares, we made a kind of home.