Saiesh Faisal

Saiesh “Sai” Faisal (he/him/his) is a Senior double major in Psychology and Sociology at UNC Asheville. He comes from a blended South Asian background, and was born overseas in Banglore, Karnataka, India. From three years old, he lived in the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina, in an town full of Asian-American cultures. He frequently accompanied his parents to social gatherings of primarily Indian families and occasionally attended Indian cultural events at the local temple. His high school education offered dual enrollment at a local community college where he attended and took nearly a full associate’s degree. After high school, he attended Western Carolina University for a semester, where he felt highly isolated from people who looked like him and was in a fairly hostile environment. He left WCU quickly, after only a semester, and then went on to enroll at UNCA in the spring of 2022. 

In terms of race/ethnicity: “I was always raised to fit in, and actively assimilate into white culture. I was born as an Indian citizen, lived the first four years of my life speaking only in Hindi and Punjabi, and upon arriving to the United States I had that stripped from me. My first few years in school were spent struggling with English, and teachers urged my parents to stop using our native languages in the home. They obliged, effectively erasing all Indian language from my life. After losing my mother tongues, I lost my connection with extended relatives, local communities, and other Indian children, so I began to operate only in English and in English-speaking circles. I forgot I was anything but white, avoided making any friends that shared my culture, and hated any interactions with others in our community. I couldn’t understand what they were saying and I felt “too American” to truly be accepted as Indian, and somehow that my Americanness made me more ‘normal’ and less ‘weird.’. On top of it all, I came to the realization that I was queer and trans, and felt that the ‘conservative’ and ‘traditional’ culture could never accept who I truly was, and that my only solace could be white and liberal circles. It was only during my senior year of high school that I began to take an interest in my cultural upbringing, and during college when I began to dismantle years of shame and internalized racism, homophobia, and transphobia. To this day I struggle with relearning my first language and with finding meaningful connections as a queer Indian American, but I hope that I can be a part of helping AAPI find and create spaces that are welcoming, safe, and that value the beauty of all sorts of diverse identities.”