{"id":7062,"date":"2014-06-30T21:33:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-30T21:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/beyondbollywood\/?p=6879"},"modified":"2015-03-09T16:18:25","modified_gmt":"2015-03-09T16:18:25","slug":"going-beyond-suzanne-persard-writer-and-activist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/going-beyond-suzanne-persard-writer-and-activist\/","title":{"rendered":"Going Beyond: Suzanne Persard, Writer and Activist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Suzanne Persard is the next in our series of interviews from contributors to the Beyond Bollywood <\/em>exhibition. She is a writer, an activist, and a founding member of Jahajee Sisters<\/a> a movement-building organization, led by Indo-Caribbean women, committed to social justice.   Suzanne is also a contributor to the Huffington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Suzanne<\/a>

Suzanne Persard<\/p><\/div>\n

Interview by Priya Chhaya <\/em><\/p>\n

How did your family come to the United States? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Simeon Persard (Suzanne\u2019s dad): We were in Jamaica and then the economy started to change for the worst. My oldest brother, George, came first, and I came to the Bronx in April 1979.  I did air conditioning work all my life; I came to America and did the same thing for 35 years.<\/p>\n

Patricia Persard (Suzanne\u2019s mom): I wasn’t really excited to come to the U.S. because I was in a good job and I was due a promotion; I was a mortgage supervisor.  I took entry-level jobs when I came here — [employers] wanted “New York experience”.  We were homesick.  We only came with $50; you couldn’t take more than that out of the country.<\/p>\n

Can you can speak to your work with LGBTQ and Women Empowerment groups. Why is this important? How did you get involved?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jahajee Sisters emerged out of a critical need to challenge the culture of silence surrounding sexual and domestic violence in Indo-Caribbean communities.  Following the deaths of Natasha Ramen, an undocumented Indo-Caribbean woman murdered by her rapist in Queens, and Guiatree Hardat, an Indo-Caribbean women who was murdered by her ex-fiance, an NYPD officer, we were appalled by the absence of outrage from Indo-Caribbean communities in New York City and the normalizing of gender-based violence.<\/p>\n

From an intergenerational group of women meeting in the living rooms of Richmond Hill and the Bronx, Jahajee Sisters to a fiscally-sponsored organization running community-specific arts and empowerment programs; reproductive justice programs; and social justice programs with a focus on sexual, domestic, and intimate partner violence.<\/p>\n

As an LGBTQ activist and organizer, I wanted to openly speak out about LGBTQ rights in the Indo-Caribbean community and shatter stereotypes and assumptions. Of course, this was initially terrifying — simply speaking openly about LGBTQ rights in spaces filled with women who were the ages of our mothers and grandmothers was unprecedented, but the impact has been phenomenal.  I want to commit the rest of my life working within these communities and as for long as LGBTQ individuals struggle for social and economic justice.<\/p>\n

Can you reflect on your personal experience growing up an an Indo-Caribbean young woman in NY?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a first-generation Indo-Caribbean kid in the U.S., the language of indentureship entered my vocabulary at an early age.  I recognized a relationship to India in a sort of mythological sense: knowing that my roots were from a place that I’d never traveled to, from a culture with which I was connected to but simultaneously excluded from in many ways.<\/p>\n

But I am forever grateful that I was born a New Yorker.  I grew up in a Jamaican neighborhood in the Bronx, and on Sundays, I’d travel to the Indo-Caribbean hub of NYC, Richmond Hill, with my parents.  Somewhere between the Bronx and Queens, I saw white picket fences dotted with pooja flags and cars blasting reggae. In these spaces, my identity never required lengthy explanations or abridged history lessons. I believe New York City is singular in this way, though, for allowing the recreation of multiple worlds and communities through the traumas of migration.<\/p>\n

In addition to her work as an activist and organizer, Suzanne is also a writer. She shared with us one of her pieces. Here is Elegy:1838<\/a><\/strong>; <\/em><\/strong>written in <\/strong>2012<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suzanne Persard is the next in our series of interviews from contributors to the Beyond Bollywood exhibition. She is a writer, an activist, and a founding member of Jahajee Sisters a movement-building organization, led by Indo-Caribbean women, committed to social justice.   Suzanne is also a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beyond-bollywood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7062"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7062"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8842,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7062\/revisions\/8842"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}