Christina Huang 00:04
Hello, my name is Christina Huang. Today's date is July 31, 2023. I'm located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. We are here today with Sona Shah, Assistant Director for the Center of Asian American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Equity Inclusion Program Manager in the City of Austin. Thank you so much for being here today. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Sona Shah 00:30
Thank you for having me. My name is Sona Shah. I am currently in Austin, Texas. And my previous position was the Assistant Director at the Center for Asian American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. But I currently serve as the Equity and Inclusion Program Manager for the City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department.

Christina Huang 01:03
Awesome, that sounds like a lot of work. Very interesting. Could you tell me a little bit about what it looks like to be the Equity and Inclusion Program Manager?

Sona Shah 01:11
Sure. So this position is a brand new position in our Parks and Recreation department. And it was created in October of 2021 when I took on the position. And the reason why the position was created was because the city of Austin has been doing a lot of work around racial equity. The city of Austin had its equity office, created in 2016. That was driven by the community to create and really highlight the disparities in Austin, Texas. A lot of times is seen as this oasis within a conservative state. And so the equity office's work has been to highlight really the racial inequities and the economic sort of inequities that we see in our city. And so, after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, when a lot of institutions, I think, were trying to understand the ways that our institutions in many ways perpetuate systemic racism. Our department, the Parks and Recreation Department, started a racial equity committee, which I was part of. And through those discussions and things, it was decided that we really needed an Equity and Inclusion Program Manager in the department to lead some of these efforts. And so, I've been in this role now for about a year and a half. And prior to this role, I was actually the first Asian American manager of the Asian American Resource Center, which is also in the Parks and Recreation Department.

Christina Huang 03:16
How did you get from being the former Assistant Director of Central Asian American Studies at UT Austin? And now, how do you take that stepping stone into working as the Equity and Inclusion Programmer?

Sona Shah 03:33
Yeah, so a lot of my history and career has been in sort of community organizing, and honestly, with a focus for a large part of my career was within Asian American communities. And for seven years, I worked at the Center for Asian American Studies at UT Austin. But I was also an undergraduate student there, from 1996 to 2000, at UT. And that was sort of prior to- that was actually at the time when an Asian American studies program was trying to be built, right. And so, I share a lot of this because my work history, and I guess my own sort of political and personal trajectory, has always been intertwined. And so much of that work I see is really kind of me developing my own sort of identity as a South Asian American woman. And making those connections from really, I think, in a lot of ways in the university, sometimes you can be sort of in a bubble, but in what ways are you organizing with students, raising more consciousness, right around our histories that are not really told?

And so the Asian American Resource Center again, it's one of the few city-funded centers in the country. And my time at the Center for Asian American studies, I was already working with a lot of community leaders and maybe present in some of those conversations about what the Asian American Resource Center should be, because that opened up in 2015. Yeah, it was 2015, I believe, or maybe later, 2018. And that's when I- sorry, I'm like messing up my dates here. Anyways, so I was always sort of involved with the, even my time at UT, with kind of understanding what this cultural center was going to mean for Austin, right, and for Asian American people here in Austin. And so, when the center was created, it included a lot of first generation Asian Americans in in our city that really had this vision of wanting to create a space in Austin, that Asian and Asian Americans can go to. And I see a lot of connections in the ways that I think that ethnic studies is organized in universities, in many ways.

Even when I was at UT, at the Center for Asian American Studies, much of my work there was about creating and building space for Asian and Asian American students to really kind of have a central space. I think oftentimes, because of the model minority myth, and all of these things, oftentimes institutions ignore us, and don't sometimes see the different layers of oppression or barriers that our communities may face, especially in institutions like schools. And it's interesting, because I think my work at UT really set me up well to kind of move into the city, and seeing how to really kind of bridge some of the learning, understanding, and inclusiveness that I think Asian American Studies tries to really bridge among different communities of color, but also, internally within such a diverse pan-racial identity, that I've taken a lot of those things to my work within the city. And so even with leading the Asian American Resource Center- I led the Center for three and a half years. And during that time, we were able to really shift and make explicit our vision, our mission, and our values, to be more intersectional. And really think about our existence in solidarity with other communities of color. And how do we sort of bridge that through, intentional programming, intentional relationship building with which communities? And much of this I saw very similar to the work I'm doing on a college campus.

Christina Huang 08:51
Thank you so much. You've done so much on UT Austin’s campus and beyond. You touched on a lot of things that I want to ask you about. But I'm very curious about your experience as a student at UT Austin when this whole push for Asian American Studies was happening, because I know there was a lot of protests, students got arrested, what was the like political, racial, social climate when you were a student?

Sona Shah 09:24
Yeah, so when I was a student, it's interesting because I don't think I was as active in sort of campus politics or student organizing. I was born and raised in Houston, Texas, and I think when I went to school, I was still someone kind of developing my own sort of political analysis, I think. And in many ways, I studied Asian studies because there wasn't an Asian American Studies major. But part of the reason why I majored in Asian studies was because I recognized I really had a lack of understanding about my own identity, my family's history, culture, all those things. And so, I took a course in undergrad by Dr. Kamala Visweswaran called Asian Women in Diaspora. And that was, I think my last year in college, so it was in 2000. And I remember being in that class, and something just clicked to me where it was like, Oh, wow, all these things that I've been observing and thinking about as far as society and culture, and the ways I think our communities can be stereotyped. And especially along race and gender, her class just lit a light bulb or something for me, because I was like, Oh, this is what school can actually be. I never actually had any of that.

Education around these sort of historical pieces about this sort of group, of population. And taking that class really hit home to me, because my mother is somebody that I think has really sort of inspired me to kind of fight back. [laughter] And to really sort of call out maybe some of the gender patriarchy that I see within my own household and own sort of systems. And so taking that class, an undergraduate student just really opened me up to a whole other level of thinking about what it is to be Asian American. Honestly, before even that class, I didn't even know what to label myself. So, I didn't know how to label myself if I was Indian, or American, or what, but it was really taking that course that like lit something in me that's like, oh, we are Asian American, and we exist here. And we have a long history here. I think that's what it all visibly highlighted for me.

Christina Huang 12:36
It's so powerful how one class can completely transform your whole perspective, or like what you want to do in the future and influence you. I'm so glad you got that opportunity. So, you're talking about this identity as being like, you mentioned before being South Asian, but on top of that, being a South Asian woman, what does that look like? Like in an activism space or in your career? Like in what ways do you feel visible? And what ways do you feel invisible?

Sona Shah 13:12
Yeah, I think when I was an undergrad, again, this was from '96 to 2000. So keeping in mind that our demographics have been shifting very differently, right, where it's becoming much more of a majority minority kind of state and country, right. But when I was growing up in Houston, and even going to UT at that time, there were organizing and different and things happening, but I don't think I was connected in that way. Right. And so for me, it wasn't until sort of, because even at UT as an undergrad, I remember getting comments like as if I wasn't Asian, right. And so I think this speaks to something within Asian American communities where it's like, a lot of times when we think of Asians, we just think of sort of East Asians, right. And I definitely felt that sort of bias at UT. When I was going there, I have an example of walking down South Mall where many of the student groups would be and recruiting students for different organizations and things. And there was an Asian sorority that was handing out flyers. And somebody tried to hand one to me, and they're like, oh, nevermind, you're not Asian. And I just had to question them being, oh, well, I actually am, like India is part of Asia. And so I just remember having to do even that kind of questioning, right, that comes up.

And I think now, 2023, we have gotten so far, where I think there's much more solidarity within Asian American communities and across the sort of nationalities and ethnicities. But I think there's still this sort of strong narrative about how do we, as South Asian Americans, really kind of fit into these sort of nuances of what it means to be Asian American in this country. And one of the things I'm noticing, and again, this is just more of my observations, but through my work with kind of Asian American communities and things, I think that marginalization happens within our own communities, too. And a lot of times that happens based on what sort of dominant groups that there are. And one of the things I definitely see in the US and even in Austin somewhat is, we have more Chinese and Chinese Americans and more Indian and Indian Americans. And so sometimes I think, as Asian American leaders, or just folks that are really advocating for equity, is to really kind of constantly take a critical look at where marginalization is happening. So even within our own kind of communities, and I noticed this with sometimes, like, me being Indian American, I know, India can be a very dominant character or country within the South Asian diaspora. And so, it's kind of having for me also to sometimes check my own biases around how, as me being an Indian American can still be very different from somebody being, Pakistani American, or a Nepali American, or Bangladeshi. And so, there's so many nuances, I think, within our communities. And I think the challenge for me is to always to make sure to be like, how do we honor those nuances or make sure that they're more explicit, and not just kind of like, re-marginalizing somebody else? They're already within the US system of whiteness? How do we make sure that they don't get also like re-marginalized within a dominant characteristic of what it means to be Asian?

Christina Huang 18:10
Yeah, I think that's a very powerful thing to do, because sometimes it's hard to look at your own privileges and your own biases, when you already face a lot of hardships. But I think it's very important, as someone who is Chinese American. What you were saying really resonates with me, realizing that we have to uplift other people's voices in our communities. What does that look like in the spaces that you're trying to create? So you were part of the Asian American Center, you created a nonprofit, and now you're working as a part of the city of Austin. When you talk about spaces, like what spaces can we take up? How do we make sure all voices heard? How we do make sure that it’s like pan-ethnic and intersectional?

Sona Shah 19:00
Yeah, I think honestly, it takes- there's always a quote in sort of doing equity work, right, like that “Trust happens at the speed of relationship building.” I think, I don't know, maybe I'm messing up this quote. But basically, it's gonna take time and consistent relationship building. And from my experience, having worked in organizations that do focus on Asian American communities and that are trying not to marginalize or further marginalize other groups, I think being explicit about where these things show up is really important. When you work within groups to really be explicit about our identities or positionalities or lenses that we bring in. And how do we communicate across those differences? I think, again, a lot of what I hear right now, especially in kind of organizational development, or leadership development work, is where people are now wanting more soft skills, right? The communication relationship building, those with emotional intelligence. That wasn't the case like 20 years ago, right? And so, I think more leaders are becoming aware, but I still think there's like this gap in folks understanding how to effectively do this. And I think we need to learn from community organizers, people who do things consistently and again, through a relational kind of model, I think, can build some of those things. I don't think some of this work easily fits into nice plans. Right. And so I think there's a lot of messiness, with community building and community relations, but it's like, how do we kind of still- thinking about how, as leaders, we create a sort of accountability within us, internally? But then also with community, right. And a lot of the ways that I've seen this happen is through relationship building with community leaders and folks and identifying folks that may be kind of further marginalized, and then helping kind of facilitate those kinds of dialogues and conversations, to build better understanding. So that your team is behind you, you're all working on these kinds of things? I'm not sure if that'll help…

Christina Huang 22:12
Yeah, that was a really good answer. One thing that I was wanting to ask about … it's really interesting, because you mentioned that the center is not UT Austin, but owned by the City of Austin. So, the Asian American resource center, okay.

Sona Shah 22:32
The Asian American resource center, yeah.

Christina Huang 22:33
Something that I've noticed when I'm talking about Asian American Studies, or Asian American spaces, especially in higher education, is that it stops fulfilling the need of the community, and starts satisfying the needs of academia and constantly turning over research papers and doing conferences, but it forgets the community and relationship building aspect that you're speaking of. Do you have any advice how we can revert back to being community-based in spaces for Asian Americans, not just in higher education?

Sona Shah 23:11
I'm so glad you pointed that out. I saw this too at UT. And in many ways. Especially I think the difference between faculty and students, I was an administrator at UT right. So even though I taught a class, I taught as a lecturer, not as like a tenure track professor. And I think sometimes we are not honest about what academic institutions are there for. They're there for in many ways to promote faculty in their research. And at UT Austin. It's a tier one research institution. So I think there's also a lot of different cultural factors with that, right? It may be different, or like my experience at UT may be very different from a small liberal arts school somewhere else. Right. And so, I just want to put that caveat there as well. But one thing, me and a fellow colleague, because when I worked at UT, I worked at the Center for Asian American Studies, which was one of the ethnic studies programs, right? So there was a department for African and African Diaspora. And then there was also a department for Mexican American and Latina/Latino Studies, right. And so, the Center for Asian American Studies was just a center and on it, I was the only staff person there amongst several other junior faculty and a few senior faculty, but that I think that was honestly the biggest struggle was getting that sort of faculty representation, and also faculty power, I think within UT. And so one of the things that the director and everyone was focused on is the course publishing, right? Moving these junior faculty into tenured positions. And during the time that I was at UT, there were several Asian American Studies faculty affiliates, that did not get tenure. And so I think that causes, right, this very different approach, because you see your faculty members, and everyone really just trying to battle the own institution for their own existence. Right. And so I understand why they need to focus on publishing and doing that work, right. But there is a piece missing, right? And how do we still get that community involvement and building that, and I think when I was there at the Center for Asian American Studies, when I had started there in 2011, the senator had already gone through budget cuts, and many other in liberal arts, right, were experiencing budget cuts. So when I was hired on, it was really about like, how are we going to bring money, like funding and kind of community building, and really like recognizing that we need outside community to be supporting what's going on in the institution, too, right.

So you constantly have that kind of relationship of like, who's pushing from the outside and who's pushing from the inside? And we tried, there were many things we created a whole strategic plan. When I was working there, I was hired by Dr. Madeline Hsu, who was the first permanent director for the Center for Asian American Studies at UT Austin, and I think in her tenure, she dealt with a lot of challenges, right. And so, me being kind of like the only staff person to sort of support was challenging in many ways. And I think the ways that I approached it was really to kind of focus much more on the students and the community building. And so that was sort of that link for me. And I know for many students too, and wanting to kind of get engaged. So, a lot of what we did was organize, I worked a lot with the Multicultural Engagement Center, because there were lots of student groups and student activist groups. At that center, I was able to work with the staff there and students to develop programming to kind of instill more of this connection that I think you pointed to about sort of missing from the community. So, a lot of the programming we focused on was bringing Asian American professionals to campus, right, showing what you could do with an Asian American Studies degree. And really kind of highlighting these critical thinking skills that you pick up in these classes and understanding of our communities is really valuable. And working now in the city, I see it more and more clearly. Really, like my liberal arts education has helped me propel to prepare me so much in understanding people, how we operate, how we work, but also just like history and analysis and critical thinking, many disciplines, especially maybe one that are probably like the better paid jobs, right? [laughter] When I think about engineering or business and stuff, which again, I completely understand people's needs for financial security and all of that. But I think sometimes some of those schools are not implementing this sort of real equity analysis, right, and in what ways are critical thinking skills really helping to minimize the gaps that we see in our society?

Christina Huang 30:06
I really appreciate that. That you were focusing on students and the community and engagement, I think coming from a student perspective that is very meaningful. And as a student, we really appreciate the work that you put into this. As you worked as an administrator, and then you were a student at UT Austin, and you also taught classes at UT Austin, could you tell me about how your different positions have informed the work that you do now? And like advice you'd give for students to how to navigate this higher education institution, to get demands for Asian American Studies or to get involved to push their institution in a certain way?

Sona Shah 31:00
Yeah, well, I feel like I'm a constant learner. And it's something that I actually really value, I feel in many ways. Even when people bring in their biases, right, or let's say, make a politically incorrect comment, it's like, I also come from a vantage point of like, it is a real privilege to be at a university and to study and to learn and to grow. And so I know that I've had a lot of privileges to kind of choose my own journey, where in ways I didn't have to, like, just to survive, right. And so I recognize that not everybody can do that.

But that said, one of the things that I really encourage kind of everybody, even coworkers that I have, even my director who runs the parks department, right, is to really think about how do we slow down and do a bit of self-reflection? I think self-awareness is so critical in sort of relationship building and community building. One of the things I'm recognizing is that we don't actually have good skills sometimes on how we communicate interpersonally, right? And so a lot of the advice I give, a lot of my work right now is actually just like consulting a lot of groups in our very large department about how can they can make their programs more equitable, center race equity? And a lot of what I tell them, the first thing is to start off is really do a self-reflection of how you show up within your own identities, and then also look at the team around you, and what are they bringing into it too? What I find in the city, in particular, around these conversations around race equity, is that a lot of times we're in very homogenous groups, I may be the only person of color in a group. And yet, when we're talking about racial equity, still nobody explicitly states race, right. And so, the self-awareness, being really explicit about race. I think we still live in a society where colorblindness is still thought of as being respectful, right. And again, at working at UT, I did feel like I was in my sort of own social justice bubble, right? [laughter] You know, like-minded individuals that were in other ethnic studies departments or the multicultural engagement students, so you can really create that bubble for you. And I think now, in the city, what I'm recognizing is we need to get out of our bubbles and start really talking to those people that don't want to actually get us, but how do we do that in a way that doesn't put so much of that emotional labor and work on an individual, right, just as their identity, but do that more collectively as a group to kind of honor. And I think those are some of the things that I was trying to really figure out at the Asian American Resource Center. With, the work I did in sort of changing the mission, vision, and values there, because I recognize when I led that center, many of the staff there didn't actually even have an Asian American Studies background. So, a lot of the work there was actually educating my own staff on their own kind of identities and how those things show up. What are some of the themes that we see in Asian American Studies, right, that we need to kind of critically be talking about in our own cultural spaces. So I do feel like, by being the first Asian American manager of the resource center at the City of Austin, was a way to kind of bridge maybe more of that, of what we need in sort of Ethnic Studies kind of representation, right? And the research and who's doing that, to really show that, like, this Center is going to be led by our voices, not by voices of positional power or by whiteness, I think that's another theme that comes up a lot within Asian American communities is our proximity to whiteness. Right? And in what ways do we perpetuate that for our own benefit? And what ways are we not being explicit about it to really advance racial equity for all people?

Christina Huang 36:42
Yeah, definitely. That's like- I'm like soaking everything in, because everything you're saying is like, very powerful. And I think it's so true. There's so much to do within our Asian American Studies, like to educate Asian Americans and bring in people to help understand our community. As the program manager, being the first Asian American programmer and manager, how did you make that assessment? Like, I need to do this and this and this. How did you figure out and get the ball rolling when there's so much things to do? Like, what did you prioritize?

Sona Shah 37:20
Yeah, it was really hard. Working for a municipal government is not easy. And, there's all these stereotypes about bureaucracy, government work and things. Now, five years into working in the city, I'm starting to really feel those things. But, part of the reason why I applied to the position, honestly, was a sense of obligation. I, having lived in and out of Austin since 1996, and seeing sort of the Asian American community growing the way that I've seen it growing. It needs leadership, it needs leadership that can really sort of bridge a lot of these issues. And so, part of me felt like kind of obligated, like, here's a city resource, this whole cultural center, right. And, many in the community, including myself, were pretty upset that the city appointed somebody into the position as the first manager there. And the person was totally fine and capable of running the facility, right. But it really left out the cultural engagement and what this center could be. And so when I- and again, during the first five years of the Asian American Resource Center, I did work with some staff there, actually, there was one staff member that was a graduate of Asian American Studies at UT. And her and another staff member that also had ethnic studies background, right, and education from college, were really the drivers of trying to advocate for Asian American issues and representation, but these staff members were also at a very lower position. So, they weren't a manager level, right. And so, that is something else that I kind of noticed where it's like, we use younger folks, right with their sort of own analysis and things but not necessarily giving them power to really kind of set the strategic direction.

And so when I started with the Asian American Resource Center, I already knew that many folks just saw this space as a rental facility, because many of our facilities can be rented out. And because it was a brand new center, there was so much work that needed to be done to just get the word out in the community that it existed, right? So I think with any sort of new organization, there's going to be a lot of those growing pains, in setting up the kind of structure. And when I started, I had to do a series of interviews for the position, and even a public forum where I had to basically do a Q&A in front of the community. Yeah, it was intense, the hiring process, it was like five interviews within a week and a half. And part of the reason why, though I think they were so intentional about trying to get somebody and having the community feedback was because the city did listen to people's feedback about the appointment of the first manager, right? And so really needing that community involvement.

Christina Huang 41:11
I'm just sitting here fascinated learning about your story and how you got involved. You talk about this leadership and what advice would you give to students, faculty, administrators, who come to an institution, and like, there are no resources or the resources are really limited? How do they start up building that community and giving out, the things that are needed to sustain either a humanities studies program, or Asian American Resource Center?

Sona Shah 41:40
Yeah, one of the things that I've learned- this is actually what I was going to mention in your previous question. So once I joined the city, and because the City of Austin's equity office was created, there are many colleagues there that I had known from different work in the community. And from what I really learned from their office, because they brought in- I don't know if you've heard of this organization, but it's called the Government Alliance on Race and Ethnicity. And it's an organization that's joint with the Othering and Belonging Institute at Berkeley, and then also Race Forward. And I really like using, they call them GARE, the Government Alliance on Race and Ethnicity, but I really like using GARE's race equity framework and kind of understanding a lot of the ways we organize and the way the framework is listed is like, it's basically like a circular diagram. And at the top, you have visualize, and then you have normalize, organize, and operationalize. And it's like this kind of circle, but it's not that you do them all, like in order, but that all these things are constantly happening. So first, how are we visualizing the society that we want to live in? Right, I think sometimes we completely like, miss that point. Um, because we're so just bogged down with all the kinds of issues, right, but what is it really that we are trying to create here? And that was some of the deep work that I felt like was needed at the Asian American Resource Center, right? Is what exactly should this space be? For us as Asian Americans, right? The previous leadership and management, because there's so much fear sometimes about being explicit about race, we tend to move towards thinking about equality, not equity. Right? So, it's more about like, oh, well, we need to make sure that everybody has this stuff. Well, there's no way everyone can have these things. We don't have the resources and things have not been equitable. Right? So really, kind of shifting that thinking around how do we visualize stuff, then normalizing conversations around race? This has been the most important thing. And even when you think about Asian American Studies and stuff, how do we normalize our identities in relation to a racialized America? And what does that mean for other communities of color? Based on the ways that we have been stereotyped, right? And because all of those- you probably learned from your Asian American Studies courses, all of these themes are so interconnected. So, you have visualize, normalize, and then organizing is a big piece and those are really the ways that you're gonna get your comrades and folks to like do this stuff with you, right?

Figuring out what are the groups that you need to do, which are the faculty members that you need to talk to? Who's already organizing some things around some of this stuff that, we really need to make sure that we are aligned with and messaging with, right? So I think that's a really important aspect. And then you have the operationalizing piece. So what tool are you developing to really know your analysis, right? In the city of Austin, we talk a lot about language access, right. And when I was at the Asian American Resource Center, one of the big things that I shifted in our operations, was spending money on interpreters and translators, and not relying on just like our staff, especially second generation staff, kind of like myself, right? We're born and raised here, and you're trying to get them to be interpreters for our seniors, like, that's not fair. It's like, we need to actually spend money to do interpretation, right? [laughter] And so that was a big shift that I had made and allocated a lot of money in our budget to provide that because there is a large Senior Program at the Asian American Resource Center, and the language issues, right, that kept kind of coming up around that needed to be addressed with actual institutional resources, not people either volunteering their time, or getting paid a low wage as a temporary employee just to be an interpreter. Does that help explain? But I think that framework has been really helpful for me as a way to kind of see these processes, especially because I had worked at UT for seven years in a higher ed institution. And now coming into city government, it's like, I can still see how we need to use this type of framework of visualize normalize, organize, and operationalize and how it needs to all constantly kind of be happening.

Christina Huang 47:32
Yeah, thank you for the framework. I really appreciate it. And I think I'm gonna look into it and see different ways I can implement it. I love structures, and I love some sort of way to organize your organization. And yeah, that was very helpful. Thank you so much for your answer. I was wondering also, while I'm listening to you, you're doing so much incredible work. You're doing programming, you're figuring out like the framework of things or starting to educate your staff and faculty and students. Like how do you set boundaries and look after your own mental health and avoid burnout, while also keeping the ball rolling? And continuing the work that you do?

Sona Shah 48:16
That's another excellent question. And one I think I'm still working on, [laughter] um, you know, it's interesting. I share this a lot, when I worked at UT, I advised a lot of Asian American students, and many of them I connected so much to because I saw my younger self in them, and my experience at UT was so different, right, then the experience that I think many of my students got, and I would advise students around mental health resources, going to therapy, talking, really thinking about your community like to kind of hold you up, I think, in many ways. In the US and honestly in many very capitalistic societies, right, we can be very individual-focused on kind of our own growth and development and climbing the ladder in some ways, right. And so I think, for me, part of my own boundaries and setting boundaries and kind of learning more about my boundaries, I guess, and where energy has been draining is really kind of to practice a lot of mindfulness.

I will say, so I'm 45 years old right now. And I remember at 39 kind of feeling like I was going through some sort of midlife crisis. And I will be very open with folks. But that's actually when I started going to therapy. And it's interesting because it's like in many ways, I felt like a therapist to a lot of [laughter] my students and other friends because I have a natural sort of- I also used to be a peer advocate when I worked with Saheli way back in the day, which was like a domestic violence and sexual- so I'm familiar, right with kind of like case management and things like that. But I recognized where I was giving all this advice, but I was never taking it myself. And I think it wasn't until finding like a really good therapist, and one that really helped me kind of start seeing my own internalized inferiority of things, in the ways that white supremacy operates in this country, and the internalized racial inferiority that we as people of color can feel in this country. But having more of that sort of dialogue and understanding in the ways that really impacted me, being, an Indian American girl in Houston, Texas, where there's like nobody else like me around. Right. And I still find that sometimes today, in a lot of spaces, I am sometimes the only Asian American. Right. And so, I just have to remind myself, and I think, again, it takes a lot of like, I'm getting better about my boundaries, and now recognizing more, and maybe this kind of comes with age, like when you're in your 40s. But basically, just like not caring anymore of what other people think. Right? And really kind of having more clarity, about my own sort of vision of the world that I want to see, that we live in, right, and how I'm going to help contribute to that in the ways that I know how to, but that don't deplete me. And so, I journal, I talk a lot with close colleagues and friends that I feel like are kind of in this work, and trying to make sense of it too. But just to recognize that I'm not alone in this, I think it's really important.

Christina Huang 52:46
Yeah, thank you so much. I think I love hearing about the different methods that you're trying to make sure you're taking care of yourself. Therapy's very powerful, journaling. All good ways. And I love hearing that, because sometimes I get answers. Like, I don't know. ‘Cause I feel like as Asian Americans, especially as women, too, that we take on a lot of this community work, and we don't look after ourselves.

Sona Shah 53:13
Well, it's a lot of emotional and communication labor, and recognizing, I think in many ways, this can be very gendered in the workplace and in organizing spaces. And so, I think I'm trying to be more mindful of how that kind of shows up. Another thing that I will kind of put here too, is something that I'm looking into is really about somatics in the ways that- and especially doing race equity work, I think there needs to be a bridge and understanding how our body experiences all these things. I think we can talk a lot and say a lot, but it's really our bodies that are holding in so much of this tension, stress and all these things. And so, one of the things for me I know that I am going to be centering, and again because of my age, right? And I also have an almost nine year old so I think a lot about his future and me being there for it. But I think a lot about somatics and in what ways am I being physical with my body, so that I'm not in my thinking head all the time. And I think when you're a student, when you work in a university, right, when you're in these spaces, you can constantly be thinking about very complex things. And so, we need to remember that we need to have sort of a break from all that. And I think that's something that I'm trying to do. My partner and my son tried to remind me because I tend to like read a lot and just do a lot of different things. But how do we make sure that we're incorporating those physical acts of joy too, into our work? So this doesn't feel so weighted and heavy all the time.

Christina Huang 55:27
Yeah, I love the idea of- the ways of connecting your body and your brain until one. Because I feel like there- I understand that completely sometimes you're always constantly overthinking. And there are just some times you just take a breath and like, step back, and yeah. I wanted to ask you, so zooming out from all the work that you've been doing, what does it mean for you to be part of Asian American studies, but also this Asian American movement as a whole?

Sona Shah 56:01
It's very empowering. Asian American identity is a social construct, right? It's a political construct. It's all these sorts of things. But I love the fact that we can construct what that means. And again, with the organizing around it, working within Asian American communities, and even around Asian American Studies, has honestly brought so much healing for myself in, again, kind of my own internalized racial inferiority in microaggressions, and things that I experienced, growing up and continue to today, right. And so, for me, I think it is very empowering to see and to connect with individuals. Like, again, our Asian American community is so vast, so diverse, and all of these things. And I think sometimes if we just focus on the family relations, or some of those things, we're just like, no one gets it, right. But once you start connecting with individuals that have sort of a political consciousness and social awareness around how we have been used in history, how we have been used in political arguments, right around these things. There's a lot of collectiveness and empowerment that I think needs to go hand in hand in order to respond to those things. And so for me, I just feel very privileged and lucky that I listened to myself and listened to the things that I knew that I kind of needed early on, so that I could be so well connected to the Asian American community here in Austin, but also just Austin as a whole. Honestly, like, even with SAADA and seeing the ways that SAADA has grown in its organization, the organization that I used to work here in Austin – Saheli - back in the day. It's now called Asian Family Support Services of Austin, and I've seen that organization completely grow and change. And so, to see, I guess, to be able to witness a lot of this has been very empowering, because it seems we're moving in the right direction, even when I think the political landscape and stuff shows otherwise. I see the work that people are still trying to do and still trying to engage in and still trying to center.

Christina Huang 59:09
Yeah, that was such a beautiful answer. I'm so glad that I got to interview you and get your voice into the archives and have your story and your work be remembered for generations to come. Yeah. Thank you so much for your awesome responses. I am so grateful to have the opportunity to speak with you today.

Sona Shah 59:34
Yeah, well, thank you for the opportunity. I'm just happy that students are still interested in this work, and that I think that more and more Asian American youth kind of find their voices right in this sort of landscape because it isn't easy for us.