South Asian immigration stories take center stage

Harini Aiyer works as a salesperson during the day. At night, she's an aspiring stand up comic. This week, she’s preparing to walk out onto a new stage, and it has her feeling a certain combination of excitement and worry.

“I'm not shy about going up and speaking in front of strangers,” Aiyer said. It’s the subject of her story that has her concerned in the leadup to “Voices,” a night of storytelling from South Asian immigrants.

Aiyer is an Indian American who has spent the last 24 years in the United States. She lives an open life in Massachusetts, but she’s kept part of herself hidden from social media and from many of the people from her life in India.

“I identify as bisexual, and I am of a generation that grew up in India with no exposure to anything other than heteronormativity,” she said. “The story that I'm going to tell is really going to be about that experience of growing up in a heteronormative culture, knowing that I am different, and how I came to accept myself and then have others accept me.”

This will be news to many people from her past in India, outside of a handful of close family members. “It took me a long time to come out to my parents, but by request of my mom I have not posted it directly on social media,” she said, knowing that she may soon upset her family. “It will be the big coming out.”

Aiyer will share her story on Saturday and Sunday at the Academy of Creative Arts in Burlington alongside six other storytellers of South Asian background. A story from a Sri Lankan American author and psychoanalyst will examine implicit bias. Another story looks at parenting culture in India versus America and how this one storyteller still ended up taking on traits of her mother. Storyteller Phuni Kim Meston tells her own story as an immigrant raised in a Tibetan herding family that took asylum in South India and was later trafficked into the United States.

Each of these storytellers pitched their story to “Voices” and has spent dozens of hours crafting their narrative. They worked with the team from Off Kendrik, a Bengali theater group based in the greater Boston area which is presenting the event.

“When I first listen to a teller giving me a pitch on that first call, I spend up to three hours listening to a teller,” said Chandreyee Lahiri, coach and curator for “Voices.” “Even though they know that the story is going to be seven minutes long, I do a lot of really careful listening to try and see what's on their mind.”

It’s important to Lahiri that the stories are told, as she phrases, on “the tellers’ terms.” She’ll ask questions to help draw out the essential points in a story and help with things like word choice as English is not the first language of many of the performers. “It ends up being kind of a transformative experience for some tellers,” said Lahiri. “They end up realizing things about themselves, or maybe they glean some insights into their experience, which then  transforms the end result into something that's even more meaningful for them, and thereby it’s meaningful to the show.”

Lahiri began as a teller at the first “Voices” event in 2016. Off Kendrik artistic director Sankha Bhowmick had seen her cast in a 2014 performance of “Listen to Your Mother” in Boston.

Bhowmick is a professor in Dartmouth College’s mechanical engineering department. Storytelling shows such as The Moth Radio Hour and Storycorps inspired him to create “Voices.” He wanted to create a venue to showcase the diverse experiences within the South Asian community that are often underrepresented in the media.  “I wanted this to be a forum,” he said. “A platform for us to express ourselves, tell different types of stories, tell a lot about some of the challenges we face.”

Years ago, Bhowmick was in Boston for postdoctoral research at Mass General Hospital when his father unexpectedly passed away in India. He began to experience a period of solitude in his life that he now cites as another inspiration for wanting to build community through holding these storytelling events. “We try to put people together [with] very diverse perspectives, diverse backgrounds, and try to create something that generates empathy or that can create a more empathetic society.”

Afroz Khan is a 2022 “Voices” storyteller who currently serves as city councilor in Newburyport. “It's so critical right now,” she said. “There's always this black box of not being exposed to other cultures, other ethnicities, other religions. ‘Voices’ provides an opportunity for at least one segment of an experience or a population.”

Aiyer informed her parents over the weekend of her plan to no longer hide her full self. “If you don't say it out loud, then people don't know that you exist, and if they don't know you exist, then it's like there is no identity, right?” she said. “So therefore it is important to stand up and be counted.”

"Voices" takes place March 2 and March 3 at the Academy of Creative Arts in Burlington.

Correction: An earlier version misstated the name of Burlington's Academy of Creative Arts. We regret the error.