When I walked out of the Jackson Heights subway station in Queens, I could have been walking out of a metro station in Delhi or Mumbai or Chennai. Everyone around me was Brown, storefronts all around selling samosas, chaat and chai. It felt like home. It made me realize how empowering it is to be surrounded by people who look like you, something so many white people take for granted. Two of these photos show the predominantly South Asian area in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York; two of these photos are from the streets of Kochi, a city in my dad’s home state of Kerala in South India. To me, it is comforting how immigrant communities are able to recreate their homes wherever they settle. In the moment, sipping my chai and listening to all of the different languages being spoken around me, I was grateful to be there.
