Interview with Dr. Roksana Badruddoja: Reframing Narratives and Understanding the Inextricable Link Between Race and Gender
I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Roksana Badruddoja, a Professor of Sociology, Women and Gender studies, and Critical Race and Ethnicity studies at Manhattan College. Hir is also the chair of the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the college. Hir is currently researching the psychotherapeutic framework of understanding trauma, and the intersectionalities between race, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity.
Hir bio reads:
“Dr. Roksana Badruddoja is a feminine/masculine WOC; an interfaith and cross-cultural womanist; a critical race theorist and decolonial gender scholar; an urban shamanic and akashic practitioner; a family constellation and inner child trauma therapist, a tenured professor of sociology, women and gender studies, and critical race and ethnicity studies at a PWI; and a queer mother to four fierce energy beings. Hir teaches courses on womanist and decolonial research methods, WOC in the U.S., race and resistance, codes of gender, sex and violence, social inequalities, and decolonial feminist activism. Dr. Badruddoja focuses on contemporary social inequalities and the voices of marginalized “Others” as hir sites of thinking to address social problems in the modern world; explores the meanings of spaces and places in the context of power, privilege and abuse and solidarity, resistance and mobilization; and, thinks deeply, every day, about how vulnerability is imagined, the practices of solidarity and what it means to be of service to the marginalized. Hir is the author of National (un)Belonging: Bengali American Women on Imagining and Contesting Culture and Identity (Brill/Haymarket, In Press), the editor of “New Maternalisms”: Tales of Motherwork (Dislodging the Unthinkable) (Demeter, 2016), and a contributor of Good Girls Marry Doctors: South Asian Daughters in Obedience and Rebellion (Aunt Lute, 2016). (bio and photo from Manhattan College Directory)”
Could you talk about how you personally got involved in the fields of sociology, women and gender studies, critical race and theory studies? What interests you about these topics and/or their intersectionalities?
I don’t argue that I got involved in the field. I argue that the field got involved with me. Studying sociology, women and gender studies critical race and ethnicity was not something that I had ever thought of. There’s a lot of documentation and literature about the South Asian immigrant experience and falling into this myth of the model minority. Growing up in the Midwest, my future was chartered by my parents. I was either going to be a doctor, an engineer, or a lawyer — the typical myth of the model minority. That’s what I was set out for and then in college, I thought that it just didn’t feel right. It didn’t fit. I really didn’t know what to do. So. I went and got a degree in communications and finance. I got an MBA and I started working in the financial world. About one year into it, I woke up one day and I quit my job. I was lucky enough to have the financial resources to quit and start volunteering at a domestic violence shelter. I wanted to work at the shelter and particularly, work with immigrant and brown women to navigate the legal system and the immigration process. So, I started working as a domestic violence advocate. From there, that’s where I started really exploring how race, gender, and violence are government policies, and how they impact not just women but particularly women of color. immigrant women of color. On the surface level, there was no rhyme or reason for me to go into this, but there was this calling from inside. That is ineffable, so I don’t have language to describe it. It found me no matter what. I was not on the path to get a Ph.D. in Sociology and focus on social inequalities and oppression. That was not my path. There was some type of spiritual course correction if that makes sense.
How do you see your work as a family trauma liberation therapist working in conjunction with your research as a professor at Manhattan College?
There’s a deep connection between my role as a professor and as a chair at Manhattan College for the Department of Sociology and Criminology and my private trauma liberation practice. The reason I don’t view them as separate is because my orientation is constantly in equity, inclusion, and accessibility. That’s my compass even in my private life; even in my sleep, I’m armed with a multiracial interfaith cross-cultural decolonial feminist agenda. What that means for me, let me translate it for your audience, is that I think — every day even when I’m sleeping — about how vulnerability is imagined. I think every day about the practices of solidarity and what it means to be of service to those who are the most disenfranchised, in our culture, in our community, and in our nation. My approach to teaching research, advocacy, and administration is to unravel the structured vulnerabilities that deprive disenfranchised folks of safety. So, my work focuses on those of us who feel unsafe. I operate at all times from the premise that accessibility, equity, and inclusion are non-negotiable. I will not compromise this.
What were your motivations for starting to write “National (un)Belonging: Bengali American Women on Imagining and Contesting Culture and Identity”?
The quick answer is I wanted to learn about myself. My more thoughtful answer relates to the experiences we have with the intersections of race, class, gender, nationality, citizenship, and religion. I think about these intersections deeply and how our social location and life experiences are informed by those intersections. I was born and raised in the Midwest in the 70s and 80s. I really came of age and started doing this social justice work and advocacy in the 90s. I just really sat with the microaggressions that I experienced growing up, both racial and gender microaggressions. As we know, you cannot separate race and gender because they intersect in really intimate ways. My experiences of microaggressions are not simply because I’m a woman, and it’s not simply because I’m brown. My experiences of microaggression are because I’m a brown Muslim woman who identifies as queer. So, the way that I experienced oppression in the United States was informed by a multitude of forces. I had a deep desire to understand what was happening to me. This isn’t a narcissistic endeavor; understanding myself also means that I need to understand the communities in which I am embedded because my experiences are not happening in a silo. They’re not happening in isolation. My experiences are informed. Even though I’m not an immigrant, my experiences are informed by immigration policies. My experiences are informed by growing up in the 80s in the Midwest. Looking at all these intersections, I really wanted to think about how race, class, gender, and sexuality impact a person’s sense of belonging, and a community sense of belonging in the larger national landscape.
Since your book includes the narratives of 25 women from the US, I wanted to ask you how you encounter these narratives.
The data collection process included snowball sampling. What that means is I first started out with community members and South Asian American-based organizations. For example, I reached out to a performing arts troupe that I used to be a part of back in California. I was connecting to my networks that were informed by the South Asian diasporic experience. From there, I asked for connections to other people, because part of this snowball sampling method is not working with people that I directly know. I asked people whom I knew if they knew someone who would be interested in being part of the research. Of course, the research and finding respondents went through an IRB approval process. From there, people would contact me if they were interested, and we would connect. The research wasn’t an ethnography in its fullest sense; I guess I would call them “extended interviews” rather than an ethnographic process. I would spend a day in the life of the women who wanted to be a part of the research. I spent eight to nine hours with each respondent. Once in a while, we would split up the extended interview into two days. I definitely had an interview guide; I had questions that I wanted to ask that would really address how race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, citizenship, and nationalism intersect and inform the lives of these women who were part of the research project. One of the things that I really wanted to explore is how our lives compare to the lives of normative Americans. I really looked at how white heteronormativity functions in our culture and how that impacts the way we experience ourselves as brown, Bengali women.
Is it through first-hand discussions/experiences? Is there any specific narrative that you can share that was particularly striking to you?
Yes, I do have a favorite. One time, I was with one of my respondents at my mom’s house. My mom had left us food; we were eating mutter paneer and naan. We were just talking, and then suddenly, my respondent looked up at me, and said “You know, I represent everything that eligible voters hate.” I was stunned. I think a paneer even fell out of my mouth! My respondent said “I’m queer, brown, and Muslim. What else is there?” I just looked at them, because for the first time, someone gave me language that I could use to talk about myself. I just didn’t know how to talk about myself before this. I was like yes, I’m queer, brown, and Muslim. What else is there? That was a huge watershed moment for me. As a researcher, I found that it’s during the off moments when I’m recording and when we are just eating, that you can find the vertex for books. I didn’t know what I was going to write about before this. But, this was the mic drop moment, when my respondent made this comment. I was like, okay, this is the book. This is it.
How can we go about promoting a culture in which vulnerability is viewed as a resource instead of a weakness for women? In other words, you discuss the importance of this concept in your podcast, and I would love to hear some insight on how we, as a society, can go about changing negative mindsets towards this topic.
I’m going to argue that I have no desire to change negative mindsets. That is not where I want to put my energy because that’s not my audience. My audience represents folks who want to do the work. I no longer want to put my energies in white heteronormative spaces. I’m going to be 50 real soon. I’m tired and burned out, and I get sick often because I have spent my entire life educating white folk. They need to take on the responsibility to educate themselves. Brown academics work in dire circumstances. We are working within the context of institutional-wide apathy. We are also living in a nation where the culture is informed by white apathy. So, as a form of self-care as a form of self-preservation, I no longer want to take on that role, and I don’t take on that role. For me, self-care is about recognizing the parts of me that are vulnerable. It’s about recognizing the parts of me that are hurting and that are raw or exposed, and then, being very deliberate and intentional about whom I’m going to share my vulnerabilities with. My new perspective now is that sharing space with me is a privilege, and you have to earn that privilege. In my 20s and 30s, actually, even in my 40s, my perspective was like “Sure! Come one in. I’m going to share myself with you. I’m going to teach you to do all these wonderful things.” But, now I’m just tired and I’m burned out. And so I feel safe. I feel safest in communities of color. I handpick people that I hang out with, even institutionally and professionally speaking. I think brown black and indigenous folk really need to be careful about whom we’re sharing ourselves with. And the other part of this is — and I’m switching gears just a little bit — those raw, exposed and hurting parts of ourselves. I argue that those are our sources of artistic creation. I argue that those are our sources of miracles.
What are your goals for how you hope to see your research on marginalized women develop, specifically within the next few months or during the summer?
Right now I am working on exploring both the concept and experiences of trauma that BIPOC folks sit in. I do have an agenda and my agenda is to challenge the white western psychotherapeutic framework of understanding trauma. My argument in my latest research is that the medical industrial complex in the United States is designed to hurt BIPOC folk. If you look at the history of the medical-industrial complex in the United States, it’s designed to actually kill us. The system is designed to kill us. I mean, we weren’t supposed to be here. And so, the way that the psychotherapeutic models are designed in the United States is so that they don’t take us seriously. It doesn’t take our grief seriously. We’re made to think we’re crazy. I think there’s a lot of gaslighting that the medical industrial complex engages in when it comes to BIPOC folk. What I’m doing in my research is searching for the meanings of trauma. I’m working to reshift the normative meanings of trauma so that they are supportive and life-affirming to the experience of grief that BIPOC folk sit in. What I’ve come to discover is that my understanding of trauma — my narrative of trauma — is informed by my role as a social scientist. But that doesn’t get me really far. So, what I’m doing now is creating and curating an understanding of trauma that isn’t informed by my rigid training in the social sciences. I’m returning to indigenous epistemologies to develop an understanding of trauma and share that with the larger world.
What advice do you have for those interested in fields similar to your areas of interest? Do you have blogs, podcasts, or summer opportunities that you recommend students explore?
Yeah, for sure. The first thing to do, like you are doing, is to search out BIPOC mentors. I think that’s really important. It’s important for students to work with people whom they can see themselves in. I have a lot of students who say, “I have never seen anyone like you in these spaces.” That’s important to them because academic institutions are designed to support white students. There’s tons of research that shows what happens when students of color have white mentors and the negative psychological impact. The second thing is, when searching out reading materials, search out scholarships by BIPOC — this is really important. None of my students read work from white scholars. All of my students read work from BIPOC scholars and I particularly focus on BIPOC women. So, in other words, my second point is to be intentional and deliberate about who you’re reading.
Also, you asked about blogs and podcasts. This is probably a generational thing, but I don’t do a lot of blogs and podcasts. But, there are so many good ones. Black Girl Dangerous is an amazing blog. I’m sure there are many more, but I can’t name them. I know that there are many podcasts out there that take on a decolonial framework and an intersectional framework. They’re rooted in a social justice imperative to address the historically disenfranchised. While I don’t have titles offhand, those are the things you should be looking for. You should try to root yourself in understanding historical disenfranchisement, and make the connection to how that impacts our lives today.
Is there anything else you wanted to mention?
I’ll end with this. Our stories as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color are important. I’m not arguing for intellectual narcissism. I’m saying that relationships and the way they are managed are important. And, our stories are what give us meaning and purpose. So, I think it is very important for us to tell our stories so that we can underscore and bring to light what vulnerability really looks like vs. white imagination of vulnerability. It’s because of this that my work focuses on girls and women. It’s because of this I argue that women’s emotions are important data points. We are told not to feel, but I argue in my work that our emotions are important gateways to knowledge production about what vulnerability really looks like in this world. I’ll end with that.
