Desi Girl Speaking by A.S. Hussain
Author A.S. Hussain writes a rousing call to action guest blog around mental health and poses the question, Are you Ready to Speak Up?
Are You Ready To Speak Up?
by A.S. Hussain
Mental health, today more than ever, is a growing topic with strides being made to break the silence and stigma surrounding it. But for many communities, the same strides aren’t made.
The reality is that when it comes to discussions about mental health, people of color are still not being included or represented. The consequence of these communities not being represented goes beyond the pain of not seeing themselves as main characters in the stories they read and can translate into a raised stigma of mental health as a whole as it becomes a subject that they are unfamiliar with and can even become one they come to fear or judge.
These stories exist, of course they do, but unless we make an effort to highlight and represent these stories, they will continue to go under the radar. Stories about mental health are important but so is the identity of the person facing those challenges. The reason why I wrote Desi Girl Speaking is because growing up, I read stories of my white counterparts who faced mental health struggles, but their experiences never compared to mine. I knew that, fundamentally, our experiences would not match up because of my background.
Opening up about how I was feeling was hard enough as a hormonal teenager, but it felt even more difficult being South Asian. And not seeing myself or my experience represented in between the pages I read? Even more difficult. It made me feel like South Asian people couldn’t possibly be depressed because I never read about them, nor did I ever hear about them.
For a lot of people reading is a way for them to escape the world, for me it’s a way to connect with it. To learn about experiences other than my own. And I know that if I had read Tweety’s story when I was a teenager that I would have found some comfort in her pain. I would have felt seen. I would have felt like I wasn’t such an outsider for feeling the way I did.
A conversation needs to be had both within the community and between the wider public. In minority cultures, stigma around mental health needs to be reduced, and the first step is to talk openly about it. A frank and open discussion about mental health, especially among minorities, is brave and can encourage others to do the same. In addition to helping the communities themselves, the world must grow and understand that no one size fits all.
Tweety’s journey is one that many young people may experience at one point in their lives and it’s important to recognize that if you are not South Asian, her experience may look different to yours. Tweety may not be able to access the same resources as her white counterparts due to socioeconomic, religious, and cultural factors and it is important to acknowledge this rather than be under the assumption that Tweety is resistant to getting the help she needs and deserves.
Hopefully, Desi Girl Speaking will start a conversation about how to approach different communities and their struggles, as well as decrease the stigma associated with psychiatry among South Asians. Nothing will change unless we talk about it.
What I am asking you now is: are you ready to speak up?
Desi Girl Speaking by A.S.Hussain is out Thursday 9th May 2024, published by Hot Keys Books and is available at all good bookshops.
