Reminiscent of a classic Bollywood film, Deepa Mehta’s Fire begins in a field of mustard flowers. But this movie is not the traditional feel-good Hindi film — no, Fire puts forth one of the best well-kept secrets of contemporary Indian love — sexual orientation. Fire primarily concerns itself with domestic spaces, which are conventionally occupied by women.

Code-Switched, a new show by, for, and about young South Asians just released its pilot episode. Starring Sonal Aggarwal, Sabeen Sadiq, Saurabh Pande, Vikram Pandya, and Stephen George as a bunch of young South Asians dealing with work, family, and love in Chicago. Kajal spoke with show creator Karan Sunil about representation, brown folks in media, and making the webseries he wanted to watch.

Syed Ahmed Jamal of Lawrence, Kansas, was arrested by ICE on January 24th from his front yard while he was trying to drop his daughter off at school.

Marvia Malik, a 21 year old journalism graduate and model, has just been hired as Pakistan’s first transgender news anchor. Malik was hired by the station Kohenoor TV. She made news earlier this month as the first transgender model on the runway at the Pakistan Fashion Design Council. Overwhelmed by the love and support she received as a model, she decided to venture into the media industry.

For most of my life, I saw myself akin to the characters in Disney’s Aladdin. I would dress up as Jasmine for primary school dress-up days, and even until college thought of my own culture reflected in the imagery and cultural symbolism of Aladdin. As people of color, our ethnicities and racial identities are given little room, so we are often willing to settle for infantilizing, stereotypical depictions of ourselves onscreen.

Khizr Khan, the father of an American soldier who died in Iraq, delivered a speech about American democracy on Thursday at the Democratic National Convention. Hillary Clinton introduced Khizr Khan as an immigrant who came from the United Arab Emirates with his family, including his then 2-year-old son Humayun Khan, who would later serve in Iraq.

Last Friday, DarkMatter, trans South Asian spoken word duo, performed at Stanford, where both Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramaniam obtained their undergraduate educations. They have been active in raising consciousness about issues related to race, queerness, trans identities and violence in (and by) the United States, especially those issues pertaining to the South Asian diaspora.

Last week, events concerning the LGBT community flooded the news, from Pride weekend to the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage. This news was celebrated by a large mass of people, LGBT-identifying and their allies. During the week before Pride, I visited Facebook’s premises with a friend.

And yet, here we are. While the video’s framework was basically just white people getting off on Holi, it received mixed responses. Some celebrated the depiction of India in Western pop culture at all, and some were more frustrated that a video about India had very little to do with actual Indians.

Like many of my peers, I receive most of my news and entertainment from the Internet. And, although I hate to admit it, BuzzFeed became a huge component of my weekly (ok, daily) internet binge, particularly because it was the first mainstream “news” source that matched many of the values I considered imperative.

At the turn of the 20th century, a huge influx of South Asians had immigrated to Eastern Africa, increasing the population of their presence almost tenfold. Sometime in that time period, a Gujurati man with the last name Ladha, and one with the last name Lalji, were sent to East Africa on ships — perhaps the same one.

The third season of famed TV show Orange is the New Black just came out on Netflix, and the internet was set ablaze by one name: Ruby Rose. The attractiveness of the actor was a hot topic for a few days, causing her name to become a trending tag on Facebook. Most of the attention the show has received has been for the white actors and characters, i.e.