Many Lives | Resource Bank

Dhan Gopal Mukerji

Dhan Gopal Mukerji was the first South Asian immigrant to achieve literary success in the United States, as a Newbery medal awardee and author over two dozen works across genres including fiction, poetry, and social commentary. A key figure in introducing Indian culture to American audiences, he is best known for Caste and Outcast (1923), which combines memoir and cultural critique, depicting his life as a Bengali Brahmin in India and his later experiences as a student, worker, and activist in California.

+ Caste and Outcast, with a forward by Stanford professor Gordon H. Chang

Ali “Tinku“ Ishtiaq

Ishtiaq immigrated to the U.S. from Bangladesh in the early 1980s to study computer science at MIT and later became an engineer in Silicon Valley. In 1986, after responding to a poster asking, “Are you South Asian and gay?”, he met two other South Asian engineers, and together they founded Trikone, the world’s first South Asian LGBTQ organization.

+ Learn more about Trikone’s work here

+ Another amazing local organization is Parivar — the first South Asian Trans-led Organization to be fiscally supported by the state of California and the City and County of San Francisco

Sandhya Jha

Sandhya Jha (they/them) is an anti-oppression consultant and PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice, focusing on contemporary progressive and conservative social movements. Founder and former executive director of the Oakland Peace Center, they are a multifaith community organizer and ordained pastor with master’s degrees in divinity and public policy. As a SAADA Archival Creators Fellow, Sandhya documented the stories of South Asian workers involved in labor organizing in the U.S. They now lead a research team at UPenn’s SAFE Lab studying how digital belonging supports social movement mobilization.