I’ve always believed in poetry as a form of activism, where the role of the poet goes beyond the realm of personal experience, where the poet is a documenter and interlocutor of the times. As poet and activist Audre Lorde says, “Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence.” In the same spirit as poets and activists Adrienne Rich, June Jordan, and Audre Lorde, I feel that the act of women writing poetry is a radical one. I also believe that poetry — especially in the context of gender, race and cultural identity — is one of witness, documenting what is said in the margins, or what might be hidden, waiting to be unearthed. Such poetry often acts as a catalyst for raising awareness and becomes a bridge between the present and past. This is probably why I found myself so drawn to historical persona poetry, where stories of the past are explored poetically in the voice of historical figures. Works like Olio by Tyehimba Jess and Anarcha Speaks: A History in Poems by Dominique Christina dazzled me in their ability to give voice to people whose extraordinary stories had never been heard. 

In 2017, I was researching South Asian history, particularly about the first Indian woman to have come to the United States. When we think of South Asian American history in context of India, we’re given the narrative of engineers and doctors that immigrated to the United States in the 1960s and 70s or of Sikh farmers from Punjab that settled in central California in the late 1800s/early 1900s. But I knew there was more. This inadvertently led me to a sepia-tinted photograph of three female medical students from India, Japan and Syria in their native dress, who all converged in Philadelphia in 1885 and I was blown away by what I found. While this photograph echoed exoticism, orientalism and the West’s fetishization of the East, I was drawn to the elegant Indian woman seated in a saree, her Mona Lisa-like glance following me, her lips curled up in a half-smile. Her image radiated such fierce determination that I had to know more. Who was Anandi Gopal Joshee and how did she become India’s first female medical doctor? How did she make her way from India to Philadelphia all alone in the 19th century, breaking from tradition and crossing black waters considered taboo? I was shocked to discover that many of her experiences echoed my own, even though we were separated by more than a century and it was through poetry that I found myself exploring our shared connection of finding one’s own voice and belonging to more than one place. Until very recently, Anandibai’s story has been told through the lens of her husband being her saviour and inspiration. By telling Anandibai’s story through poems in her own voice, my hope is to not only restore Anandibai’s agency and give her story back to her, but to also highlight her sharp intellect, fierce determination, and empathy.