Zainab Syeda

Zainab Syeda is a Community Outreach and Volunteer Coordinator for South Asian Network, a local nonprofit that promotes awareness, engagement and advocacy among South Asian community members in Southern California. In this interview she discusses growing up in Orange County, and how COVID-19’s impact on the South Asian community.

KEYWORDS: South Asians, Sikh, Pakistan, language, COVID-19, Qur’an, Black Lives Matter,

Interview Transcript

My parents actually are immigrants from Pakistan. And they got married in 1988, and then moved to Southern California. The entirety of my primary and secondary education has been with the Latinx and Vietnamese community. For the most part, I think those are the most concentrated of the communities that I grew up with. And I remember really struggling with that, with being the only Pakistani girl and no one getting me, and also wanting to be Latina because I just thought that was the norm and that was a cool thing to be, right. And now looking back at it, I think—no, not I think, I know—that was the best thing that could have happened to us. And  I am so grateful that my parents decided to raise us in this city.

[Path to Community Outreach]

And since then I think I started just carrying that idea of carrying my culture and carrying my history and my family’s history with me. And also just wanting to cater to the needs of the community that I come from. I remember also growing up, my mom had limited English [proficiency,] and so she can speak English fairly well now. But I know a lot of folks who didn’t, it wasn’t the case for them. And so having someone speak in your language and just that connection of seeing someone who understands your lived reality, really was what kind of brought me into this work. In terms of what SAN [South Asian Network] does, and the South Asian population—like I mentioned, I think, over the years, I’ve seen it transform so much. So growing up, I didn’t see as many South Asians as I see now. And actually, just two blocks down they opened up a gurdwara, or Sikh temple. There’s a lot more South Asians, like Punjabi Sikhs, who are either living in the neighborhood or they’re coming and visiting the neighborhood more often.

[Impact of COVID on the Community]

Our first response was just checking in and making sure that people knew they weren’t alone. And having materials in language created so that people know that we’re still here for them. And then kind of taking it to the next step is we started providing families with groceries, we started providing families with cash assistance, we had some very generous donors that allow us to provide direct cash assistance and rent and funding for utilities and things like that. 

[Final Thoughts on the Community]

Again, I think that the, not the pandemic, but I think what’s been happening with the Black Lives Matter movement recently has been reflective of the power of people coming together. And of people learning from each other and taking an opportunity to take a backseat and really soak it in. There’s this verse in the Qur’an that says that [something] like, “God says that we created you from different tribes not so that you fight with each other, but so that you learn from one another.” And I think this has been like so reflective of that, because people are open to the opportunity to learn from each other and to build together. And I keep relearning this lesson, that we’re all in this together. We really are. We need to care for each other. Diversity is so beautiful and there’s so much value in it. And there’s so much to be learned from people who don’t necessarily speak your language who don’t look like you.

Interviewers: Nikki Oei and Ernest Olivar

Related Resources