We Do Not Let History Shroud Us: The Body as Curriculum and Its Refractive Possibilities

Abstract

As two South Asians in the diaspora, we situate the significance of the body as a curriculum, where our lived experiences and stories supported us in navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. We engage in the method of life writing to attend to specific narratives that have framed our diasporic identities. Through that engagement, we seek to demonstrate how we struggle with questions about belonging and dislocation, while also finding ways to overcome those challenges and realities in our everyday lives. Gripped by memories formed through phone calls and visits, with miles between us and the place we know as South Asia, we posit that the diasporic body forms a curriculum by way of a Brown(ing) body. We make the case that such a body has always had to refract in all its complexities and nuances—pandemic or not. Accordingly, we then consider how our lived experiences and subjective bodies informed the pedagogical possibilities of navigating the morbid pandemic as it touched the lives of the students we worked with. Our collaborative writing is therefore an offering of hope and sustenance that emerged during a pandemical time of grave uncertainty and profound loss.