Moving Memories: An Archive of Bangladeshi Queer Migrants in the US

Moving Memories showcases oral histories of Bangladeshi queer migrants in the U.S. Queer Archives of the Bengal Delta developed the project in close collaboration with South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA). Moving Memories explores the intersections of migration and queerness, along with the interplay of gender, race, class, religion, ability, sex, and sexuality against the backdrop of post-9/11 America and post-2016 Bangladesh. 

Moving Memories starts from the premise that archiving is colonial business. But archiving is also a site of power struggle to tell our own (his)stories. Categories such as “Bangladeshi” or “Bangladeshi-American” are both intertwined with supremacist racial imaginaries around brown folks, and at the same time these identities can be sources of pride, rebellion, and belonging. This project celebrates those fluidities and ambiguities of queer migrant identities. Our goal was to unite and embrace all queers (who identify on any part of the queer spectrum) with direct and related experiences of migration—whether documented, undocumented, asylees, diaspora, returnees, or others—across the colonized lands and waters that we now called the United States and Bangladesh. All of us involved in co-creating and preserving these narratives are the archive’s custodians, while the queer community has complete ownership over these oral histories. Through these intimate oral histories, Bangladeshi queer migrants in the U.S. offer us a different vantage point to look at the entangled histories of Bangladesh and the U.S., the present political and social moment, and they share their aspirations for a more just future for global LGBTQ+ communities.