Dipti Ghosh

Themes — Activism, Community, Familial Relationships, South Asian Experience

Dipti Ghosh moved to the United States from India in 1971 when she was 17 years old.She lived in Michigan until moving to San Francisco in 1993. While in Michigan, Dipti was determined to find another South Asian queer person. Thirteen years after her arrival in the US, her sister finally connected her with a queer South Asian woman, whom she immediately flew to Hawaii to meet. Dipti’s new friend eventually convinced her to move to the Bay Area in 1993, where she found community through the Asian-Pacific Islander Lesbian Bisexual Network (APILBN) and later got involved with Trikone, a South Asian LGBTQ non-profit.

Dipti grew up with liberal parents, so when she came out at the age of 24, her parents accepted and supported her. This positive experience of her coming out turned out to be very important in her life of activism and in her community. Many of her queer South Asian friends did not share similar experiences. Dipti took on the role of supportive parent for community members without one, and mentored them in their process of coming out, even talking to their parents. Dipti especially thanks her father,a former wing commander in the Indian Air Force, for encouraging her to be who she is, to say what she thinks, and to do what she wants because it let her “move forward.” Today, Dipti is happy with her partner Meggie of 20 years. Her father’s social justice values gave her the courage to love and the desire to make change for her community and future generations.

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Narrator: Dipti Ghosh
Date recorded: February 28th, 2015
Duration: 35m

And when I came out, I was about twenty four when I came out, and I did not know another South Asian queer person. I knew one other Asian American queer person, but no South Asians. And so from like about ‘81, from 1980 on, I was on the search. I was like, “I can’t be the only one. I’ve got to find these people. There’s gotta be more than me.” And I had sort of given my phone number, liberally, to friends, and said, if you ever meet a South Asian queer person, please give them my phone number, I just want to talk to them.