Through audio diaries and interviews, former SSRC fellow Sienna Craig and her collaborators chronicled the experiences of Himalayan New Yorkers during the pandemic. Many Himalayans live in central Queens, the epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak in New York City. This essay shares the many challenges faced by the Himalayan community, not least their struggle to be seen as a “community” with its own needs. But it also emphasizes the responses of Himalayans in terms of collective self-help and making claims on city government for attention and essential services.
Daniel Kaufman
Daniel Kaufman received his PhD in linguistics from Cornell in 2010 and cofounded the Endangered Language Alliance (ELA) in the same year with the goal of bringing together linguists with immigrant and Indigenous communities in New York City who speak endangered languages. He has specialized in the languages of the Austronesian family for the last two and a half decades and joined Queens College in 2015 as assistant professor. Here, he also heads the Language Documentation Lab. Kaufman also coedits Oceanic Linguistics, a journal devoted to the study of the Indigenous languages of the Oceanic region and Island Southeast Asia.