Our Stories: An Introduction to South Asian America is an anthology produced by SAADA, exploring the history of South Asian America, spanning from the 1780s through the present day.

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Mallick founded SAADA in 2008, in part to address an overlooked community of South Asian Americans whose stories were not preserved. “I’ve always felt personally impacted not seeing myself reflected in the American story despite being born and brought up in this country. It made me feel disconnected from the country that I call my own.”

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As SAADA is a community-based archive, many of the artifacts collected and stewarded by its staff, pictured here, are personal, coming from people’s homes and private collections.

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“For SAADA’s initial decade, I was the sole staff member for the organization,” Mallick says.
SAADA’s offices, located in Philadelphia, now provides space to seven staff, including Mallick.

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Mallick and a staff of six, including Yousef Khan, program coordinator, support the preservation and cataloguing of more than 5,200 artifacts in what is the largest publicly accessible archive of its kind.

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SAADA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to sharing and preserving the stories of South Asian American communities across the United States. 

Building Financial Resilience in the Digital Humanities

Samip Mallick, executive director of SAADA with colleagues.

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Sharing Personal Stories from South Asian Communities 

Artists as Catalysts

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Beyond Incarceration

A side profile of a Black poet who is wearing glasses and a hat with a feather hat pin.

Borderlands Cultures

In portrait orientation, an aerial view of a major highway running parallel to a large border wall set on a hilly landscape

Civic Engagement

A man in a brown jacket stands in front of blue bulletin board that is covered with papers and advertisements  

Evolving Higher Education

A vertical image of an Indigenous person who is sitting on a chair in front of a backdrop.

Expanding Public Knowledge

An interior room filled with audio and video equipment 

Monuments and Memory

A multicolored painted totem pole set in front of a foggy forest landscape

Multivocality

Five people stand together in a group photo. They are laughing and smiling.

Power of the Word

Five colorful neon signs hang on the wall with messages that include, "Freedom cannot wait," "Brown owned," and "America is for Dreamers."

Public Places‚ Public Stories

A group of Indigenous Maskoke people stand and sit in the wooden frame of a structure in a woods

Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora

In a vertical image, a black leather vest is adorned with colorful pins across the front of it. Embroidery on the vest reads: "Felícitas "La Prieta" Méndez" 

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