When Neema Avashia tells people where she’s from, their response is nearly always disbelief. “There are Indian people in West Virginia?” A queer Asian American teacher and writer, Avashia fits few Appalachian stereotypes. But the lessons she learned in childhood — about race and class, gender, and sexuality — continue to inform how she moves through the world today: how she loves, how she teaches, how she advocates, and how she struggles.
