Writing Our Own Narrative: A Bengali Woman's Response to "Women of Banglatown"

Over the last year and half, I have had numerous conversations with Bangladeshi women from Detroit and Hamtramck about the harm we’ve experienced in witnessing the rise of Women of Banglatown (WOB). I do not use the word “harm” lightly or as an incendiary device: It is harm when the existence and practices of an organization has people visibly upset, at times sobbing and feeling helpless.

WOB seems to have stemmed from one woman’s, Ali Lapetina’s, desire to “rescue” the women of the community. Like many other saviors before her, Lapetina’s “discovery” of the community and its people are exoticizing and othering. In an interview with PBS, she describes how she learned of the community:

“I noticed two women collecting sticks in the alleyway and I kind of followed them and I didn’t know where they were from. Somehow through conversation, you know, a few words that we both understood, they told me that they were from Bangladesh. Through that experience of them planting their garden, I became familiar with one family and started following them that summer that I was in the neighborhood. Initially, when I had met the women I had my camera with me so instinctually I just started shooting them not thinking about what the final outcome was or what was going to happen with the photographs.” 

My initial reaction to these actions was to be horrified. Imagine noticing people unfamiliar to you, then feeling so entitled that you follow and photograph them “instinctually.” If we were to flip the script and I, a brown woman, saw white women carrying sticks in an alleyway and followed them to their backyard garden and started taking pictures of them, how would they have responded? Would you think that was normal or okay? Furthermore, nowhere is there mention of consent, certainly not informed consent (permission given with full knowledge and understanding of the consequences), and one might question how anyone can obtain informed consent when they faced a language barrier. Lapetina publicly sharing images of women in the privacy of their homes, dressed in a manner that they likely would not wish the world to see because it defies the modesty rules most Bangladeshi women in Detroit live by, demonstrates how little she understands the community and its values. If the women in the photographs were fully aware of who would see them without their scarves or doing household chores in maxis, would they have truly consented to its publishing? What about the images of children published online without the consent of their parents? A Bangladeshi friend of mine pointed this out to Lapetina when the photos were first released, but it’s unclear whether Lapetina did anything about it--the images continue to make the rounds online and bolster Lapetina’s photography career.

If the colonial overtones of Lapetina’s “discovery” of the Bangladeshi community isn’t enough, her uninformed observations about said community decidedly are. Lapetina says that she observed boys playing outside but not girls, and wanted to change that, as if her singular observation could be generalized. Her narrative perpetuates the single story that the Detroit Bangladeshi community is one where girls are not given the same rights as boys, that it’s gendered and sexist. This singular narrative, along with being circumstantial, ignores the nuanced realities of immigrant communities: that we’ve had to work hard for everything we have, that our community has only recently started to own homes and build wealth, that the capital for businesses and such have been hard earned, nevermind the cultural capital required to navigate the nonprofit industrial complex. 

In the early ‘90s, the Bangladeshi community was male-dominated, a critical mass of hopeful men who had moved to Detroit to provide for families back home. When they were able to situate themselves in America and reunite with their families in the late ‘90s, they tackled the hard work of establishing financial security and education for their children. When these children (like myself) grew up, graduated from colleges and universities, we faced a total lack of infrastructure, few places locally that could support young professionals. This forced us to move out of the community to build out our resumes and earn a living. It has taken us time (decades, generations) to overcome systemic oppression and get to the point where we could devote time, energy, and attention to building the infrastructures that we need. Lapetina perpetuating a singular story of a closed society that doesn’t give equal rights to women is narrow-minded, dangerous, and offensive. It assumes that girls and women have no agency, when in truth, we have been exercising our agency in all the urgent areas of our lives, and our community boasts young women as the most educated in several generations. 

Furthermore, Bangladeshi women have been building community on their own for generations. Like many other ethic groups, we gather in community within the privacy of our homes and outside of it. We are political and aware; we do not wear blindfolds about our lived realities. I saw this very thing this past summer when I co-facilitated a listening session for Rising Voices of Asian American Families in Hamtramck and Detroit. Over 20 women attended, with the majority being Bangladeshi-American, to talk about what matters to them: immigration, mental health, structural inequities, pan-Asian solidarity, and navigating multiple identities. These women, like myself, are aware that some things could and should be different, that women and girls should have access to more public spaces and spaces built specifically for us by us, but nowhere did they assume the role of deprived, agency-less individuals in need of rescue. 

Several people have reached out to Lapetina seeking transparency. Who is on her board? Who staffs WOB? Does she have people in the community working with her? I feel highly doubtful, as in another interview, Lapetina admits that she never reached out to the community, saying, “I never really targeted community members; I simply spread the word about free art classes.” This may have been fine for a few after school activities in the back of a garage, but it’s hardly enough for a registered nonprofit raising tens of thousands of dollars and claiming to represent the entire community, all the “Women of Banglatown.” At the time of writing, we still do not have transparency about WOB management and leadership. 

While I do expect to receive pushback on the public expression of my views, here are some things I’d like readers to consider beforehand: Why am I not allowed to name the harm done to myself or my community without having the burden of offering the solutions? Why am I double-, nay, triple-burdened, with experiencing harm, processing harm (for myself and with members of my community!), and then having to do the intellectual labor of calling it out and dealing with the expectation that I must also take on the responsibility of offering alternatives to the harm? “Processing”, by the way, requires a great deal of time and has not been easy. It’s dealing with the emotions arising from an outsider coming in and trying to “save” my community, perpetuating negative stereotypes, and leaving the bitter aftertaste of exploitation to anyone keen enough to question these practices.  

We don’t need saviors. We don’t need outsiders to come in and do the work for us. If you want to work with us, then put us in charge. Pay us for our time, intellect, and energy. Honor our agency. Get to know the community and its history. If you’re serving youth, talk to the adults, too. Don’t rely on youth to give you all the necessary information. If you’re a funder, critically analyze who you’re funding, if the leadership is from the community, if they are using community-centered practices, if they are being nuanced and thorough in their understanding of the problems they seek to address. These practices are absolutely necessary for sustainable, empowering work. If you are in the media, center people from the community. 

And if you are of the community, support the people from the community doing the work. If you haven’t encountered it, go search for it (the information is out there) or do it yourself. Or talk to other people and leaders in the community about your needs. You’ll be surprised by how well-supported it is. If you’re hosting events and having keynote speakers, highlight local organizers and activists. Give them recognition and power. Think critically about who you support and why. Dig a little deeper before you jump in. Stop perpetuating harm.

Edit: Women of Banglatown and Ali Lapetina responded to some of the concerns raised in this piece on February 13, 2020. You can read their response here, on the org’s brand new Tumblr account. I hope this information will be posted on the organization’s existing platforms (Instagram/Facebook/website) so that everyone can be informed.