Welcome to Export Quality
Welcome to Export Quality
Your home for news by and about American and Canadian desis
Hi! I’m Mythili, a journalist in New York with a few decades of bylines all over the place covering everything from politics, climate change, the United Nations, tech, NYC - and South Asians in the U.S. I’ve reported from several countries and NPR, CNN, the LA Times, far-flung radio stations, and a few podcasts have quoted me. I’m also former president of the South Asian Journalist Association. My delusions of fame stem from having one of my stories featured in Stephen Colbert’s Late Show monologue years ago.
That’s me in a nutshell, but what you’re really here for is something I’m creating.
Welcome to Export Quality, a place to find news by my journalist friends of South Asian descent and about our Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nepali, Sri Lankan, Maldivian, Afghan, and Bhutanese communities in the lands of apple pie and poutine.
I’ll experiment along the way with curating news links, logos, schedules, formats, sharing my collage art, and different forms of content but for the most part I want this to be a place to support South Asian American/Canadian journalists who write about far more than just us and to learn about all the things happening in our communities. This newsletter fully brands itself as a supplement to your gossip downloads from aunties and uncles over chai.
The seeds of Export Quality were planted when I joined the SAJA board back in the Before Times of 2020. That newsletter was just a way to keep in touch with members about our programming but quickly turned into a weekly share of their stories, podcasts, videos, TV/radio appearances, etc and their social media handles so their colleagues could follow them, get in touch, and collaborate. And now, I’m taking my talents to Substack.
Eventually, I want it to be a place reflective of the inclusive kind of community we all wanted growing up in the U.S. and Canada; maybe even a place to reminisce about those experiences no one else will ever have again.
For those of you blessed enough to be Gen X or Xennials, you might remember the those heady days of F5-ing your screen at work to see a new post on Sepia Mutiny aka the Big Brown Blog. It was a place on the internet just for us, a place that didn’t exist yet in real life for so many commenters, lurkers, and yours truly (my handle was coffeeface!). While no newsletter is able to recreate the beauty and hilarity of that moment in ‘Net history or that community (some of my closest friends today are from originally from SM), this project is certainly influenced by it.
I’ll share news from our countries of origin too, but I can promise it won’t be the family Whatsapp group. News from the Subcontinent sometimes has a profound effect on us culturally, politically, emotionally, sartorially - and maybe sometimes not at all.
For now all the posts will be free while I figure things out, but soon I’ll have more content and perks for paid subscribers.
So grab a bottle of export quality Maaza or Limca from Patel Brothers or Asian Imports (aka your parents’ fridge) and settle in. We’ll learn a lot, reminisce a little, commiserate, and laugh. I’m hoping you’ll like it here!
And, with that I’ll leave you with a piece of my art:
"American Desi Xennials #1: Activate"//18x24//Magazines, cloth purse, paint, dupatta on salvaged canvas
A special thank you to
over at ; Ambreen Ali at Central Desi; Kavitha Rajagopalan at the Center for Community Media at CUNY; fellow freelancers Jennifer Chowdhury and Lakshmi Gandhi who encouraged me to do this over a few meals, gossip, and sweating it out in Austin at the Asian American Journalist Association conference!