I collaborated with author Sejal Shah to create a series of comics that accompany her debut essay collection, This is One Way to Dance. Read the full piece on LitHub.
My background is in social science and program evaluation. I currently work in local government on efforts to make City policies and services more equitable. I love to combine my illustration, research, and storytelling skills to make complex ideas engaging and understandable. Click and hover for more detail.
This image is for a workshop I developed on the history of race and the carceral system. I have conducted the workshops with numerous government and community stakeholders.
Workshop materials, continued.
Workshop materials, continued.
I developed this image for a newsletter on disparities on COVID outcomes and incarceration - and what we can do about them. Read the full newsletter here.
These are snippets from a piece I created in response to an artist panel convened by Soham Dance Space.
This is a snippet from a comic published in Cape Mag.
In the winter of 2019, I asked my Instagram followers to share their experiences with “desi fuckbois.” I received a flood of responses that demonstrated the glorious and harrowing breadth of this demographic group. I used the crowd-sourced responses to create this popular series on the ways toxic masculinity takes root among desi-American men.
This is a comic about Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, a South Asian feminist and freedom fighter. I wanted to create a comic that brings Kamaladevi’s work to life and gives South Asian kids a badass, desi feminist hero to look up to. I hope that sharing her story will inspire a new generation of desi activists in the U.S.
The comic was featured at a university-wide symposium on social change and activism at the University of Michigan. It is currently available on SocialChange101, a free online educational resource, and has been featured in Tides magazine.
This flow chart was published in SAAG Anthology.
When I made this series, shows and movies like Master of None and The Big Sick were in the habit of presenting straight, white women as brown mens' love interests. The MO was to either exclude brown women or present them as burdensome, caricatured, and unattractive options.
In response, I decided to reimagine what it would have been like if the rom coms I grew up with featured anyone who looked like me, and the idea for the illustrations was born. It was featured on Buzzfeed India.
I created a zine about growing up as the only brown girl in my neighborhood in Virginia. Email me for a full copy! (shebani.rao@gmail.com)
