Chapter 4: Nepal: Miseducation, Travels, and Contesting Racialized Worlds Within and Outside Academia

I grew up in the city of Kathmandu (Nepal), an urban area that included multiethnic and multilingual communities. I was privileged since I was raised in a middle-class family setting and came from a “higher” caste background. Similar to the U.S. racial caste formations, in Nepal, caste identities have been socially constructed along ethnic hierarchies and have reproduced inequities within schooling, employment, healthcare, housing—and so forth—spheres. My schooling in the city of Kathmandu is intimately connected to the larger politics of education, both in the local and the global contexts. To ensure that I would receive a meaningful education, my parents enrolled me into a Jesuit school. Both of my parents did not complete high school and saw to it that I would receive an education that would provide access to college education: an option my parents did not have because of the lack of financial resources.