Meet Anusha Kothari the author of “Transforming Taboo: Discursive and Generic Uptake in South Asian Mental Health Recovery Narratives.”

Anusha Kothari is a second-year student at Oxford College of Emory University and the author of “Transforming Taboo: Discursive and Generic Uptake in South Asian Mental Health Recovery Narratives.”
As someone from a South Asian community, Anusha was able to observe the culture-specific stigma around mental health and how it varies depending on the community. As Anusha said, “I'm interested in medical anthropology. But how health and medicine attitudes around illness experiences are different and similar across different communities.” In addition to her interest in differing culture’s views of mental health, Anusha also expresses her interest in the power of communication and how it shapes one’s culture and ideas throughout the college experience. “I learned after writing the first draft I had to ground [the research] in a lot more in cultural background because what's in my mind is not in your mind…and it was really important for me to convey that.”
When asked about her writing process, Anusha explained that she often had difficulty finding the time and motivation to work on her research. She credited her ability to remember the reason behind her research as a significant motivator, stating that she’s “interested in rhetoric and communication, whether or not that's a part of medicine and this [research] was a way for me to explore that and pursue that and kind of affirm my interest in that. And similarly, I think anyone doing research, knows the purpose of your research broadly, as well as the personal purpose for you.” Anusha also discussed how it was challenging to conduct research in an academic setting with which she was not entirely familiar. “Honestly, just finding time to write and then the time that I found to write sometimes I just would not be able to [write]. I wasn't getting distracted or anything, it just was that I wouldn't be able to be as productive as I wanted to be. And then dealing with that frustration and kind of like the impostor syndrome of like, am I really in a position to be staying this much or like doing this kind of scholarship?”

Anusha’s advice for students trying to get into writing and or looking to publish articles on the YSW page is to find a good mentor and “just go for it…it wasn't because this is some great project that I wanted to do. I didn’t even know what writing studies was. It was just because I had a really good mentor who gave me the idea of connecting something that we were doing in class to something else I'm interested in which unleashed all these different interests and opportunities for me.”

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This post was initially developed through a partnership between Dr. Cope’s Fall 2023 WRT280: Research Methods students, who interviewed the author, and Dr. Cutrufello’s Fall 2023 WRT320: Digital Writing students, who drafted the post. Lee Krauss edited and updated it for publication.