SENIOR PROFILE: Suneela Mubayi

Most Columbia students don't consider cracking dirty jokes in Arabic a good time. Most don't also get featured in Our Bodies, Our Selves. But Suneela Mubayi, CC '07, is used to being the exception.

"I was featured in the latest edition in their new section on transgender youth," Mubayi explained. "It was weird, I had no idea how popular the book was."

Born in New York, Mubayi grew up with her father's family in India and didn't come back to New York City until she graduated from high school there in 2002. In the year before she started at Columbia, she dabbled in spoken-word poetry and began to identify as a transgender woman.

The transition was difficult. Wearing her signature orange tunic and lip and eyebrow rings, Mubayi admitted that she considered transferring.

"I just felt like the lone figure often. For a long time, I didn't know what my place was," she said. "I wish campus was friendlier."

Mubayi immersed herself in studying Arabic, honing her skills for three years. According to her friend Sarah Standish, BC '08, this included "forming friendships with local Arab shopkeepers, reading Butler's collection of Arabic novels in parallel with the English translations she's assigned for classes, volunteering with Arab cultural organizations, and ... watching YouTube."

The Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures major was accepted to the prestigious Center for Arabic Study Abroad program, where she'll spend a year in Egypt translating Arabic media and literature. Upon acceptance, program directors warned her that she was overqualified, but have allowed her to develop an independent study through a fellowship program usually reserved for students preparing for their dissertations.

Arabic study may not correlate well with her queer identity, but Mubayi said "somehow I made it work."

Mubayi said she regrets only marginally participating in campus queer and transgender awareness.

She said she isn't sure what she'll wind up doing in the long run, but the self-described radical said, "I live my revolution every day of my life."