Dua, Raunak (Audio Interview and Transcript)
Abstract
Description
Raunak Dua is a third year student at Wake Forest University (class of 2025) and is from the Bay Area of California. Raunak discussed their experiences as a queer person of color trying to navigate the predominantly white queer spaces at Wale Forest and Winston-Salem writ large. They expressed concerns about the lack of a strong community at Wake Forest and the Winston-Salem area, discussing feelings of isolation and the need to look externally to cultivate intimate collectives of queer folk to find and feel supported. Raunak also discussed their involvement with Wake Debate as central to their introduction of queer life at Wake Forest, while later receiving a bit of a culture shock when arriving and discovering that the campus was predominantly white and not very accepting of their queer identity. This interview primarily focuses on some of the challenges of navigating queer spaces at Wake Forest and what queer students and faculty at Wake Forest can do to look to the future of making queer spaces more accessible to queer folks of color.
Keywords
Wake Forest University--History, Queer Public Histories, Expanded Wake Voices, LGBTQ Center