When Alaudin Ullah was growing up in East Harlem in the 1970s and 1980s, he loved hip-hop, graffiti art, and the New York Yankees, like many kids did at the time. Still, there was one readily evident difference between Ullah and his peers. Ullah’s parents were from Bangladesh, making them the only South Asian family he knew in the Carver Houses, their public-housing project. Ullah had to explain certain things to other kids, for example that the garment his mother often wore was called a “sari.” But mostly Ullah did…
