Queens, New York is referred to as “The World’s Borough” because of its unparalleled racial, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity, an outcome of the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act. In fact, the Guinness Book of Records describes the 2.3 million people of Queens as the “most diverse urban area on the planet” with its 190 nationalities and 360 languages and dialects. New immigration from Asia and the Pacific to Queens continues to drive up these numbers today, as nearly one in two Asian American and Pacific Islander New Yorkers–roughly six hundred thousand people–reside in Queens.

The hyperdiversity of Queens’s Asian American and Pacific Islander population distinguishes this borough’s lifestyle and neighborhoods from New York City’s other four boroughs of Brooklyn, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island. In addition to the sizable Chinese, Korean, Filipino, and South Asian populations, Queens is home to an overwhelming majority of Indo-Caribbean and Himalayan New Yorkers.

This module focuses on the dynamic Indo-Caribbean and Himalayan immigrant communities in Queens. These two communities represent a growing population of the Guayanese and Trinidadian immigrants concentrated in neighborhoods such as Richmond Hill and Ozark Park as well as the Himalayan immigrants of “Little Tibet” and Nepalese backgrounds in Jackson Heights. These two communities have established vibrant cultural centers and social institutions, representing the intersection of foodways, economics, and spirituality.