as diasporic Tibetans from India and culturally Tibetan regions in China, have settled into lives as New Yorkers, their senses of identity have begun to transform. Language plays a central role in these transformations. Himalayan voices can now be heard in the already hyperdiverse sociolinguistic landscape of a place like Jackson Heights. 1 Yet the processes of migration and assimilation have created new challenges for maintaining language diversity and cultivating a sense of social belonging through language. How are Himalayan New Yorkers finding a sense of community, navigating new transnational and intergenerational cultural dynamics, and responding to the relationship between "home" and being "over here" in New York? And what does language have to do with this? These questions have guided a collaborative research project, Voices of the Himalaya: Language, Culture, and Belonging in Immigrant New York. Using the medium of video interviews, this project explores the lived experiences of migration and social change between the greater Himalayan region and New York City. The project has brought together a team of scholars and social activists, with expertise in linguistics, anthropology, and community-based participatory research (including the creation of digital archives), toward the production and curation of accessible narratives

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This article analyzes the audio diaries of a Tibetan physician, originally from Amdo (Qinghai Province, China), now living in New York City. Dr. Kunchog Tseten describes his experiences during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, in spring and summer 2020, when Queens, New York—the location where he lives and works—was the “epicenter of the epicenter” of the novel coronavirus outbreak in the United States. The collaborative research project of which this diary is a part combines innovative methodological approaches to qualitative, ethnographic study during this era of social distancing with an attunement to the relationship between language, culture, and health care. Dr. Kunchog’s diary and our analysis of its contents illustrate the ways that Tibetan medicine and Tibetan cultural practices, including those emergent from Buddhism, have helped members of the Himalayan and Tibetan communities in New York City navigate this unprecedented moment with care and compassion.

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