"When I meet people, I always get some astonishment when they ask me where I am from. “Wyoming,” I answer. And more often than not, the response is, “No, where are you from, really?” or “Hmm, you don’t look like a typical Wyoming person.” Over the years, I am not sure of the response I am supposed to give, and usually, I just reply with, “Well, there are some brown people there.” But what is a typical Wyoming person? When I think of Wyoming’s political identity, I know it is easy to make some quick judgments about its identity in general. Wyoming is 90 percent white. Wyoming is 0.8 percent Asian American. Wyoming is largely Republican. And conservative. I think we’ve all heard the drill before. And yet, Wyoming was the first state to have a woman governor, and in the case of my mother, they were the first state to elect someone to serve in a state legislature who was born in India.

In 1994, when my mom was elected, again, she had no Indians in her district. When she first ran, even I was a little doubtful that she’d win. She wore saris often. She has an accent. But she went door to door and talked to almost every house in her district. She campaigned on issues that were important to Wyoming people—and to her. And she won. After that, my feelings about Wyoming changed—as before I thought of the state as a little backward when it came to matters of diversity. I was only 19, and had just left Wyoming to go to college. I realized then that while your physical identity is something that people can’t help but take in, Wyoming people vote for people that have something to offer. Wyoming acknowledges ability and competence."

At the end of the second paragraph (“And yet . . . India”), the author includes a series of clauses that serve to