Simi is an Indian-American feminist scholar and anthropologist from the Twin Cities. She received her B.A. in cultural anthropology and creative writing from the University of St. Thomas in 2011. Simi's work asks how Vietnamese-American foodways and food practices directly impact the relationship between refugeeism and disaster in New Orleans, emphasizing the significance of racial, social, and economic discourses that constitute citizenship through the exclusion of Vietnamese New Orleanians. Further, she asks how Vietnamese New Orleanians rearticulate the term “refugee” post-Katrina, Rita, and BP oil disaster, positioning it not as a transitory identity, but as an everyday experience that is centrally and repeatedly remade through the production, consumption, visibility, and distribution of Vietnamese New Orleanian food.