L: Artist Mel Chin; R: Cover of good, designed by Mel Chin (2000) I met Mel Chin twenty-two years ago when I was invited to submit an essay for...
Read more11 Jun, 2021
19 Mar, 2021
say their names. . .
19 Mar, 2021
Four days after six women of Asian descent were murdered by a white supremacist in Atlanta, the mainstream media is barely releasing the women’s names. Few details about the...
Read more01 Feb, 2021
south asian writers resist…
01 Feb, 2021
zoom screenshot featuring: (top row L to R): Beyond Baroque Executive Director Quentin Ring, me, Shreerekha Subramanian; (middle row L to R): Mahmud Rahman, Torsa Ghosal, Neelanjana Banerjee; (bottom...
Read more28 Dec, 2020
IGTV conversation with ali zaidi…
28 Dec, 2020
On Thursday, December 17, Ali Zaidi and I engaged in an IGTV conversation about memory versus truth in which we revisited our intersection 33 years ago in Lahore. For...
Read more12 Nov, 2020
farewell, asmi sahib…
12 Nov, 2020
Veteran activists gather for a visit (from L-R): SM Shahid, Saleem Asmi, Zawwar Hasan, ABS Jafri, Dr Haroon Ahmed, Iqbal Jaffery My sister, Beena Sarwar’s remembrance about our family...
Read more27 May, 2020
week 11: honoring legacy…
27 May, 2020
Yesterday, more than 50 invited family members and friends from around the world signed in on Zoom to celebrate my father and share stories about him. The baithak was...
Read more30 Mar, 2020
on lockdown with the rest of the world…
30 Mar, 2020
Week 1: a Saturday evening sunset at Redondo Beach, a site that is now closed Week One (March 16-22): Two weeks ago, all schools in Los Angeles and most...
Read more17 Mar, 2020
“the new normal”…
17 Mar, 2020
photograph by Richshell Allen, Pasadena City College photographer – “What compelled you to write about social justice issues?”– “How do you push past ‘writers block?'”– “Can you talk about...
Read more14 Mar, 2020
charcoal, cancellations, & social distancing…
14 Mar, 2020
Yesterday, I took blank paper and charcoal and zero instructions for my storytelling workshop participants The situation changes from one hour to the next, and the conversations that I...
Read more19 Dec, 2019
“black wings” best of 2019 fiction / entropy magazine…
19 Dec, 2019
I don’t check my twitter account that often, but today when I visited the page to see some updates, I was surprised to see myself tagged by multiple writers....
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