Washington DC South Asia Literary Festival Panel now on YOUTUBE

One of BUZZFEED News’ “15 Books From Smaller Presses You Won’t Be Able to Put Down!”

Announcing the Tasveer South Asia Festival online…. Movies, Books and Conversations

Announcing the Tasveer South Asia Festival online

How will you observe this American President’s Day?

Now, I understand why it is important to trust and respect these institutions and figures. We have to believe in something, since much else in American history is now revealed to be quite embarrassing in the eyes of the whole world. But can the answers to my wonderment about the American President’s Day really be found in the Constitution? Or the politics of the Founding Fathers? The same men who thought and asserted they could uphold E Pluribus Unum while holding and fathering slaves?

On Arundhati Roy, from the writer of Love’s Garden….

“The targets of the dual assault of communal fascism and neo-liberalism are the poor and the minority communities (who, as time goes by are gradually being impoverished.) As neoliberalism drives its wedge between the rich and the poor, between India Shining and India, it becomes increasingly absurd for any mainstream political party to pretend to represent the interests of both the rich and the poor, because the interests of one can only be represented at the cost of the other.”

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF POLITICAL BLACKNESS

POST 2. History is a tale of many ‘Accidents.’ Today I’m thinking of something one can call ‘Accidental Political Blackness.’ Accidental Political Blackness is a part of my history. And a part of brown people’s history. Tomorrow is Juneteenth. On June 19th, 1865, Major Gen. Gordon Granger came to Galveston, TX to inform slave-owners that President Lincoln had actually freed all slaves TWO YEARS before that. The slave-owners were incensed, horrified, terrified, mortified, but compelled to obey. Still, they got those two extra years of political whiteness. ‘Accident’ of history, one might say, at least of History as written by…