desi people
i am a desi diaspora chick interested in people and their browness in various forms (especially those that might deviate in different ways from the slick bollywood images that i/we regularly consume)
browness is a fluid term used by many in many different ways. i generally use it as we did growing up; desi peeps
Next on my reading list: The Beautiful and the Damned: Life in the New India by Siddhartha Deb.
After so many overwhelmingly positive characterizations of “New India,” it’s great to see more complex accounts of life after liberalization.
“I was never the lead in the play. I don’t think I went to a single party with alchohol at it….I had a great time in high school, but it wasn’t the high school experience you see on teen dramas, where people are in serious romantic relationships, and hanging out in parking lots or whatever…I had fun…having long, protracted, unrequited crushes on older guys who didn’t know me, and yes, hanging out with my family…I want ambitious teenagers to know its totally fine to be quiet, observant kids.”
(Source: scribd.com)
Thanks to a tip from WalkOutOfHerMind, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in the South Asian Diaspora has jumped to the top of my reading list.
Duke University Press’s description of the book:
Terrifying Muslims highlights how transnational working classes from Pakistan are produced, constructed, and represented in the context of American empire and the recent global War on Terror. Drawing on ethnographic research that compares Pakistan, the Middle East, and the United States before and after 9/11, Junaid Rana combines cultural and material analyses to chronicle the worldviews of Pakistani labor migrants as they become part of a larger global racial system. At the same time, he explains how these migrants’ mobility and opportunities are limited by colonial, postcolonial, and new imperial structures of control and domination. He argues that the contemporary South Asian labor diaspora builds on and replicates the global racial system consolidated during the period of colonial indenture. Rana maintains that a negative moral judgment attaches to migrants who enter the global labor pool through the informal economy. This taint of the illicit intensifies the post-9/11 Islamophobia that collapses varied religions, nationalities, and ethnicities into the threatening racial figure of “the Muslim.” It is in this context that the racialized Muslim is controlled by a process that beckons workers to enter the global economy, and stipulates when, where, and how laborers can migrate. The demonization of Muslim migrants in times of crisis, such as the War on Terror, is then used to justify arbitrary policing, deportation, and criminalization.
I’m sure this will be of huge interest to anyone who wants to learn more about the racial politics of Islamophobia, race, diaspora, and the War on Terror.
Book: Racism, Eh?: a critical inter-disciplinary anthology of race and racism in Canada
You can access the whole Google Book here
another recommended read for all (hence why it’s here) :)
heeyy. i have this book!
(Source: rematiration, via eggplantavenger)
From now until October 3, 50% of all online sales of God Loves Hair will go to Pakistan flood relief.
(Source: godloveshair)
25, and with a critically heralded book already under his belt, Ali Sethi appears on cNBC to talk about The Wish Maker.
I’m nearing the end…and I’ve loved every page :)
If you’re looking for a summer’s-end read, consider this great novel.
THIS is the side of Pakistan I wish was more portrayed in the media (you know if it was a Western state it would likely be a much more prevalent representation) rather than watching an hour of Western media or even GEO and DAWN (Pakistani news channels) and being bombarded with images of oppression, radicalism, poverty, corruption….. and yes even the tapes of the Sialkot lynchings (does Pakistani news have NO boundaries?). I’m not saying to not show the rest, it exists, it should be shown, but at least try to keep it balanced? They’re not just a land of “savages”….but I guess this is falling on deaf-ears cause “this is just how the media works,” a lot of negatives with a few positives.
Rabindranath Maharaj is a Trinidad-born Canadian author. He’s written three collections of short stories and four novels, the most recent of which, The Amazing Absorbing Boy…The novel is a creative, quirky, touching story about a Trinidadian boy named Samuel who, upon his mother’s death, moves to Toronto to live with his father. What ensues is a series of surprises, disappointments, surreal experiences and joys…
When I was maybe 17 or 18, maybe younger, I tried to read The God of Small Things. Now at 21, I whipped through it just a few weeks ago and I’m so glad that I returned to give it another try. It really was one of the most beautiful, complex and tender novels I have ever read.
authorcrushes: Arundhati Roy
