[A guest post by Tipu Sultan] Once, I Was An Oil Drop I was taught that oil was the most glorious thing that had ever happened to humankind. My first memory of this education was at age six. I was inducted into the girl-scouts, along with some of the other girls in the corporate-garrison town-city [...]
{ 12 comments }
[Editor's note: This is the first part of M. Neelika Jayawardane's two-part essay on South African Desis. A longer version of this essay appeared in Transition 107] In my return to Southern Africa as an adult, I was delighted to find a space in which “Indianness” was engaged in a different conversation. It was only then, almost [...]
{ 1 comment }
[editor's note: This is the first part of M. Neelika Jayawardane's two-part essay on South African Desis. A longer version of this essay appeared in Transition 107. Our sincere thanks to her for allowing CM to host it.] As a child growing up within Southern Africa’s socio-political landscape, I found no easy, seamless fitting in. South Asians [...]
{ 5 comments }
I. Years ago, while writing my dissertation, I stepped out one evening to one of those enormous drug stores that are open all night in cities. I browsed idly among the nail colors, wondering if I should consider adding layers of glitter to my already elaborate manicure. The aisles of women’s products were full of [...]
{ 4 comments }
CM friend, Neelika Jayawardane, reviewed Lapata’s The Little Book of Terror for Africa is a Country. Rather than fall into the sort of pop-psychology that claims to sort out why the children of the well-off (Osama bin-Laden included) may find “radicalism” attractive, Daisy Rockwell’s “cheeky little volume” of paintings and minimalist essays, The Little Book of Terror, offers a [...]
{ 0 comments }
My review of Habibi is out in The Sunday Guardian today. It was originally longer. The full piece is below: I. Hating Art I have hated many pieces of art in my life. An Italian restaurant I used to go to was decorated with enormous abstract oil paintings. The paintings were so aggressively bad they [...]
{ 9 comments }
