Swinging Door

"When we become truly ourselves, we just become a swinging door and we are purely independent of and at the same time dependent upon everything."

My mother has always told me I say too much, by which she means she would appreciate if more of what is in my head stayed inside my head. I have only followed her advice when I have done or seen things which have been outlined to require grave consequences if revealed, and in regard to those instances, I feel like I oppressed my soul for having taken part in something that must be hidden. Listen, I know that I wouldn't feel that way if those things hadn't been outlined as such, but they were and I do. So here's everything else.

If you don't do drugs, you will learn other ways to step back and look at your own life. You realize that's what you wanted in the first place, when you still had control. You will remember you always knew how to tear yourself away, if necessary, to open your laden arms and stop time to take stock-- what exactly are you carrying? Do you need all that? The questions have changed, and I'm getting better at making the assessment, but this act remains essential to maintaining sanity. It does matter what you step back into, too.

I need a close look, so I'm up late tonight. It's only 1:22AM in California. Still late for me these days, but I don't have to work tomorrow or the next day, I'm not tired because I didn't work yesterday or the day before. I don't have to worry about falling asleep late and missing the dawn prayer because I'm on my period, so excused this week. I'm not studying for a certification exam and I'm not in school or recovering from being in school. I haven't been in love in about 18 months. And my life has taken shape recently (read: I got my shit together) in a way that I had once imagined over twelve years ago and then completely forgotten about. Oh, and the world seems to be going to shit and I have never felt more calm about it. In other words, the universe has aligned and conditions for reflection are perfect. And I'm going to do that publicly because, don't you want to know how I did it all?

Awh, internal laudatory chorus. Stawpppp. It wasn't narcissism. I swear.

We've come a long way since the two whitest kids at my school asked me if I was related to Osama Bin Laden and if I believed in god, respectively. The other day, the whitest person at work asked me what the Muslim community thinks about ______. Chicken? Printer cartridges? Toilet Paper? I'm not actually sure. I faded out for a second and for that paranoid second, I wondered if he was asking me for A Reason and reassured myself-- this is not something I need to hide. Whatever he asked, I recovered in time to read him the first sentence of this paragraph, minus the bit about white kids. I think he got my point because he went on to express a bunch of sympathy for the disenfranchised (while maintaining a fiscal conservative stance). At least the one time that a non-Muslim POC bullied me, he had the awareness, in 2002, as a pre-teen, to put a towel on his head and imitate a muezzin. If I hadn't been terrified, I might have been impressed.

I've lost track of details. Are things worse now than they were fourteen years ago? I think so. But I can't say I've been trying to keep track of everything. It takes a considerable amount of work to go from literary studies (academic analysis of written cultural artifacts) to maintaining and building data systems. (That's a horrible description of it. My profession is not good at descriptions of our work. I apologize. I work on distributed databases. Sometimes I say, hey, it's still a matter of understanding the organization of information. Or, like, you know, the basic human experience of understanding.) First, I had to change from being a person who engages through only observation, however creatively or intelligently I did so, to a person who takes initiative and moves both ideas and resources. I also needed both an art degree and a science degree. I also fell in love and broke my heart a bunch of times. I swallowed my pride. I treated depression with unsanctioned drugs. I moved halfway across the country, and then entirely across the country. I pursued esoteric religion.

So I can't fully tell you how I ended up back on the path I meant to take when I was fifteen, the person I wanted to be before I realized how complicated global politics was going to make my life. You can't contain my whole life. You don't need to. No one can. But there are some parts that are critical for us to share.

I do still occasionally catch the news. Sometimes it can't be helped. I don't exactly avoid it, but I also don't feel constantly threatened. I do care. I pray for the dead. I pray for the living. I give what I can to people who have lost their homes, their families, their livelihood. I hope to do more of that. I work because I can and it's okay that some people can't do as much.

But I don't have all the defensive arguments down. I refuse to. I understand why they're important to some people. But I need more than that, deeper and wider. Yet, I already have everything I need.

I'm not who I'm not. I'm not even who I am. Identity, or what I project, where I feel I belong or who I show alliance with or however you want to define it, is only a small part of the self. I think most people only use a small part of the self. And when you have very little, you are likely to hold what you have very tightly. And probably spend all your money on it. But that's not the point of self. The point is to let it go.



the quote at the beginning is from a zen member of my family

Post-reading notes: I, Tituba, Black Witch Of Salem

Tituba's influence on the white Christians in the book is really interesting. She uses "witchcraft" or voodoo to slowly and painfully kill one of them, a literal influence, which haunts her the rest of her life. However, her more subtle influence as a non-Puritan on the young girls who she encourages to break a few rules in their religion only to improve their health, has dire consequences for everyone but Tituba. When her suggestions proves successful, it seems the girls turn on her and accuse her of witchcraft but they also accuse everyone who is different or has inconvenienced them of the same thing and turn the whole town against each other. They seem more possessed by Satan than anyone else! So in reality, it seems the girls lost their faith. It's usually those who are most insecure who accuse others of insecurities, usually the same insecurities that they have, which here means feeling in scheme with the devil. It's interesting that for a Puritan, losing faith is suggested as being tantamount to switching to the devil's side but this may be because they see the devil in everything that isn't Puritan. Tituba, by the way, doesn't believe in either God or Satan.

I also thought that the discussions between Tituba, her mother, Mama Yaya, and Hester about gender are really interesting. Everyone else believes involvement with men brings nothing but misfortune to women, which in this novel is generally true, Tituba's life and the plot of the novel, is almost just a string of Tituba's romantic involvements and how they precipitate the events of her life and eventually lead to her hanging. Still, Tituba, who was conceived through rape, seeks involvement with men for the sexual comfort. Tituba is, above all else, a character who wants to trust people.

I like what this story and what Mama Yaya says about the struggle of slaves for freedom. That they are inclined to violent means to gain back the dignity taken from them with such violence. However, it is through Tituba's care for people, whether slave or master, which undoes society. If that isn't a huge shout out to MLK and the Civil Rights Movement, I've never heard one.

Finally, thinking about this book, maybe because it talks about a slave woman's influence on religion, I thought of Roots and I thought of how horrifying it must have been for a Muslim woman to be taken as a slave the way Europeans took the Africans as slaves. Yes, the there are slaves in the Quran but Muslims are urged to treat slaves with humility and promised rewards for freeing slaves. Not that I don't sympathize with enslaved males Muslims but Muslimah taken as a slave is the twisting of the knife in my belly.

Meditation on Sharhnush Parsipur's Touba

Today, I have been mentally disconnected from the world around me, wandering in the book, Touba and the Meaning of Night. I finished it last night and I need to move on because I have plenty of reading I plan on getting done in the next few weeks. But in my usual approach to finishing a really good book, I want to dwell on it. I can't read anything else while I'm at work so here I am. To do this constructively, and because the themes of this book a very relevant to this blog, here's a quick analysis.
The book is pretty out there. Employing what critics are calling magical realism,which I love, the book is a blend Islamic mysticism and a critique of history and gender politics. At times I felt that the author was heavy handed by offering definitions yet her definitions were so good, I can't say I minded. I felt like I was being told a story by an elder, wisdom emanating from the actions of every character.

Alert: spoilers ahead. If you dare, keep reading.

Let's start with the Islamic mysticism. The main first ambition expressed by Touba, the main character, is her desire to find god and bear a messiah. She is inspired after her father teaches her the Quran, who is inspired to do so when the thought that the earth is round makes him realize that women are capable of thinking. Throughout the novel, when there is a change in the path of Touba's life, she recalls this ambition and wonders how her marriages, her children, her society, her property prevent her from following it. In the end, however, it is Layla, the embodiment of femininity, who enlightens Touba and unites her with the Touba Tree, the Sufi symbol for spiritual perfection, unity with God, and death.

The society that had successfully prevented her was itself in political and cultural upheaval. The political upheaval, despite Touba's marriage into the Qajar dynasty, always seemed distant in the book. The absence of politically people involved are not felt except in the case of Mr. Khiabani and Ismael, Touba's and her daughter Moone's prime male interests. These interests, through no fault of their own, turn Touba and her daughter towards mysticism. Nonetheless, the book begins with a story of a European man whipping Touba's father in the face for wandering, deep in mystic thought, into the path of his horse. The idea of historical progress, which is implemented by those in power, at first embarrass Touba, but in due course become irrelevant after she also questions, admires, and rejects them on the basis of disconnected principles. Touba's greatest difficulty is in dealing with modernization and, for which she consults her spiritual leader, fluctuating social norms.

On Touba's first visit to her spiritual leader, he sends her home because her mind is preoccupied with those she must care for: her family, including four young children and a mentally disturbed aunt. Her family soon doubles after they get home and Touba is asked to take in refugees from Azerbaijan and only to be broken when her husband takes a second wife. Two false images of gender equality are presented: the sexual agency of the court women, allowed them due to wealth and power, and the financial agency of Touba's daughter, afforded her through modernization. Both are false in giving neither woman what she wants, though the second, unlike the first, is less harmful in its falsehood. But what Touba wants most is to be united with God and each duty in her life seems to be an obstacle. After yet another generation of adopted family finally finds their own direction in life, Touba finals turns within herself and asks herself why she has never achieved her only goal.

That's as far as I can spoil it for you. Now I'll give you my conclusion: This is a work of dharmic feminism, a journey in search of the divine feminine. I don't know Farsi, but in Bengali, the word for religion doesn't translate to "faith." This is something I first glimpsed in a lecture by Ingrid Matteson, a professor on the Spirituality of Muslim Women at Hartford Seminary. I just put two and two together. The word for religion, dharmo, is very close the Hindu concept of "duty." Sufism is, in fact, highly influenced by the dharmic religions. Because Touba's end goal is to raise herself to union with God, and because her duties include contending with the social and political forces around her, she expresses embedded feminism.

I heavily related to this book because, even in different social and political environments, this is the Islam I grew up with. Persian culture is appreciated by many Bengalis, as is Buddhist and Hindu culture.. Though my family is Sunni and Iran is largely Shi'a, there are also members of my family who are Sufis, like Touba. My maternal grandfather, despite his Arabian influenced Islam, read palms, which I can't see jibing with Wahabism. My parents, in deference to my grandfather's dated reference, seek Arabian influence and these days that results in pretty straight-laced views. How has Wahabism developed over the span of my grandfathers' lives, my mother's life, my life? Could it have been less influential when my grandfather developed his religious views?  These are relevant questions I wouldn't have thought to ask without having read this book.**

Of course, in America, Islam is something still different. Sufism is/should be different. I am an immigrant but I doubt I will instill in my children half the dharmic values I have and I don't have that many compared to my parents (though there are some I want to cultivate). At times, in America, you need something else. Are there Puritan, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish values that can be expressed in Islam? Considering the common root of the religions, that answer should be easy! But has it emerged? Eboo Patel says there is a cornerstone in the value of service and I agree. Mohja Kahf points out American Islam's roots in slavery and the Civil Rights movement and the American value of egalitarian love and that has to be a part of it, too. Also, it has to seriously engage in feminism. What else? I think there's more. I believe this is my generation's duty.

Now, time to get my laundry and clean my room.



**I have vague answers because I know a rough religio-political history of Islam,  via Reza Aslan's No God But God and G. Willow Wilson's Butterfly Mosque.

Shades of Grey and Brown

Fifty Shades of Grey recently hit the library bookshelves. I've had some interesting conversations with housewives and overheard interesting conversations among the ladies in the office. They're more or less unabashed, although I didn't spot anyone talking about it with or around too many men. It basically reminds me of the scene in Madmen when the ladies pass around a copy of Lady Chatterley. I don't think it's anything all that new and I don't think I'll be reading it, either.

But something good has come out of this for me, nonetheless. While trying to explain why I would not be reading it to a fellow lover of literature, I said that, right now, there are other ways that I'm more interested in developing my imagination.

And then it hit me. Ever since I was in the middle of my B.A., I have been conflicted about what I should be reading. I wasn't even sure what I wanted to read. There were a lot of people telling me what I, as a student of literature, should read. On the grounds of studying literature and yet studying post-colonial literature, which is anti-literature, in the classical sense, as much as movements in modernism are, and yet feeling as though there was something missing, all I knew was the my love for reading was in shambles and if it were to die, a part of me I loved would die with it. But the question I needed to ask myself was: What part of my imagination do I need/want to develop?

When I was in middle school, a well-meaning school librarian suggested I read a fiction book by a Muslim author with Muslim characters in a Muslim country. I don't even remember what book. Flustered, I told her I didn't want to. Between Harry Potter books, I was more interested in the Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. I was interested in anything written by Avi or Rodman Philbrick. I remember liking a series of fairy tales re-written as novels from the point of view of a different character. Growing up sheltered, I wanted to know about the culture beyond my house, a culture I desperately wanted to take part in or at least relate to.

Even then, I knew I wasn't interested in mainstream culture-- I was self-aware enough to know I was different and geeky and be able to appreciate that about myself. But I remember being afraid of being shaped wrongly by the book she suggested. I was afraid it would change me in a way I had no control over. I was afraid it would hit uncomfortably close to home. I was also afraid it would miss and make me feel too different, an unreachable other. Even as I started reading global, post-colonial literature in college, I was a apprehensive about reading anything by Indian, Bengali, or Muslim writers.

As I became more exposed to writing closer to my experience, started reading and enjoying a few books, even becoming overwhelmed by volume of literature I could still read about it, it became less important for me to be able to completely relate to a work by a Muslim or from a Muslim country. It made me realize that there were a lot of people like me, but not exactly like me and that this is a good thing. Even though there's still a part of me that's afraid that if I read one more book about being from the Indian subcontinent, being an immigrant, being Muslim, on top of which, being feminist, I'm going to alienate myself, now I think that it's something I need to develop more of an imagination for.

In a way, this focus it does limit me. I don't read very much mainstream literature and I'm not that interested in much of the literary canon and because of these reasons, it's not enough for me to meet someone who loves to read to feel an immediate connection with them-- like it was in middle school. But I do still connect with people who love literary fiction of most varieties. I also recently discovered my love for sci-fi. The biggest difference is that I now relate most to people developing shades of grey within their imagination of Muslim, immigrant, female, religious, subcontinental experiences because as someone of these experiences and an American on top of that, to do otherwise would require me to believe these descriptors are limits upon myself and believe they should be for other people, too.

My favorite word: Tomato

Lately, I'm all about finding new favorite words. I hear them and they stick in my brain. Maybe it's because I've been doing tons of reading lately. I couldn't really read in college. I will often make the excuse that I was too busy reading other things but I think I was actually too busy thinking more in depth about the (very) few things I read. Through most of my life, I have gone through phases of reading or thinking excessively. After the drawn out period of thinking that was my undergraduate career, this reading phase has been a long time coming.

With words, I really like words with nice mixtures of hard and soft sounds lately. Copacetic (in excellent order), Trantor (ex-capital planet of the Galactic Empire) and now, "tomato" (common variety).

The word tomato is one you could probably guess I've known for a long time. Like many words, I knew the Bengali word for it before I knew the English one. The word for tomato in Bengali is, however, tomato. Where it makes a difference is that when I think about the word twice, I think it the second time in a Bengali accent. I wish I knew enough linguistics to accurately convey it. Maybe like this: say TOUAWGH meh touawgh. Now say it really fast. Now say it twice as fast as last time. Now say it normal speed with the letters still all squished together. I hope you got it. The 'o' sound in the word get transformed into this wonder vowel I can only express using three English one and 3 consonants to help it out.

Since I intend to keep up the reading, my favorite word will probably change again soon. But I wanted to share this one while it lasts. 

Another old hat I might pick up: reading pop-psychology, specifically in the vein of cognitive-behavioral theory and therapy.

Who's making your future?: An introduction to mine.

“There is no such thing as unmanipulated writing, filming, or broadcasting. The question is therefore not whether the media are manipulated, but who manipulates them. A revolutionary plan should not require the manipulators to disappear: on the contrary, it must make everyone a manipulator." -Hans Enzensberger (Rust Belt Visions: The 2011 Allied Media Conference)

It is a commonly held notion that the world around us isn't good enough. Maybe with the exception of people who belong to the elite class of luxury and excess, most of us look around us and see things that need to be improved. Most of us are willing to work towards improvement, if only for a good night of sleep following a hard day's work. We don't want our effort to line the pockets of the elite or further the damage already surrounding us.

For change to happen, we need resources. Knowing that one of the problems we face is a shortage of resources, some of us choose to directly address this need. I respect that effort, especially because to do it honestly it requires skillful navigation between the corporate creation of scarcity and actual need.

Apparent in my penchant for literature, rooted, perhaps, in the immigrant tradition, I want to address our need for resources by helping both people seeking to provide resources and the people in need of them think about what they really need and to best provide and/or obtain it, and I want to do it by addressing our escapist tendencies.

Next, though you might not immediately see how this comes next, a good story caters to the escapism of entertainment and a really good story teaches you something important at the same time. Though I have spent years of my life with my nose, nay my entire head, in some book, I know that most people escape into music, television shows, movies, video games, or, the biggest one of all: the internet. And though I was an English major, I know that most if not all media contains a message. The message is usually simple: consume more media from this source/follow this message.

BUT the original conception of the internet was not one prompting us to consume but to create. It was not to create another platform for corporate manipulation but to give us access to creating information. Dave Winer from Wired.com equates internet access with having access to your own personal printing press. And the more digitized media becomes, the future we can take that. Why not your own radio or TV station? Video game? Record company? Art gallery? Why not? It seems like the ultimate escapism until you realize the internet is a place where change can happen. In fact, it is happening but the change is being enacted by corporations and that needs to change.

The next question is that of creating media with messages in good faith. In other words, creating media in the context of creating a better world, not just one into which we can escape, as has been its historical corporate function. This is probably the hardest part. While I was English major, dissecting the worlds created in literature-- even though literary fiction is often a prompt to dissect the intentions of the world around us, facing the intentionality in the world around us is an incredibly difficult task. Before using literary analysis, which tries to pinpoint the techniques used by the author to create the message of the book, I never really thought of books as being authored, forget the process by which they are. The way I learned to read as an English major and the way I read before were entirely different and the difference nearly ruined the pleasure of reading for me.

But there are people who face intentionality at its worst everyday. People who face racism or sexism, for example, and know they should be judged as an individual rather than through prejudice. Especially when prejudice is encountered everywhere, it becomes apparent as being constructed with the intention to justify the mistreatment of others. People who struggle against it can tell you how important it is to know the historical context of both the force they reckon with and of their struggle as it proceeds.

For example, when part of a struggle against prejudice, such as the revolutionary movement of hip-hop, is commercialized and made into "pop," it's context (the Civil Rights Movement) disappears. So how do you create media in good faith? You make sure it is connected with the context of it's intention. Don't trust anything without context.

But simply providing context is not enough. Judith Butler, on addressing the lack of centrality/representation/leadership in feminism states that gender, to remain relevant and to avoid coercion, must function as platform for the interpretation of gender. For feminists, gender is a conversation starter, not a lecture. Gender is a context but without the opportunity to continually edit the contained content, it morphs into the polar opposite of what feminists (and humans in general) need it to be. Given, the next step is to empower people to contribute to the creation of information and media.

So, my goal is to help people become aware of information manipulation (giving them context) while giving them the skills to dismantle the sway of the current methods of manipulation as content contributors. This will not only help people become more aware of commercially created "need" but hopefully also help us find our actual context within which we can assess our actual needs. Believe it or not, you can learn all the necessary skills to do what I want to do at a good Library and Information Science program. So that's where I'm headed next.

On Habibi, Graphic Novel

I almost didn't read Craig Thompson's Habibi. After reading a media critique article from a Muslim perspective media watch, I was assured it perpetuated stereotypically western interpretations of both Arabs and Muslims. What Thomspon does was labelled "self-conscious orientalism." Thompson is quoted to note on his orientalist aesthetic as being superficial, saying,

“it’s almost better to not see the words when you’re looking at them and you can just appreciate them for their visual aesthetic, rather than have the meaning of the words get in the way.”

which is exemplified by the filling of a woman's body with Arabic text, as if, says the article, "the meaning of the imagery will get in the way of appreciating the aesthetic." However, what rang most true to me was one criticism stating that Thompson's portrayal of Arab brutality is never "justified or made to face consequences."

I dread stereotypically western interpretations of Islam, especially since it has a tendency of confusing Muslim with Arab. But since I'd been interested in it before reading the criticism, I went with my gut and didn't cancel the inter-library loan I used to request it. When it arrived, I began reading it on a slow day at work.

I was hooked. Thompson is a talented story-teller and artist. Though it is true that there a few Arabs who are portrayed as bad guys, there a lot of Arab good guys, too. For example, Zam, one of the main characters, becomes a eunuch in order to understand his sexual attraction to Dodola, his beautiful childhood rescuer, whose rape he witnessed after learning that she sold her body to feed them. Dodola is also a storyteller and the audience's source of an incredible amount of Islamic tradition, through the telling of stories from the Quran. Many stories serve to compare and contrast Islam and the other Abrahamic faiths, but many just serve to glorify Islam's value of storytelling and creative thinking. Though her child marriage to a scribe is the source of Dodola's literacy, in the scribe's insistence on teaching his young wife to read and write, he treats her as an equal and gives her the tools she needs to save her life over and over after he is killed by thieves. 

Things like that make me think Thompson's comment on having "the meaning of the words get in the way" was taken out of context. I don't really see him using orientalism merely as an aesthetic in much of the novel. The Quran itself is a written version of oral tradition, and in a lot of ways, Thompson's Habibi is the graphic version in addition to an interpretation for contemporary audiences, both on account of its format and messages conveyed. I also like that Thompson's narrative includes Islam in both the problems and the solutions faced by the world today, such as environmentalism and racism.

The reason I say that the criticism on Arab brutality spoke loudest to me is because I feel like many people are overly sensitive to negativity in nuanced portrayals of Muslims. True, the newsmedia usually zeroes in on negativity to the point where nuance is squeezed out of the picture. However, limiting media to only glowing portrayals of Muslims stifles nuance AND internal criticism, which can certainly be suggested by non-Muslims, such as Thompson, as well as Muslims.

An Important Note For My Audience

My sister made a comment, off this site, about my previous blogpost and it, along with a comment about my fiction, has triggered a serious breakthrough.

In my last blogpost, I passingly mention a story I wrote when I was in first grade. In the story, I teach my sister how to run because she afraid to do so. My sister commented that the story sounded like "The Scarlett Ibis," by James Hurst, which both of us read in our own due passage through Mrs. Geiger's ninth grade advanced English class. Interestingly, "The Scarlett Ibis" was the first story in which I was able to understand the idea of a literary theme.

I don't know if it was the sparks that surround my comprehension of that idea, but it made me realize that I've lost my ability to tell a good story. My sister ignored my entire narrative about myself as a writer and singled out the part that was most important to her. Telling a good story is all about knowing what your audience wants to hear. It's a way of making an argument that does not call out to objective fact, as academic arguments do, but which is a subtle use of yellow journalism, shared consciousness, and emotional intelligence. It is  not an introspective act. Rather, at it's best, in my opinion. it encourages introspection and demonstrates a method of expression for those wary of the institution certified methods but who believe current conditions, whatever they are, can and must be improved. Telling stories, as any griot could tell you, is an exercise of community leadership.

Rewind.

I've lost my ability to tell a good story. Telling a good story is all about knowing what your audience wants to hear. What would they find interesting? What matters to them the most? And most important of all, who are "they"?

It takes me a long time to judge and cater to an audience. I watch and listen carefully. I start by talking to one person. Slowly, I infiltrate. Eventually, I become the person who knows and talks to everybody and thinks of them as all a part of on one large, dynamic, never-ending puzzle that I finally learned the key to solving. It takes me a long time but with slow and diligent work, including late nights spent imagining conversations with people I have yet to speak with and telling trial stories, which some people call "lies," to help me judge my audience, I can figure it out. And to be honest, it's the most interesting work in the world.

But I don't just want to study people like they are lab mice. And I don't do it because I want everyone to like me. I watch them carefully so I can function as best as I can in the community. I've mentioned my mom's self-consciousness about this before but I think it also has to do with having a sense that you are different in a way that most of the people around you might not understand. The difference between my mom and I is that I have never been ashamed of being different. In fact, I find it far more realistic to think of being different as something that's just, well, different.

Accordingly, people react differently to difference. As someone different, I realized I really needed to know my peers and accept their difference before I should expect them to accept mine. It's a trust breeds trust sort of thing. Also, because I feel more different than the usual amount, I felt it's something that needs to be done with extra care than the usual things I do. It is utterly important for me to be a part of a community. It is the only way I know how to function. It's only when I know everyone's stories that I can tell them my own and it's only once they know mine that they can properly become a part of it.

Once I am a part of a community, I am fully invested in its dynamic. Accordingly, the greatest pain I can suffer is the feeling that the community I am a part of does not have my own or even its own best interests in mind. If someone is doing something that hurts someone else in the community, I am restless until there is some resolution.

I have been a part of some toxic communities. I have also been a part of communities I did not feel utilized what I had to offer it and therefore, did not have either my own or it's own best interests in mind. Maybe that makes me sound full of myself, asserting that I can differentiate what is best for a community. To be honest, after a certain point, I become too invested and I can no longer tell. What I've never been good at is abandoning a sinking ship. I think of it as good as being my own and if it's going down, so am I.

Of course, it only takes surviving that a few times, probably fewer for some people that others, that you have the choice to not go down with it. I, on the other hand, took so long to learn that, that when I learned it, I decided to maybe just find a different form of transportation.

However, this blog is not called "Introspective Commentary." Despite that, that's what it is. And to be honest, when I write fiction, it is really nothing more than introspection, either. My number one fan, maybe my only fan anymore, has told me that it is stream of consciousness, which for some reason never occurred to me before he pointed it out.

As I said before, in my last blogpost, my sister singled out the part of my post that was most important to her. Introspection, which is perhaps my own opinion (and that explains away my personal dislike of stream of consciousness narration), is often done to figure out what's most important to a person. For some people, just figuring things out, anything at all, is what's their most important thing. For me, the thing that was most important was my function in a community. I do not believe it was something that came from being a self-conscious teenager, though being one helped me figure it out. I think it's something I honestly believe to be the most important thing that there is and my recent introspective phase has come out of disillusionment with the idea.

However, introspection is not a vehicle of achieving what the title of this blog seems to imply and what I have in previous posts implied is most important to me. I am not trying to define new values for myself. I am in a battle against myself to get back to the way of life I prefer over this one. I'm not trying to get things back to the way they were. I am trying to resist the disillusionment, cynicism, and general closed heartedness/mindedness caused by disappointments outside of my own control and return to learning from my mistakes and then moving on.

I am trying to be someone who tells good stories, again.

Learning To Draw Again

I'm going to learn to draw again.
I'll learn to look things straight in the eye
and memorize the gesture
of being seen.

I have grown too accustomed
to the pursuit of
the gaze of
privilege.

I have grown too accustomed
to seeing and not being seen.

I have grown too accustomed
to my supernatural position
as a ghost.

I'm going to learn to draw again.
I'll learn to look things straight in the eye
and internalize the gesture
of being seen.

9/11: 10 Years Since And It's Time for A Muslim President

Good afternoon, my fellow Americans.
Well, actually, I should be honest,
I’m not an American citizen.
I’m a permanent resident, by chance,
patiently awaiting citizenship since I was a child of two.
But, please, hear me out:

Imagine me,
ten years ago,
seventh grade gym class,
the teacher comes in late,
interrupting my musings
over whether my sneakers made my feet look big,
saying, to the other teacher,
“No, they need to know.”

We fall silent.
He says,
“Guys, a plane flew into the Twin Towers
down in New York. It’s really bad.”

Imagine,
the words meant nothing to me.
I didn’t hear anything else he said.
Gym class moved through its usual motions.
As the day went on, I saw it on TV.
A friend of mine said he was worried
because his dad worked nearby.
As the day went on,
I wrote a poem, watching the second plane,
for the thousandth time.

Later, I was asked to read it at a school assembly.
I was nervous, but that day, I understood I had a responsibility.
I joined the school newspaper
to answer questions from people I didn’t know.
Was I was related to Osama bin Laden?
Did I have explosives hidden in my basement?
Did I believe in Jesus Christ?

The next year,
I joined school government and was elected into office.
The next year,
a friend told me she wanted to be trusted and,
in an act of self preservation,
shed her most protective layer; her hijab.

The next year,
I wrote poem after poem,
trying to understand.
The next year, I began volunteering in my community.

The next year, I watched Fahrenheit 9/11,
and completely distracted from Michael Moore’s snark
by the violent war imagery,
I cried like a baby.
The next year,
I became a media junkie,
holding my breath at every Muslim name,
praying to God,
that this person
was someone like me.
The next year,
my teachers chose me
for the Frederick Douglas and Susan B. Anthony Award.

The next year,
I went to college.
I wanted to study civil rights
and this made my parents very nervous.
The next year, Barak Obama was elected
and my mom said,
“May God protect him.”

The next year,
I wanted to be a writer,
but I didn’t want to write about exotic food,
or men with beards and guns,
or women who were a pair of kohl darkened eyes.

Last year,
some people demonstrated against the construction of a community center,
because it would house the prayer of Islam,
prayer of, in English, peaceful surrender,
which they believed could taint the sanctity
of the nearby sacred space known as Ground Zero.

The Pew Poll found, this year,
Muslims are the most diverse religious group in America,
the most optimistic religious group,
and a group as loyal to America as they are to their religion.
This year, a GOP hopeful said on television
that any Muslim serving under him
would have to take a special loyalty oath.

I read somewhere,
that you aren’t culturally considered American
unless your family has been here at least two generations before your birth.
Every morning, all through school,
I pledged allegiance to the flag
Of the United States of America,
And to the Republic, for which it stands,
One nation, under God,
With liberty, and justice for all.

I’d like to thank you, my fellow Americans,
who’ve been as good on their pledge as I have.

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

-"Song of Myself," Walt Whitman

Reading belle hooks is as good for my soul as reading Walt Whitman has ever been. I have been slowly working my way through Teaching Critical Thinking, savoring the fleeting chapters of "practical wisdom." In a chapter on how helpful stories are for the learning process, she shares one of her favorite stories. It goes like this:

"A student seeking to understand better the process of self-actualization goes to the teacher and says, 'I often suffer from a split mind, a lack of congruence between what I think, say, and do. How can I end this suffering?' The teacher tells the student that the potential for this split is happening inside everyone. For inside all of us there is a 'sick self and a self struggling to be well and they are in conflict.' When the student asks the teacher which self is winning the conflict, the teacher replies, 'whichever self you feed.'"

Philosophical, empowering, 100% belle hooks.

As I may have mentioned, I am terrible at taking advice. You cannot simply tell me what to do and expect I'll do it, even if I asked you for advice. I need to see the reason behind your advice and I need to see the values behind your reasoning, and I need you to acknowledge that I've thought about this so much already that it's a ridiculously complex issue that you may not fully understand unless you're in the mood for a very, very long story. At it's best, advice only helps to clarify my own reasoning and the values behind them. However, because we may disagree or, even more likely, I may feel that your advice doesn't take the culmination of my experience into consideration, I am still left with little confidence on my issue.

On the other hand, the best stories of wisdom rarely tell you directly what to do but help you think through your own complexities and, at the same time, are empowering. Even stories that don't resemble zen koan, just good, nuanced stories that aren't your own and help you get out of your own head and your own frame of mind help you figure out your own experience in a delicate comparison/contrast.

People are complicated, life is complicated, and that's why we need stories to help us learn.

Radical Heritage

In Bangladesh, it's considered patriotic to be radically political. If you don't have any passionate political opinions, it's because you don't care about your country. If anyone's tried to kill you because of your provocative ideas, you are considered a hero in general consensus for having made people think. This basically being Humayun Azad's life story and him being my relative, no wonder my mom is wary of my literary and political leanings.

Though my literary aspirations are in vernacular English and my political aspirations are in American local government, I am after all, a Bengali educated in English and raised in America.

Azad wrote the Bengali equivalent of The Second Sex, was an anti-military, anti-religion satirist and wrote both adult and young adult fiction in addition to political criticism. He also wrote on and studied Bengali language linguistics. The political bent in his fiction is to be expected because Bangladeshis well know, as everyone should, that language is political. His form, therefore, suits his function, which is always a selling a point for me. Though I don't necessarily see eye to eye with him across the board, I have to admit that the man was a badass.

Bengali language is seeped in literary tradition well beyond Tagore (who Azad claimed to be a misogynist/chauvinist) and Arundhati Roy. Merely exposure to the language, apparently, can cause literariness, such as with immigrant Jhumpa Lahiri (and, I suspect, Rohinton Mistry although I'm not 100% positive on his first language). I'm just scratching the surface here. If I mention Bharati Mukherjee, I'm probably crossing into the realm of writers most people have never heard of, if I haven't been there for awhile already. I just wanted to add another person, Humayan Azad, to my readership's consciousness. If you had doubts about my writing capacity before, now you can rest assured that it's in my blood.

A Coming Out Story

If you haven't heard about the stereotypical career of the South Asian, it may be because you are not the stereotypical child of the stereotypical South Asian immigrant parents who believe the only way for a South Asian to be successful in America is to fit quietly into the stereotypes of the South Asian doctor, professor, or engineer. Or, as my father explains, any career that is so highly skilled that they have no choice but to hire you.

Though none of this was explained to me, my parents frowned on their straight-A child's childhood dream to become a teacher. If you're smart enough, you go to medical school. And if you don't go to medical school, you aren't smart enough.

In my first semester of college, I realized I was far more interested in social justice than I was in medicine. In fact, through personal experience, I decided the honor of the medical field has been severely crippled by pharmaceutical companies and other forays indulging in capitalism and vowed I would never make a three figure salary off a nation struggling for health care access.

When I revealed to my parents that I'd found my calling, they quickly informed me that politicians are corrupt and my interests would lead me down a shameful road ending nowhere better than where I started. Disheartened, by not only the naivete they perceived me to possess, I did not dare mention that my increasing awareness of myself as a post-9/11 Muslim American woman was only a shaky first step. Where I sought support and advice, I was met with devastated expectations, adamant rejection, and confused anger.

Instead, I dropped out and took a semester off to gather my courage. When I returned to college, my first semester English class-- Global Lit, redirected me to my knack for cultural analysis and my love for literature. My teachers in high school tried in vain to foster those things in me but I had dutifully pursued science instead. This time I decided to follow my instincts.

In the meantime, my father became more and more frustrated with the lack of career direction in my choice of major. As it becomes more and more clear to me what I want to do, I am realizing I knew all along but was afraid to claim that knowledge of myself in fear of disappointing my parents. I wandered semi-aimlessly in a place I didn't quite belong. I started to believe that what they'd said was true, that my failure to pursue medicine meant I wasn't smart enough or strong enough to succeed--that I would never make them happy. Unfortunately, my belief in myself maintained its sway in my shaping. A negativity crept into me, buried itself there and has grown and seeped into parts of me I once believed to be infallible.

Again, this blog is a quest to adhere to the best of my beliefs. Here is another: Do NOT accept negativity. Reject it as harshly as it would reject you. Though this may stand in contradiction with my previous post, I do not believe it is entirely a matter of having the right to define yourself. It is more a matter of being good to yourself when you decide what defines you.