Book Launch: Asian American Literary Review’s Special Issue Commemorating the 10th Anniversary of September 11

Join the Asian American Literary Review, Alwan for the Arts, NYU Asian/Pacific/American Institute, and 3rd i NY to commemorate the 10 year anniversary of September 11th and reflect on what it has meant and continues to mean within our communities both here and abroad. The 350-page publication and companion DVD feature a wide array of interviews, essays, first person testimony, and video shorts by South/Asian and Arab American contributors.

The Launch will include:

Introductions by AALR Co-founder Lawrence-Minh Bui Davis and issue co-editor, Parag Khandhar

Screenings from the special edition DVD featuring Bushra Rehman and Pushkar Sharam of Brownstar, amongst others.

Live performances & readings by Yalini Dream & Nandini Nessa of The Sugaran Tour, as well as Zohra Saed of UpSet Press.

Reflections by contributors and special guests, such as the Visible Collective and Moumita Zaman of Khadija’s Caravan who have written about the hardships endured, political battles waged, and personal and collective responses to the past 10 years.

Come see old friends and take a moment to remember, reflect, and celebrate the resilience and power of our communities. Enjoy desi snacks and sodas on the house, and cash bar also available.

Open to the public, $5 – 10 suggested donation toward production cost of publication.
Limited Capacity, so please come on time!
BOOKS WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR SALE ONSITE!
PRICE: $12

More about the issue, including ordering information can be found at: www.aalrmag.org.
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About the Presenters

The Sugaran Tour is a caravan of multimedia stories performed and presented by artist-activists YaliniDream, Nandini Nessa, Bushra Rehman, and Amita Swadhin.

“Sugaran” is the Marathi word for a weaver bird hailing from lands throughout South Asia. These birds are both clever, weaving nests specifically shaped to defy predators, and resilient. Like their namesake, the artists of The Sugaran Tour trace their ancestry to Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and have resiliently survived multiple oppressions – racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, classism, Islamophobia – by weaving new conditions in which they can thrive. Through their fiction, poetry, testimonial performance, filmmaking, theatrical work, and dance, they have stitched bits of discarded and buried histories from the Northwest Frontier to the Western Ghats to the Aruvi Ara together with lessons learned in the concrete jungle of NYC, birthing selves and breaking cycles as they weave. For More Info: http://thesugarantour.tumblr.com/

Zohra Saed was born in Jalalabad, Afghanistan and moved to the US at a young age. Saed holds a BA in Liberal Arts with a concentration in Cross Cultural Literature, an MFA in Poetry, and is a Doctoral Candidate at the City University of New York Graduate School. Through her writing she not only educates people about her country of origin, but also keeps herself deeply connected to it. She sees her writing as a mediator between two worlds. Her works have been published in a number of publications in the US. Saed is the publisher of an upcoming Afghan literary anthology. Check out her blog at: http://zohrasaed.wordpress.com/

Visible Collective is a coalition of artists, activists, and lawyers looking at hyphenated states and security panic. The majority of detainees in paranoia times were from the invisible underclass – shadow citizens who drive taxis, deliver food, clean tables, and sell fruit, coffee, and newspapers. The only time we “see” them is when we glance at the license in the taxi partition, or the vendor ID card. When detained, they cease to exist in the consciousness. The impulse to create an insider-outsider dynamic with “loyalty” overtones has a pedigree: WWI incarceration of German-Americans; 1919 detention of immigrants in Anarchist bomb scare; WWII internment of Japanese-Americans; and HUAC “red scare”. See: http://disappearedinamerica.org/

Khadijah’s Caravan connects people, places and communities through spiritually-based activism. Our aim is to support and encourage values of compassion and justice by focusing on art, education, and entrepreneurship. http://www.khadijahscaravan.com