Category: Writing
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Who Reaches First
The morning the publicity for my second book began, there was no one to call. On being the one who always reaches, and the wish, just once, to be reached for first.
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On Becoming a Writer
From the treadmill call that started Why Is My Hair Curly? to the week before Why Is My Skin Brown? launches: on writing from memory, writing toward hope, and the label she finally let herself claim.
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I Ran Nineteen Years of Myself Through the Matrix
I ran nineteen years of my own essays through a script that measures sentence length, reading grade, and how often I interrupt myself. What the numbers caught, and what they could not.
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What the Lens Sees
Two hundred and twenty-four professional photos arrive at eleven at night. I pick twenty. None of them, finally, for the woman walking between rooms, mid-thought.
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The Archive Remembers
A question to an AI about Generative Engine Optimization became a week of restructuring seventeen years of my archive, and a night of meeting the selves I used to be.
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The Refusal to Translate
A response to the argument that every major Indian writer lives abroad and writes from memory. The real variable isn’t geography. It’s whether the publishing chain between you and the reader lets you keep the sentence intact.
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Nithya Raman, Okra, and the Brown Woman’s Second Act
I wrote about Rini Sampath in April. Nithya Raman is the next part of the question. The first act has a script. The second act has none.
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^NARS
I planted twenty-six lines into a database my husband architected. One per year of our marriage. He has not seen this part yet.
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Going Gently Into The Night
“My headphones are not charging.” Pattu’s voice is matter of fact. She states it as if it were non negotiable, this state of her headphones. “Have to tried charging it at a different spot? Have you tried using a different charging cord, different adapter?” My questions stream out of me in the measured way of…
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Death Rattle Of A Dying Empire
Photo by Ksenia Chernaya on Pexels.com On Sunday, I sat with four girls, three mine and a friend’s daughter at Movie Tavern for the sing along version of Kpop Demon Hunters. On my left was another woman about my age with a group of kids younger than mine. They all clutched light sticks as they…