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Mostly, It Is For Me
I stare at the items in my Amazon cart: a pair of leather sandals, dark chocolate bark with nuts, a bag of sea salt caramels. I save two of the three for later and order just the caramels. Yesterday it was a bunch of tee shirts, added and then deleted. A pair of overripe bananas…
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In Conversation with The Indian Book Club
The Indian Book Club sent me fifteen questions about Why Is My Skin Brown?, and answering them turned into one of the more honest conversations I have had about this book. We talked about growing up the darker cousin. About my paati’s backhanded compliments and how a child feels the sting long before she has…
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The Skin I Grew Up In
My essay in The Indian Express, for the She Said column: colourism, a paati’s first word for my daughter, and the systems we fight that live inside us.
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The Last Bit I Walk Alone
The alarm goes off at five forty-five. Maggi in a thermos, a transition reel, photos by the tree, and the last bit of the walk home alone.
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Idols, Fandoms, and Where the Moral Compass Lives
BTS partnered with Google on an AI ad. Namjoon and J-Hope went to a Chris Brown concert and posted it. One did not bother me at all. The other did not register until I saw the uproar online.
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A Girl Can Dream
Felix stood on his hind paws, his snout sniffing the air, his forepaws resting next to my bowl of tamarind water. I was overcome with love for this being. It’s taken over a year for this fellow to worm his way into my heart. I agreed to bring him home because my youngest begged me…
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Many Bodies, One Beating Soul
A week after BTS at MetLife: the freebies, the fan projects, seven men under the spotlight, and what fandom and belonging mean to one ARMY family.
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Changing Views on Adoption
Six years after the guardianship papers, an adoptive mother traces how adoptee and birth mother voices changed what she thought she knew. From The Smudged Hyphen.
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Signed, With A Bookmark Inside
Signed copies of Why Is My Skin Brown? are now available, mailed straight from my desk. On the first two orders and the almost-heart next to my signature.
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Do You Still Practice Astrology?
“Do you still practice astrology?” I get some version of this question every once in a while and my answer usually is “not anymore” or “no time to do it well”. I enjoy reading charts. I love distilling archetypes from the chart and seeing which parts resonate and those that don’t. The act of reading…