White ink on a white page
I just started reading the book in which, as the title suggests, Rushdie reflects on matters of life and death after a near-fatal stabbing in August 2022.
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April 22, 2024
Baghdad, a decade after the U.S. invasion.
20 years of tears
I flew home from a Boston writing conference this afternoon. The skies were cloudless and blue. Earth looked so serene from 33,000 feet up.
March 20, 2023
New year, new beginnings
Today, on the first day of 2023, I begin a new adventure. My full-time hire date at the University of Georgia was listed as January 1.
January 1, 2023
Of anniversaries and the stories that really matter
On the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War, I called a man who lost his son in Baghdad for a story I was writing for CNN. Anniversaries of tragedies, he…
September 10, 2021
In the middle of the day…
I edited a story this week about a woman who found rebirth through a pregnancy during the pandemic. I tried hard to understand how she felt and yet, the concepts…
May 19, 2021
Enemy of the people
You told me I was less than you. Enemy of the people. You robbed my sun, dimmed my stars, took away my moon. Left me adrift; I knew not how…
January 20, 2021
Losing my pillars of love
I have always been called the oldest among my cousins because the truly eldest of my generation were so much older than the rest of us, the sons of my…
December 27, 2020
The word ‘hero’ is overused but it’s truly fitting for John Lewis
When is the last time I cried over the death of a public figure or a politician? I can’t remember, really. Perhaps it was when Indira Gandhi was assassinated. I was young then and mourned the woman I had idolized in childhood. Beyond politics, she served as a role model for Indian girls of my generation.
Last night, I cried when I heard the news that John Lewis had lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. I grieved the death of a tireless fighter for freedom and justice. (more…)
July 18, 2020
It’s about time we retire the ‘R word’
In 2013, when I was a CNN Digital reporter, I spoke by phone with Suzan Harjo, a Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee writer and activist whose lifelong mission has been to fight for Native American rights. Part of her work was to remove the use of native people as mascots for sporting teams. The Washington Redskins, she told me, was the worst offender of them all.
She couldn’t even bring herself to saying the name. The R-word, she said, was the same as the N-word.
Fans of the Washington football team have defended its name as an honorific; that somehow, the word, redskins, pays tribute to the native people of America. But the Native Americans I know say the term is offensive and the Merriam-Webster dictionary advises the word “should be avoided.” Harjo told me nothing could be more derogatory than the R word.
“The Washington team — it’s the king of the mountain,” she said. “When this one goes, others will.” (more…)
July 13, 2020
On Day 86, I took a risk to fly away to the city by the bay.
The stories I will live by
My pandemic isolation began on March 12. At first, I welcomed the days spent alone at home. And though I felt stressed about having to suddenly pivot and shift my classes online, I relished not having to rush out of the house every morning. But as the days turned to weeks and then months, a strange sort of loneliness set in and I found it dangerously easy to slip into a morose mood.
Determined not to spiral downward, I began posting about the things that made me smile in this strange and trying time when the news seemed to get worse by the day. COVID-19 had killed more than 100,000 Americans. Millions were unemployed. Countless businesses shuttered, maybe forever. And then America exploded over police brutality against people of color. The Black Lives Matter movement that had been born years ago was again at the forefront of our collective consciousness. (more…)
June 15, 2020
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