Smaran Dayal

“Who we love & how we love are inherently political. We declare our kinship through our actions & words in both explicit & subtle ways.”—Alice Wong, “Let’s Recognize Why #AccessIsLove” from Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life

Important PSA.

We have friends everywhere. #andor

This is incredible. I didn’t realize it was this complex.

🚨New Episode Alert 🚨

Please check out this latest @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social episode where I speak with @smaran.bsky.social & Ben Baer about their groundbreaking new book, Spider-Mother: The Fiction and Politics of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain.

newbooksnetwork.com/spider-mother

Last week, Ben Baer and I spoke to @arnabdr.bsky.social about our book Spider-Mother and Rokeya Hossain for the New Books Network podcast. You can listen to the episode at the link below. 🙂 So grateful for Arnab's excellent questions and planning of the interview.

newbooksnetwork.com/spider-mother

We're a third of the way there!! Thank you so much for your support!! Help us #BuildtheQueensLink by continuing to donate at the link in bio ✨

What Southeast Queens Really Needs @mta.info #QueensLink

Donate to Support Transit Equity! Reconnect Queens with Rails & Trails, organized by Rick Horan Queens is a divided borough. Traveling between North and South… Rick Horan needs your support for Support Transit Equity! Reconnect Queens with Rails & Trails

The project has received 400k in matching funds from the govt but need to raise 100k to receive it. Consider donating! 2/2

Donate to Support Transit Equity! Reconnect Queens with Rails & Trails, organized by Rick Horan Queens is a divided borough. Traveling between North and South… Rick Horan needs your support for Support Transit Equity! Reconnect Queens with Rails & Trails

The @queenslink.org project would reactivate a section of the NYC subway, connecting the M-line down from Queens Blvd to the A-line in Ozone Park, adding four new stops and serving a transit desert. 1/2 #publictransit #walkablecities #urbanism #nyc

Leading by example. 🫡

Troubling situation, but good job with the interview!

Black Sci-Fi Writer Octavia Butler Predicted the Dystopia of the LA Fires by Studying History This week, her hometown of Pasadena has seen at least 5 killed and 5 schools burned to ash.

The present-day parts of Octavia E. Butler’s time-travel classic, KINDRED, take place in Altadena. So devastating to see the Palisades fire’s destruction of the area. 😢 @teenvogue.bsky.social

Happy MLK Day.

All the political maneuvering aside, I was too. It’s thankfully back today.

RIP David Lodge

Wieso low. Ist doch relevant.

We Lacanians call it Lack Friday

This is aimed at young scholars in the UK (18-30). If you teach on those islands, let your students know.

Some photos from this past weekend’s book event for Spider-Mother at Princeton. Thank you (again) to Ben Baer for his excellent translations and collaboration on this project, to @sadafjaffer.bsky.social for being in conversation with us, and to the Center for Global India for hosting us!

I had to google it. 😅

Rokeya Sakhawat
Hussain is an absolute legend. She published Sultana’s Dream, the first English language science fiction story by a South Asian woman, in 1905.

Alyssa! Good to see you here as well. Thank you!

Thank you! Hope it doesn’t disappoint.

I similarly feel like it helped me get my work out there and meet so many interesting people during the pandemic. It was painful to step away from it when things started to go south in 2022.

The excerpt from William and the Werewolf showing singular they spelled with a Thorn

The first known use of singular “they” is so old that not only does it pre-date singular “you,” it wasn’t even spelled with a “th”

When William and the Werewolf, in 1375 CE, used singular “they,” it was spelled with a Thorn

I’ve come across a few really good articles/op-eds that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise read.

We’ll be reading the Parables in my Octavia Butler major authors class in the spring. Hoping against hope that it doesn’t read as any more prescient/prophetic than it already does.

Links:

Warbler Press: warblerpress.com/spider-mother/

Bookshop: bookshop.org/p/books/spid...

Amazon: www.amazon.com/dp/1962572986

4/4

The book includes a series of nine artworks by the Brooklyn-based artist Chitra Ganesh, inspired by Hossain’s famous short story “Sultana’s Dream,” as well as an accompanying artist’s statement. And NYC Councilmember Shahana Hanif has written a moving forward to the collection. 3/4