one uncontrollable hunger away from ruin

• Granta interview with Uzma Aslam Khan and Aamer Hussain on language and Urdu literature
• What the U.S. undid for women in Iraq
• Two pieces about the 1947 Partition of the subcontinent in Granta and The New Yorker
• Fascinating photography project called In almost every picture #7 - from the review: " it tells the story of a Dutch woman whose life is seen from the point of view of a fairground shooting gallery. The chronological series begins in 1936, when a 16-year-old girl from Tilburg in Holland picks up a gun and shoots at the target in a shooting gallery. Every time she hits the target, it triggers the shutter of a camera and a portrait of the girl in firing pose is taken and given as a prize......This series documents almost every year of the woman's life (there is a conspicuous pause from 1939 to 1945) up until present time"
• 20 Awesomely Untranslatable Words from Around the World
• Penguin Books in Malaysia recently commissioned a print advertising campaign emphasizing the “unputdownable” nature of classic literature. Simply adorable, I want the art on my hands too!
• Tamara's Opus - a heart-breaking and well-performed poem (via trouble)
• This makes me smile every time. Pick-Up Lines for Feminists

slickedbackburns

The moon's been sighted, the taraveeh has been said - Ramazan has started in Pakistan! Ramazan Mubarak to all!

Like in 2005, this Ramazan too begins on a sombre note. Floods have been ravaging Pakistan, leaving death and destruction in their wake. Already dubbed the worst flooding disaster in over 80 years, the death toll stands at 1,600 and at least 14 million people have been affected - exceeding the combined total of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquakeAccording to the UN Humantarian Chief John Holmes, almost 1 in 10 of Pakistan's population has been affected by the floods and the UN has launched a massive appeal for aid. The Big Picture has posted two entries on the floods - the pictures are heart-breaking and almost leave me in tears. Kalsoom at CHUP has helpfully compiled a list of charities and NGOs working to help the flood victims. Please spread the word and do what you can to help.

• SPN Fandom Racefail: glass_icarus alerted me to this. I've been incoherent and sputtering with rage ever since I read about it (post-earthquake Haiti as the setting for your fic? No, just NO.) Just go read her post and the roundups she linked to.


• Hybrid Identities of Characters in Muslim women fiction post 9-11 via Tasnim

  
  This article addresses literary writing by female Muslim authors. Notions of identity, uniformity, and conformity are crucial as to how Muslim women writers depict Muslim characters in the post-9/11 era. In the body of fiction this paper discusses, the characters live out the contradiction of dealing positively with the stigma caused by the New York terrorist attacks, by blurring the line of assimilation and displaying a multifaceted self ; to what extent this is successful, and how it can be interpreted in the wider field of Muslim writings, form some of the main areas of my enquiry.

  [I've read only a few of the books mentioned but found it to be an interesting read nevertheless]
  
  

• trouble's wonderful post on the problematic portrayal of disabled characters in pop culture

  
  So I come back to story after movie after very special episode where the person with the disability, the cancer, the catastrophic illness, gets themselves out of everyone's way by killing themselves or begging others to do it for them. I remember every narrative where disability = evil, where disability = faked, where disability = a lesson, a punishment, a blessing in disguise, a test, a momentary difficulty that is healed when the bitterness goes away, because fictional disability never just is.
  
  This continual fictional narrative of disability as trope is what makes me distrustful of disability in fiction.