Mahmud Rahman
@mahmudwriter.bsky.social
Writer. Translator. Short stories: Killing The Water, 2010, Penguin India. Translation: Black Ice, 2012, HarperCollins India. Nomad - Dhaka, Calcutta, Tulsa, Boston, Detroit, Providence, Bay Area, LA, Toyota, Philadelphia. 2025 NEA Translation Fellow.
Somehow I missed the news that Octavia Butler's Survivor novel has been recently republished. I knew she preferred the book to stay obscure, and I had not tried to hunt for a rare copy. There's a really good intro by Alyssa Collins that goes into her journey with the book.
Remembering The Mighty Sparrow who just passed. I think I first heard him when I got a hold of this album in the mid 80s. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOWu...
Mighty Sparrow - Capitalism Gone Mad
YouTube video by Edward Spencer
youtube.com
While we watch the new Korean series Wonderfools, this was an interesting book review to come across. Korea's emergence into the global cultural stage in the last few decades is a fascinating story. Glad to see this piece raise the issue of the role of translation.
Cha: An Asian Literary Journal@asiancha.bsky.social · 2w ago𝐍𝐄𝐖 @asiancha.bsky.social 𝐑𝐄𝐕𝐈𝐄𝐖 | Sahar Othmani reviews Dal Yong Jin's 𝑈𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐾𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑛 𝑊𝑎𝑣𝑒 (Routledge, 2023): "Long before this momentous occasion, however, South Korea had embarked on one of the most remarkable transnational cultural campaigns in history." chajournal.com/2026/09/27/k...
Very thorough, investigative story about a respected, famed Nepal scholar from the U.S. who stole historical treasures from Nepal. (I remember learning about one such respected man from the U.S. who stole in Bangladesh.)
Roman Gautam@romangtm.bsky.social · 3w agoOut now! A new @himalsouthasian.bsky.social investigation by @artcrimeprof.bsky.social on how Mary Slusser, a renowned US scholar, made her name as an expert on Nepal’s heritage while illicitly buying sacred artefacts and smuggling them out to the United States. www.himalmag.com/mary-slusser...
Republicans have spent the last year trying to defund Dolly Parton
DELEGATE FROM RUSSIA: I propose a new initiative. Suppose different models of shoes from the same brand fit differently? ... Imagine a child whose current shoe is a size 2. Their next pair, from the same company, in the same size, should either fall off immediately, prevent circulation, or… both.
McSweeney's@mcsweeneys.net · 3mo agoCHAIRPERSON: Let’s begin with the annual report. How are we doing? ANALYST: Extremely well. Parents continue to ask questions such as, “How can my child be a size 1, a size 32, and a size 13 all at the same time?” (Thunderous applause.)
Has our Chief Scientist Donald "Inject Bleach" Trump said anything about the illegal, bad air, swarming across our borders? Clearly it's too late to rake the forest floor up in Ontario but I would expect him to come up with other grand solutions only worthy of such a powerful true genius mind.
Sudden, unexpected deaths of certain kinds of politicians take me back to Nelson Rockefeller's. I wonder why.
Dhaka’s lost canals: "Their disappearance is a tale of negligence, greed, and weak enforcement. However, beneath the encroachment and lack of maintenance lies something older and more deliberate: an imported idea that water is a nuisance rather than an asset." www.thedailystar.net/slow-reads/b...
Dhaka: How a city was planned to drown
Dhaka waterlogging is driven by colonial urban planning that deliberately destroyed historic Dhaka canals and wetlands.
thedailystar.net
I had the good fortune of seeing him perform with Third Rail in the summer of 1997 in San Francisco. I'd just moved to the area a few months earlier. What he did with the guitar blew me away.
jeff@jazyjef.bsky.social · 4mo agoRIP James “Blood” Ulmer (1940-2026)
Today, 230 years ago, while George and Martha Washington were having dinner, Ona Judge escaped from slavery. The first president attempted to recapture her relentlessly. But she outlived the Washingtons by 50 years. Read about those working to make Ona Judge a household name in America.
At a partially restored President’s House, Philly honored Ona Judge’s daring escape from slavery
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker signed an executive order designating May 21 "Ona Judge Day" on the 230th anniversary of Judge's daring escape from George and Martha Washington.
inquirer.com
Extraordinary work. A conversation w/Samar about the book: arablit.org/2026/03/16/s... A review by our Ibtihal Rida Mahmood: arablit.org/2026/03/17/m...
Samar Yazbek on Redefining Collective Memory
“Sometimes, I believe that silence itself could carry meaning in the face of this barbarity. Sometimes, I tell myself that I’ll stop documenting atrocities and only write literature. But all …
arablit.org
Fitzcarraldo Editions@fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social · 5mo ago🇵🇸 YOUR PRESENCE IS A DANGER TO YOUR LIFE: VOICES FROM GAZA by Samar Yazbek, tr. Leri Price, publishes this week Head to the link below to read an excerpt from the book and order a copy. fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/your-p...
Many Black American writers found refuge in France and set stories and novels there. Richard Wright, James Baldwin, John A. Williams, William Gardner Smith. Was this Black expat scene in France reflected in French literature? Are there works of fiction from France that focus a lens on that world?
"Many ideas that enjoy enormous popularity among billionaires—cryogenic immortality, disregard for punctuation, the Antichrist—have scandalously been excluded from our labs and classrooms."
We’re Diversifying the University by Hiring More Crackpots
“For too long, the university has ignored the wisdom of the donor class and hired based on academic excellence. Regrettably, this has led to the underreprese...
buff.ly
“Huck shows great disrespect for the Court’s precedent in Dred Scott when aiding the fugitive Jim, presumably due to liberal indoctrination by the Widow Douglas.” www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/exc...
Excerpts from Chief Justice John Roberts’ High School English Essays
“Huck shows great disrespect for the Court’s precedent in Dred Scott when aiding the fugitive Jim, presumably due to liberal indoctrination by the Widow Doug...
mcsweeneys.net
Best not to monument men or any person no matter how much they might have historically meant for a movement. I wish all the memorials to Cesar Chavez, streets, parks, holidays, can be renamed for Farmworker Justice.
Yes, "every man." Been grappling with this all day. It is only thanks to women speaking out, women accusing, women bringing out these stories that might possibly mean that the possibility of future abuse may be lessened. We have a long way to go.
Rebecca Solnit@rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 7mo agoPeople are commenting about how this is about "powerful" men, but in a society that listens to men over women and girls, that treats the former as competent and credible, the latter as not, every man is empowered to abuse, and it happens at all levels and in all sectors of society.
Shocking but not surprising to learn Cesar Chavez sexually abused underaged girls. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/18/u... Chavez was an organizing genius who became a deranged cult leader, leaving his union a shambles, as I explained 11 years ago in the NY Review: www.nybooks.com/articles/201...
The Myths of Cesar Chavez | Timothy Noah
The civil rights movement of the 1960s gets a much better press than the labor movement. Yet the two causes were intertwined. Walter Reuther, president of
nybooks.com
It was a joy to spotlight the Philly literary translation scene with my brilliant friends📚🖤🦅
Mahmud Rahman@mahmudwriter.bsky.social · 7mo agoOne of the exciting things about moving to Philadelphia was discovering the city's literary translation community. In this story BillyPenn at WHYY covers Philly's translation community focusing on those of us who are part of the network Transversal. billypenn.com/2026/03/03/l...
We couldn't read the greats like Anna Karenina, The Metamorphosis or Don Quixote without literary translators. Philly's own are doing their part, translating anti-war journals from Russian, representing queer French texts and bringing new perspectives to the U.S. billypenn.com/2026/03/03/l...
Philly’s literary translators want to increase visibility of their work
Philly has a broad translator community that allows English speakers to consume work from many different countries and cultures.
billypenn.com
One of the exciting things about moving to Philadelphia was discovering the city's literary translation community. In this story BillyPenn at WHYY covers Philly's translation community focusing on those of us who are part of the network Transversal. billypenn.com/2026/03/03/l...
Philly’s literary translators want to increase visibility of their work
Philly has a broad translator community that allows English speakers to consume work from many different countries and cultures.
billypenn.com
Been meaning to read Ryszard Kapuściński for a long time. Made sense to start with his book "Shah of Shahs" written when the Pahlavi monarchy was ousted. This is a different kind of book, the blurb is right that it brings a 'mythographer's perspective and a novelist's virtuosity.'
The 20th-century novelist Richard Wright and modern artist John Wilson shared a worldview that the violence they witnessed and heard stories about growing up wasn’t just about terror — it was a tool to control and exploit Black labor.
How Richard Wright Shaped John Wilson’s Protest Art
Wilson, like Wright before him, wrestled with the psychic toll of racial violence on Black families in his paintings and lithographs.
hyperallergic.com
JΛZZ HΞΛVΞN: Happy birthday to the legendary singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and activist Nina Simone February 21, 1933–April 21, 2003 ❝What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did. ❞
Today marks the language movement of 1952 demanding official recognition of Bangla in then East Pakistan. Later the day was recognized as International Mother Language Day. I published an essay in 2018 on my journey crossing real borders, language borders. desiwriterslounge.net/articles/pap...
CROSSING BORDERS, MAPPING TONGUES | DWL
desiwriterslounge.net
McNally Jackson has put together a list of 100 places in New York’s five boroughs significant to Black literary culture as a celebration of Black History Month’s 100th anniversary.
Explore Black literary NYC with this map of 100 important spots.
This year is the 100th anniversary of Black History Month, and the bookstore McNally Jackson put together a list of 100 places in New York’s five boroughs that were significant for Black literary c…
buff.ly
I recall the Profumo affair. I was barely 10 in then East Pakistan & the news had arrived that our dictator Ayub Khan had attended one of the scandal-linked parties in Britain. His acolytes no doubt saw this as impressive. For me it was the first exposure to the nexus of sex, wealth, power.
The Independent@the-independent.com · 8mo agoIn Britain, Epstein will go down as an even bigger scandal than the Profumo affair
Vanessa Ogle (@vanessahistory.bsky.social) on how the life of a single barge—from floating prison to makeshift barracks to offshore bunkhouse—tells the story of the global economy
Rolling with the Economic Tides | Vanessa Ogle
Ian Kumekawa’s Empty Vessel follows the lifespan of one barge, from bunkhouse to floating prison to barracks and back, as it traces the shadowy outer limits of the maritime economy.
nybooks.com
On a visit to Dhaka, Bangladesh, last August, I met my 15 year old self and he reminded me how movements that shake a nation can influence children in schools. I tried to recall how our ideas got shaped at that moment. alalodulal.org/2026/01/29/j...
Remembering the Josephite Action Committee, 1969
During his visit to Dhaka in August 2025, writer Mahmud Rahman encountered a street art panel highlighting political discussions in schools. Reflecting on past student movements against dictatorshi…
alalodulal.org
