27 Sep, 2022

homelessness and flooded fields…

27 Sep, 2022

L: Photo of tents by Quratulain Bakhtiari along a street in Sindh (August); R: Image from a helicopter by Haris Gazdar of submerged fields in Dadu district (September) In his New Yorker essay, “Pakistan’s Biblical Floods and the Case for Climate Reparations,” Mohammed Hanif opens with: “We have tried,...

Read more

visiting new and old corners of houston…

Sections of murals by Genzo; (L) Tu Lucha; (R) Every Beautiful Poem “Women’s rights are human rights,” said Dr. Sima Samar when talking about the future of Afghan women at an event on March 30 for which I flew to Houston. Dr. Samar was speaking in the wake of...

Read more

telling our own stories. . .

Found art collage by Minal, Karachi 2013; materials: flower petals, leaf, photographed on red floor Yesterday, my essay, My Chicana-South Asian daughter, finding her roots in Karachi and south Texas, was published in Los Angeles Times as an op-ed. Minal, the subject of the essay, was a wonderful reader,...

Read more
02 Feb, 2022

love in the time of omicron…

02 Feb, 2022

L: Roasted corn, camel, and sunset (photo by Minal S); R: With siblings, cousins, and Ammi at Usman’s mehndi celebration My two weeks in Karachi were punctuated with wedding festivities on one side as the family gathered to celebrate my nephew Usman marriage to Barira, held against the backdrop...

Read more

flying to the moon …

A long line ahead of Minal and me on a cold and rainy morning as we waited to get tested for COVID so we could fly today Even though I have flown between the US and Karachi, Pakistan for more than three decades, I feel as if preparing for...

Read more
21 Oct, 2021

last weekend to see “on belonging – community responses to home and the pandemic”…

21 Oct, 2021

Photos by Milly Correa Hernandez Almost three weeks have slipped away since one of my On Belonging – community responses to home and the pandemic installations was stolen / removed from McDonald Park. Even after investigations by a Pasadena detective who called me three times, no one came forward...

Read more

theft/disappearance of my “on belonging – community responses to home and the pandemic” project. . .

L: “On Belonging – community responses to home and the pandemic” at McDonald Park; photo by a Pasadena parks employee; R: The live oak tree after being stripped of the installation Below is the letter I sent out to community members who are involved in my project: Dear friends...

Read more
24 Sep, 2021

discostan for afghanistan …

24 Sep, 2021

Afghan dancer Samira Karami at Discostan’s fundraiser for Afghan refugees Last Saturday, I felt as if the pandemic had slipped away when I joined more than 500 bodies at Zebulan to support Afghan refugees and artists. To enter the event, one had to make a donation to causes listed...

Read more
16 Aug, 2021

afghanistan, haiti, covid . . .

16 Aug, 2021

Like most people I know, all week I was tracking the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. And as predicted by many, yesterday morning, I woke up to a new headline: AFGHANISTAN’S GOVERNMENT COLLAPSES A second headline read: 7.2 MAGNITUDE EARTHQUAKE STRIKES HAITI Lower in headline streams, was information about COVID-19’s...

Read more

gaza sunset…

photo of sunset over Gaza by Hadeel Assali This morning, I called Hadeel Assali, a friend from Houston, Texas who recently defended her dissertation at Columbia University. I had been thinking of her all month as Israeli bombs destroyed the infrastructure in Gaza and killed more than 250 civilians,...

Read more

say their names. . .

Four days after six women of Asian descent were murdered by a white supremacist in Atlanta, the mainstream media is barely releasing the women’s names. Few details about the women are available, yet people are bombarded with details about the murderer, his “bad day” and “addiction” issues — information...

Read more
13 Mar, 2021

a year has passed…

13 Mar, 2021

my family began the year by ordering black and gray masks but have now accumulated patterns that we can match with our clothes One year has slipped away since the lockdown was announced in California. In some ways, time stood still, but in other ways, we have adapted and...

Read more

I was inspired to begin my blog when I visited the library at my alma mater, Mount Holyoke College, and saw a framed photograph of my friends and me calling for divestment of funds from South Africa.

In 2007,  I began a blog when I visited my alma mater and saw a framed photograph of my friends and me calling for divestment of funds from South Africa. I use the blog to document my movement between spaces, Houston, Karachi, Delhi, Dhaka, Los Angeles and elsewhere, recording observations, images and conversations. Here, I document the multiple realities that I inhabit – writer, artist, mother, activist, educator, and transnational. Interviews from my blog were exhibited at Houston’s Baker Ripley Community Center (2014) and at Houston Public Library in downtown (2015). My papers are archived at the University of Houston’s library.