More: For weekly books coverage, sign up for the free Book Pages newsletterįor anyone looking for ways to bend language to save your life and the life of others: Audre Lorde’s “Black Unicorn, Sister Outsider” and basically anything by Audre Lorde for anyone wanting to learn more about South Asian American history: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s “Leaving Yuba City” and the “Karma of Brown Folk” by Vijay Prashad for anyone wanting to write about childhood trauma in language that is achingly beautiful: “The Dead and the Living” and “Satan Says” by Sharon Olds for anyone writing about sexual abuse, before there was #MeToo, there was “Bastard out of Carolina” by Dorothy Allison for anyone who wants to read lyrical, heart-breaking work on being a queer Black woman in this country with love, love, love: Kamilah Aisha Moon’s “She Has a Name” and “Starshine & Clay.” Then my child will be cursed like the Queen’s daughter in “Sleeping Beauty.” But here goes: Whenever I answer this question, I worry I’m going to leave someone out.
Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers? Although our lives were almost a century apart, I could relate deeply to her experiences of being a child in an impoverished immigrant neighborhood in the outer boroughs on NYC. I’ll always remember the experience of reading “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” The fierce love Betty Smith showed for the Nolan family and father, her knowing of what it was like to be from a community that was misunderstood in this country … that is the fierce love I feel for my Muslim father and community. Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?
She responded to The Book Pages about the books and people who made an impact on her.
A native of Corona, Queens in New York, Rehman co-edited the anthology “Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism,” and her previous books include the story collection, “Corona,” and “Marianna’s Beauty Salon,” a book of poems. Bushra Rehman is the author of “Roses, In the Mouth of a Lion,” a queer coming-of-age novel set in a 1980s-era Muslim American community.
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