The New York Times noted its “limber, detailed prose.” The Guardian stated: “Waldman’s prose is almost always pitch-perfect, whether describing a Bangladeshi woman’s relationship with her landlady or the political manoeuvring within a jury.” In The Washington Post, Chris Cleave wrote that Waldman “excels at involving the reader in vibrant dialogues. Additionally, The Submission was named Esquire’s Book of the Year, Entertainment Weekly’s #1 Novel for the Year, NPR’s Top Ten Novels for 2011 and the list goes on. NPR’s Maureen Corrigan called it “gorgeously written novel” and went so far as to call it the 9/11 novel. High praise, indeed.

In an interview with The Browser, Waldman was asked to define a 9/11 novel.  She responded:

“I guess a 9/11 novel is one that grows out of the attacks in one way or another and uses literature to try to shed some new light. It seems to cover such a wide range of books – from ones that are trying to completely reinvent that day to ones where it’s only a plot device to reroute characters lives. And it includes one where 9/11 isn’t even mentioned – my novel, The Submission.”

According to that same interview 150 works of fiction and nearly 1,000 works of non-fiction have in some way, shape or form been inspired by the events of 9/11. Salon columnist Laura Miller writes that the absence of any great 9/11 literature suggests the banality of death itself. She states: “Life, not death, is the novelist’s subject.” Well, that doesn’t seem to have stopped hundreds of writers, including Waldman. However, The Submission may be a 9/11 novel, but it isn’t the 9/11 novel. It remains simply one of forgettable hundreds trying and failing to meet the strange, insatiable thirst for 9/11 literature.

The Submission tells the tale of half a dozen characters whose lives change after an American-born architect of Indian descent named Mohammed Khan wins a contest to design the  9/11 memorial, provoking widespread outrage and controversy.  (Think the Maya Lin controversy magnified a gazillionfold.) While Claire, a 9/11 widow and wealthy Manhattanite struggles to fight for Khan’s right to remain in the competition, others, like the ambitious New York governor, use the occasion as a vehicle to make political gains. The novel introduces us to a smarmy Muslim American politician, a hapless community of Bangladeshi illegals, a family of angry blue-collar workers who lost a firefighter son in the attack, a radical Islamaphobe and others whose lives have been drastically affected by 9/11.

Waldman, who was assigned to the New York metro desk as a reporter at the Times when the towers fell, likely found herself exposed to many of the factions that arose when the disaster occurred and undoubtedly possess an enormous amount of familiarity with the topic.  As one of the writers who contributed to the Portraits of Grief project, which attempted to chronicle each life lost in the September 11^th attacks, she has seen her share of 9/11 firsthand. One wishes she had been able to take that experience to humanize her characters. In an interview shortly after the book was released, she said:

 “As a novelist, I didn’t want to raid details of people’s lives for material. But also, as a reporter, I felt ambivalent about the “Portraits of Grief”. The wordcount left no room for complexity. The project made me ask, how do you avoid reducing the dead to thumbnail profiles? People are much more complicated than can be represented through daily journalism. They deserve to be portrayed and remembered in all their fullness.”    

Clicking through the Portraits of Grief project, which average 200 words apiece, one can see how tempting it would be to delve into the subject in depth and allow an individual narrative to flow on to the 300+ pages Waldman employs. Unfortunately, allowing a novelist to roam untethered poses its own risks. Waldman makes the rookie mistake of trying to do too much where much less would have sufficed.

The novel first appeared as short-story excerpts in The Atlantic, a form much better suited to Waldman’s futile endeavor to encapsulate the entire post-9/11 debacle in a single book. The Submission nobly attempts to stuff the narratives of half a dozen characters into an entire book, but weaves them in a confusing, unsatisfying manner. The biggest failing, by far, are Waldman’s loosely sketched characters, who spew forth earnest, stiff dialogue that serves to stereotype, not humanize. And sadly, Waldman attempts to accomplish a neat, cyclical narrative through the use of convenient plot twists and various ironies. (Along with a heap of wishful thinking and clunky prose.)

Take for example, a passage about the architect Mohammed “Mo” Khan, as seen through the eyes of a skeptical, tabloid reporter. “He had a beard, but it was tastefully trimmed. His suit looked expensive, and his bearing, unlike the grasping, too-eager-to-please Indians in her neighborhood, was haughty. Next to him sat a dark-haired, foreign-looking woman in a cardinal red suit that suggested she was not only comfortable with attention but craved it. Men, some of them in Islamic costumes, and a few women in headscarves, stood stiffly against the wall behind them, looking like a police lineup of terrorism suspects.”

For a book that drives along on the suspense of a single question (Will Khan be allowed to design the 9/11 memorial?), any interest in an outcome dies of boredom 20 pages in.  For example, Waldman’s depiction of Asma Haque, the illegal Bangladeshi immigrant whose husband, a domestic worker, perished in the attacks, represents potential for a powerful narrative about the problems families of undocumented workers faced after 9-11. However, in Waldman’s prose, any elegance a character like Asma may have had falls flat. Seen through a narrower scope, the characters could be compelling. But as a whole, the characters are tiring.

Somewhere out there, people have come up with some fanciful checklist of the quintessential elements a 9/11 novel contains and have decided that The Submission meets this standard (however vague that may be). But the fact remains, a true 9/11 novel would delve deeper into the human complexities that drive the issues surrounding the attack. Ten years after September 11, the nation still reels with the aftereffects of the catastrophe’s reduction of humans into mere keywords. Brown? Terrorist. Muslim? Terrorist. Turban? Terrorist. Sadly, Waldman’s The Submission does much the same thing. It takes the same tired tropes and trots them out for the reader to rally over. Maybe The Great 9/11 Novel exists. Maybe it doesn’t. But either way, the list will not include The Submission.

The band members of The Kominas have shifted to not only to now include the duo from Sunny Ali and the Kid, but also in instrumental roles – three of the four bandmates take a turn on the mic for this album. With multiple talents acting as the driving force between music and lyrics, the album is eclectic and completely different sounding from anything previously released by The Kominas. People have been saying that their sound has “matured” but instead, I feel the new album better reflects the skills and sounds of the new band members trying collaborate and create a new cohesive sound (Basim Usmani is the only original band member that remains from 2005).

Don’t just take my word for it. Follow the link here to the megaupload site to download the album. And if you are too chicken to download the album before listening to a song – here’s the demo to Ren, a song off of the new album.

Frankly put, it sounds like our punks have evolved – they just may be growing up.

The album exploded on the scene last week, going straight to number #1 in the charts. No surprise considering Karsh Kale has been a revolutionary voice to the on the scene for quite sometime. Kale got his start in a rock band, is known for his phenomenal tabla skills, worked in collaboration with the talented Anoushka Shankar in 2007 and most recently has been using his skills to soundtrack movies, such as with Ajay Naidu’s Ashes. It’s no surprise then, with his recent film scoring experiences that he chose to name his latest release, Cinema.

As one of the first groundbreaking genre busting artists in what is now an established musical fusion genre, Karsh Kale can only be referred to as legendary. The album Cinema takes listeners on a cinematic journey, each song reflecting a different emotion and journey. But instead of telling you about the music, how about listening to the music and deciding for yourself. And of course, download the song **Mallika Jam* for free below. The entire album is available on iTunes.

What makes Karsh Kale tick? I wanted to know. Check out the interview with Karsh Kale, and just to mix it up, I asked him to answer in triplicates. Read it below!

What are three words you’d use to describe your 4th solo album, Cinema?

Progressive, Nostalgic, Journey

What were your top three favorite moments in creating this album, Cinema?

• The day the art work by Archan Nair arrived.
• The day I finished the final mix w Illinton.

• The day the album was released at reached #1 on Tunes World Chart. What were the top three things that inspired your song writing for Cinema?

• Childhood memories.

• Traveling through different musical worlds.
• Acoustic guitar.

You’ve had a very long and successful career, and have collaborated with an amazing range of artists. Who are your top three memorable artists you’ve collaborated with?

Sting , Zakir Hussain and Midival Punditz (could name more)

A couple of your songs on Cinema were influenced by your experience at the Burning Man Festival. What were your top three Burning Man moments?

• First time arriving at the Burn and being attacked by a chain gang of girls in bikinis and Mexican wrestling masks.
• Performing in a geodecent dome where the l.e.d floor lit up and reacted to my tabla playing.
• DJing at the Hooka Dome.

Have to ask, with a title like Cinema, what are your top three favorite cinemas of all times?

• Whats Eating Gilbert Grape
• Enter The Dragon
• Salaam Bombay

You’ve performed around the world at what I can imagine an array of venues and festivals. What were your top three favorite shows you’ve performed at and why?

• Stern Grove with Tabla Beat Science because it was my first performance w Zakir and it was in front of 17,000 people.
• With Realize Live at Harbour Front Toronto. I had a great gig w Yosi Fine on Bass and Kirk Douglass (The Roots) on guitar.
• With the Midival Punditz in Cooimbatore at the Isha Foundation Shivaratri celebrations. I performed at 3 in the morning in front of 400,000 dancing Shiva devotees.

What are three things you can’t leave the home without before you go on tour (beside the musical equipment, of course)?

Ipod, headphones, good shoes or sneakers…

What are the three albums you are listening to right now?

• Social Network Soundtrack / Trent Reznor Atticus Ross,
• The Melody of Rhythm/ Zakir Husain/ Bela Fleck/ Edger Meyer,
• Moving Pictures / Rush

What are three things you hope to accomplish before the cinematic ending of your life? >

• Score a Marvel Comics film.
• To do a live concert in space.
• Settle in a beach front home in a tropical place so I can spend hours staring at the water and listening to music.

Karsh Kale will be touring to promote this album this next month – you can check out his website to see when he’ll be touring near you. You can also follow Karsh Kale on twitter and of course, you can get his album now on iTunes.

[Moving Swiftly::][GuerillaTactics][POORPEOPLESPLANET by mandeep.sethi.music

Full disclosure, I've been helping get the word out for Poor Peoples Planet and am excited to support a young Desi American whose lyrics are smart, conscious, and inspired by the hyphenated identity. But in the course of hanging out with Mandeep this week, I was really impressed to find out that he is one of the co-founders of Slumgods. Based in India, Slumgods was founded in 2010 as the first B-Boy collective in India bringing together emcees, breakers, artists of India and America. The Slumgods are bringing it hard and fresh using the the five elements of hip hop as a tool of empowerment for the slum youth in the Dharavi slums with a community center called Tiny Drops Hip Hop Center.

India's first breaking organization for lower income group children, this attention-grabbing mix of street dance and athletics is infiltrating their lives and bringing positive change to their communities.

Kids from the ages of 10 to 21 are breaking to forget the stress and rut of lives lived as rag pickers and apprentices, electricians, tailors and carpenters. They become the dance, like the original breakers, underprivileged youths from the Bronx in the 1970s.

In America, as his mother sewed on buttons at a sweatshop and his father fulfilled his role as the ubiquitous Indian cabdriver, HeRa found a sense of structure at the local community center that he hopes to replicate at TinyDrops. [cnngo]

Mandeep Sethi will be heading back to his Slumgods roots in Feb for a mini-tour throughout India. He’ll be collaborating with local musicians, such as drum and bass artist Delhi Sultanate and the first Indian reggae band Reggae Rajahs. The last time he went he created this.

Armed with a camera, Mandeep will be documenting his journey this time around too, as he goes around India making hip hop musical connections and expanding Slumgods even further. If you are in India or know of hip hop artists that Mandeep should collaborate with, drop a comment in the comments. To follow him even more, become a Mandeep Sethi fan on Facebook or follow him on twitter @mandeepsethi. And of course, keep an eye out on iTunes to download your copy of Poor Peoples Planet soon. Trust me, it’s an album that is not to be missed.

Boom Bapri-Bap Rap!

Previously: Aisee Taisee Out of Nowhere, Getting Gully

• Pakistan Floods: The July 2010 floods were devastating, affecting 20 million people and submerging 1/5 of the nation. But by then, people were suffering from the crisis of donor fatigue.

• Racebender: M. Night Shymalan’s racist movie The Last Airbender. Come on, he made all the evil people brown! He also got very defensive about it too.

• Truffle Fries: M.I.A.’s truffle french fries bollywood drama with the reportermoment. And the funny or die subsequent mock.

• SB !070: Arizona’s immigration law which would allow the authorities the ability to pull over anyone to ask them about their immigration status.

• Tea Party and Islamaphobia: Gawd, how the Tea Party did us in this election year using the Park 51 situation as their catalyst to instigate fear. With their ignorant misguided and misspelled words. Remember the apology for the “Monkey God Misspeak”? Or when Lungren convinced Bera to give return a donation? Or how Juan Williams was scared of people dressed in “Muslim Garb”? Or SAALT’s report on xenophobic political discourse being the norm now? There were so many news items coming out those few months that blogging about them at Sepia Mutiny got repetitive and exhausting.

• Facebook Block: Remember when Pakistan blocked facebook for a few weeks citing cartoons as their alleged reasons? And then Bangladesh had to go ahead and follow suit? All a ploy to distract people from the politics at hand.

• Census 2010: For the past years, we’ve been functioning with the idea that there are 2 million South Asian Americans with the median age of 29. As of March 2010, that should officially have changed with the latest census count. Though still waiting on the data, it should have a dramatic effect on how we continue to organize the community into the future.

• Outsourced: Sure, we have many Desis on television shows now (mainly as sidekicks), but really, I’m not sure if Outsourced was a step in the right direction even though a lot of you thought it was funny and it got picked up for another season. In other outsourced news, outsourcing to India was still used in hateful racist political campaign ads. Remember this anti-Halter commercial from Arkansas? Or Schumer’s outsourcing tax legislation? Or Carly Fiorina’s ad about jobs going to Bangalore?

• Aziz Ansari: He had his Comedy Central special Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening drop this year AND he hosted the MTV Movie Awards 2010 in addition to being on the TV show Parks and Recreation. But Hari Kondabolu is close on his heels though with a Comedy Central special to be aired February of 2011.

• Padma Lakshmi: Still hot. But now a hot baby mama. Though who the baby daddy is, she still won’t tell.

• Julian Assange and the Cablegate of Wikileaks: Pakistan creates a fake WikiLeak, and there’s a bunch of other leaks on South Asian countries that were slowly released while Assange tries running from the Western world.

• Flying While Brown: It’s still an issue. There was heightened enhanced screening for people traveling from a “terrorist” nation. There were the body scanner machines that TSA started using this year that all of a sudden made everyone concerned about privacy. Even THE Shahrukh Khan got body scanned while going through airport security. The Indian Ambassador even gets a pat down.

• New Music: There were a slew of new Alterna-Desi musicians that broke through this year. There was opera singer Sean Panikkar. Goldspot’s release of And The Elephant is Dancing. Imaad Wasif’s album The Voidist. Chee Malabar, Das Racist and Koom the Ripper all drop free music. Riz MC’s MICroscope album. The grammy nominated jazz extraordinaire Vijay Iyer with his album Historicity. Janina Gavankar’s Love Locked Down. Sunny Ali and the Kid get together. Fair and Kind’s brother and sister duo Anand and Arthi. Repping San Fran and Zulu Nation we have the up and coming Mandeep Sethi. Guitar playing Bhi Bhiman. Tasneem’s animal days are gone. GonjaSufi. Ras Ceylon got gully. King Khan, Humble the Poet and The Kominas all release awesome videos. And Sub Swara releases Trigger. Plenty more where these artists came from – can’t wait to see what 2011 holds.

• Politics: What a dirty competitive year for politics. A large number of Desis ran for office this cycle, more than we’ve ever seen. But only three won in the end. There was the Sarah Palin supported, “rag-head” slurred, allegedly having an affair Nikki Haley who won her seat for South Carolina Governor. There was the white-washed half-Desi Kamala Harris who had a close race for CA Attorney General, and in the end, she won. There was the half Bangladeshi hailing from Detroit Hansen Clarke who is now sitting in Congress. And finally, all the other political madness that happened in the 2010 Election Cycle that proves we still have a long way to go.

• Joel Stein: Clearly the Joel Stein article was the most important issue to Sepia Mutiny readers because on this day our website tripled in traffic. “My Own Private India” written by Stein was the most controversial topic of 2010 both with the mutiny and within the bunker. In the end, did he issue an apology? No. He apologized that so many people were offended by what he wrote. Classy.

So that does it – the 2010 Sepia Mutiny summary. What were the highlights to your 2010, mutinous ones? Any topics that I missed?

Be safe tonight, and have a Happy New Years to all.

On his right forearm he has this tattoo. I didn’t recognize it at first – a four by four of solid black squares. “It’s the squares to my drum pad,” Sikh Knowledge said, pointing casually to his arm. It made sense – he was a reggae dancehall musician that loved to produce music. You may not know who he is but you will and I guarantee you’ve heard his beats. His tunes are the base music for many of the up and coming hip hop Desi artists of the day - Humble the Poet, Mandeep Sethi, and Hoodini have all used tracks produced by him.

Hailing from Montreal and well known on the Canuck Desi scene, Sikh Knowledge made his way to California for a mini-tour in December, hitting up cities all along the coast. I met him in Sacramento, where he was doing a show with his Sikh hip-hop posse at the Sol Collective. The show was live and it was intense to see a whole scene of brown underground hip hop heads. I sat down with Sikh Knowledge aka Kanwar Anit Singh Saini before he jumped on the mic at the Sacramento show. Here’s what he had to say.

Sikh Knowledge got his start young, singing at the temple when he was a child. But he got into hip-hop also at a young age. “I was one of those kids that would beat box going to school… I was the only grade 3 kid bringing mixed tapes to school. I lost Bobby Brown’s “Every Little Step” on the playground and that’s when I cried at school.” It was when he heard the Sound Bwoy Burill track in 1994 that he knew he was going to make music his life.

But what really made an impression on me was Sikh Knowledge’s confidence in pursuing his life. At the age of 20, he decided to stop being what other people wanted him to be, dropped out of engineering school and re-started honestly. “I dropped out, came out, and rearranged my whole life,” he stated. “I reapplied and did my undergraduate degree in music with a minor in linguistics. It was the happiest time of my life. I felt good about the decisions that I made.” He’s currently pursuing his Master degree in speech language pathology while having the dual career of mixing some of the ill-est beats in North America.

You read right, Sikh Knowledge is an out and gay hip hop tattooed turban wearing artist. “I’ve definitely lost friends along the way,” he said. “Working relationships have gone sour. But at the end of the day, those artists that choose to work with me… not because of how I can brag, but because of what I do. They’re working with an underdog. That just proves to me that I’ve got something to offer.”

“As an out hip hop, dancehall artist,” he continued. “…people hear the music first and then they reach out to me and we make tracks. Subsequent to that if they find out if I’m gay, my philosophy is that’s their problem. It’s not something I wear on my sleeve but I don’t hide it either.”

Watch the video above for the full interview. And to listen to some Sikh Knowledge tracks, download Humble the Poet’s 00.03 album where Sikh Knowledge produced a large number of the songs, the most popular one right now being Baagi Music. Sikh Knowledge also just dropped a beat reel on his BandCamp at the first of this month titled From Realistan … My Front Yard. You can listen to that below.

Keep an eye on this one and if you are a music maker, contact him to collaborate. I know I’ll be waiting on my Tazzy Star Sikh Knowledge produced beat. I have a good feeling that he’s about to blow up big. You can follow him on his Myspace, his Realistan Tumblr, his twitter @SikhKnowledge and of course, his BandCamp.

One of my favorite interviews. Hope you loved it too. Peace.

In the latest album, you can hear the maturity to their sound – the musical composition is richer sounding than their first album, and the hard rock sound is soulfully anthem-ic without sounding narcissistic. You can read a detailed album review here. I’m not much of a rock music fan (unless there’s a punk in front of it) but I do appreciate Slant’s latest album, particularly the song Beautiful Angel, a song about a family friend of ours that was brutally murdered a couple years ago.

You can download both Slant’s first album ‘A Thin Line’ and their second self-titled album off of iTunes or CDBaby now. But, exclusively for Sepia Mutiny readers, the first person that responds in the comment section with the name of three cities in Europe that Slant has performed, will get an autographed copy of their latest album (don’t forget to leave your e-mail).

I spoke with lead singer Fahim Zaman and guitarist Munir Haque about dropping their second album, the inspirations and their journey to making this album. You can read it below!

For those that don’t know Slant, who are you guys?

Fahim: We are a hard rock/alternative/progressive group made up of two Bengali guys raised in Southern California and two Russian brothers raised here, that are attempting to bring forth and change the world with our “slant” on rock music
How would you describe your music? It pops up on my itunes as “industrial” as far as genre is concerned. Is that the genre your music falls into?

Munir: Industrial? Yeah, itunes has been wacky lately. Hard rock or alternative. We combine a lot of styles that we feel fits the mood of the song.

Fahim: We’ve battled with the “What genre of music are you guys?” question ever since we started. I’d say we fit the “music” genre. We try to draw inspiration from everything that pertains to the song that’s at hand. If I really have to classify the second album, it’s a little bit of rock, a little bit of pop, a little bit of prog/industrial, and a lotta bit of “Just being as honest as we can.”

You just came out with your second album? How is the sound different than your first album? What’s changed?

Munir: The second album self titled ‘Slant’ is defined by who we are and the journey we have been on to this point. We put our hearts into this monster. Don’t get me wrong, our first album ‘A Thin Line’ is great too.

Fahim: Yeah, I feel the same. We’re growing and this time around it’s a lot more serious as far as what we’re trying to say. We’re figuring out who we are as a whole and what our “what we stand for” as an actual band is instead of just being four guys playing instruments making songs. ‘A Thin Line’ was exactly what it was: our first album…and yeah I still like it

So the band is two Bengali guys and two Russian guys – how do you feel your backgrounds have influenced the album?

Munir: I think backgrounds and where you come from will always shine through in what you do. You can hear it in the guitars and Fahim’s solos that our backgrounds play a huge roll.

Fahim: It’s pretty interesting when you think about Bangladesh and Russia/U.S.S.R. and what’s driven their music scenes. They’re both relatively “new” countries. I know in Bangladesh metal and rock music are pretty much the mainstay along with the traditional music. I’m sure now that music is more accessible and everyone is getting a mix of everything. Ilya, our bassist, has told us stories about pre-cold war Russia where basically they had no music other than the traditional ethnic music. There were only a couple of underground bands that actually tried to put out contemporary music. After the split, they were exposed to just about everything.

So with this album? I’d say we feel an honest responsibility to be pro-active and care about what we say and put forth, especially because we were lucky enough to be exposed to different parts of the world.

What is the song writing process for you guys?

Munir: Our songs come from all over the place. Sometimes it’s a guitar riff, or Fahim’s lyric, or Ilya adds some bass and it all turns into a song. The other day Andrew hummed a melody and five minutes later we were jamming out to it.

Fahim: It’s definitely getting more fun. Before, we would either have ALL the lyrics or ALL the music and layer parts/change parts after we set out one of those. Now, it’s different with each song. We don’t have a set process anymore. We start out with ideas now, either lyrically or musically, and we go from there. Our first single for this new album pretty much didn’t exist when we went into the recording studio. Parts of it came to all of us at different times and it just sort of happened the way it needed to.

When did you start playing music? How did the two of you meet?

Munir: I grew up with Fahim and started playing the guitar right before we decided to start this band. Starting the band came easy in a sense – we were four guys wanting the same thing.

Fahim: I started piano lessons when I was five and was in show choir in high school. I also DJ-ed and was in a rap group right after high school. But I wanted to make rock music, so I left all that and bought a guitar and drum machine.

We’ve been family friends since we were born, but there was like a year and a half spread where we didn’t see each other. We ended up at a family party at my house. He said, “Woah! You bought a guitar and are making music? I’m doing the same thing right now. Want to jam?” And here we are now.

When did you know that making music was what you wanted to do with your life?

Munir: I grew up with music always around and accessible to me. I’m not sure when exactly it clicked but I do remember being very sure about it.

Fahim: Making music was always just something I did because it made me happy and I enjoyed it. But the point where it went from hobby to let’s actually try to make a career out of it came soon after we started jamming.

I was particularly touched by the song written for Afsana. I think it’s my favorite song on the album. What’s the story behind that song?

Fahim: My cousin Monira Qutubuddin (nicknamed Afsana) passed away in a freeway shooting a few years ago. She was only 21 years old and she had just got home from work, changed and was heading out to meet up friends. She was shot in the head by two teenagers (ages 18 and 14) that were going around shooting people on the freeways.

Afsana was really an amazing person. She was honestly a person that found some sort of way to balance the “what you should do” with the “what you can do.” She was super close to the younger cousins in the family and it pretty much threw all of our lives into shock and confusion. My cousin Farhan Ahmed (n.n. Shawn) and I set out to do what we could to never forget who she was and what she did for us. We set out to make a song that could stay with us. Shawn formulated most of the song and he makes a guest appearance on the album in the recording of the song.

What are your musical influences?

Munir: Tool, Nirvana, Deftones, Slant, Hendrix to name a few. I just like music.

Fahim: Yeah what he said.

What are the top three albums on your ipod/cd player that you are listening to right now?

Munir: This week I have been listening to Ted Nugent, Deftones, and Slipknot.

Fahim: A mixed cd with some l.m.f.a.o., and The Game. The Slipknot album. And well the new Slant, of course…

You’ve gone on tour in Germany, you were nominated for a Hollywood Music in Media award, you have fans tattooing themselves with your logo. Sounds like you’ve been on whirlwind with Slant – what is the craziest experience you’ve had so far?

Munir: The girl with our name all over her arms was pretty cool. I think touring Europe was pretty crazy.

Fahim: I have to say the stuff that tops it all is when you get those emails from peeps in the middle of the country. They say, “Dude. You’re song helped me get through a crazy part in my life.” Or there was the time Slant went on tour in England for the first time ever. There was a fan there that had bought our first CD when it first came out in the U.S. and there he was two years later at our show in England. That stuff is just cool.

But hands down: We had been contacted by an older brother of a fan that had committed suicide a couple years ago. He wanted to let us know that our CD, along with a couple others were buried alongside his bro as music was one of the few things that had given him hope. Overall that’s just intense. This past year one of my best friend’s little brother committed suicide. He was like my little bro as well. It deeply affected me, though it’s hard to explain how. Sure, we hope that the songs we put out there make a difference because that is why we play our music. But still, I can’t be happy or sad about it. I remember songs that have gotten me through stuff in my life time and time again. Things just suck sometimes but there’s always a way through.

To learn more about Slant, please visit their website, Myspace page and follow them here on twitter. You can purchase their latest self-titled album right now at iTunes or CDBaby. (Photos taken by Ty Watkins and yes, I got a free advance copy of the album)

Children of Dust: A Memoir of Pakistan is a about a Pakistani male’s journey of autonomy set against the backdrop of global Islam and located deep inside Pakistan’s colorful but thus far neglected international diaspora. The timely piece of literature provides an engaged look at the pain, pathos, and laughter among Muslim-American lives otherwise obscured by abstract ideas such as “the clash of civilizations” and “the war of ideas.” … With gentle self deprecation Eteraz tells the story of every young person trying to figure out what they believe about religion, people, and life.[harper]

I’ll admit it, I opened the pages to Children of Dust with reluctant apprehension. But from the first page, Ali reels you in to a tale, beautifully prosaic, human, and intelligent. Intertwined with Islamic scholarship, youthful eagerness, self-effacing arrogance, defeated hopefulness, and sardonic humor, Children of Dust presents the struggles of a youth being raised Muslim and American and all the issues that come with it. The words are brilliantly laced, and easy to read. I found the book difficult to put down, staying up all night with a cup of chai engrossed in the adventure of Ali’s life. There was more than a few times where I verbally exclaimed or laughed at what I was reading. Broken into five parts, the book begins with the tale of Ali’s dad entering a covenant with Allah that if he should be given a son, he promised the son would become a great leader and servant of Islam. Ali was born soon after and his life carried the burden of the covenant for the next thirty years. Children of Dust documents his life of twists and turns as he struggles to fulfill this promised legend. The first part of the book explores his years as a child in a Pakistan village in the desert, complete with a madrassa education, and the fantastical tales of being possessed by jinns, visited by angels, and death by black magic. The second section of the book brings him as a teen immigrant to the Bible Belt dealing with the contradictions of fundamentalist parents at home and an American teen life. In the third part, on a college campus Ali comes to term with his internal struggles between sexuality and piety which ultimately takes him at the age of 18 to Pakistan to find a hijabi wife – but while there he discovers the cracks to his construct of Islam and the fluid nature between orthodox and heretical. The book ends beautifully, with only an ending that you can hope all people, Muslim or non-Muslim, can realize at some point in their life.

This book has been quoted by critics as a “journey” book — i.e. “the journey of a Pakistani immigrant.” I’d like to challenge this notion. There’s no real “journey” that takes place, but rather this is the story of simply “being”. It’s a story of the constant struggle of simply trying to create yourself and find meaning in ones own life. There is a universality to this tale that all people can relate to, it’s only that in this particular case the lens it is looked through is Islam.

As an American Muslim, we are often told how we are supposed to act, feel, believe, both by the orthodox beliefs of the Muslim community or by the narrowly scoped American community. I see this here at Sepia Mutiny often – as the token Muslim blogger in this space, I’ll get comments about how I’m “too Muslim” or “not Muslim enough” or the worst, committing taqqiya and spitting heretics. Too often our Muslim-ness is up for debate by others, and we ourselves are never given the freedom to explore what it means to be Muslim by our own rules, learnings, and understandings – we are always on the defense. Being an American Muslim is boxed into black and white, the freedom to explore gray simply isn’t a choice.

What Children of Dust achieves is to tell the story of one person being in the gray. There’s nothing static about being a Muslim American; it’s not a set typecast, but a continuous struggle of exploration of the self. Islam is more than spiritual, it’s a cultural and political identity as well. I saw a lot of similarities between Ali’s exploration and Michael Muhammad Knight’s Impossible Man, also a memoir of youth discovering faith and Islam. Both books start from birth, tell tales of childhoods that take them to the extremist side of Islam with a madrassa education, to hooking up with ho-jabis in the backseat of cars at Islamic conferences, to exploring the margins of Islam – for Knight it was NOI and 5%-ers, and for Ali it was to being a reformist. They both have hypersexualized stories rooted in the otherization of women in Islam and both books highlight stories with risky stark honesty that could be fatwa-worthy. Additionally, in this post 9/11 world where Islamic identity in the media is so driven by that day, it was refreshing to read both in Children of Dust and in Impossible Man the story of Islamic youth identity construction and exploration before that fated day.

I would highly recommend Ali Eteraz’s Children of Dust, particularly if you are a fan of the burgeoning South Asian memoir genre. And I’m not just saying that because the book was sent to me for free (there, does that take care of full disclosure?). Muslim or non-Muslim, this is the story of a South Asian American’s discovery of self and I’m sure that’s a story that every Mutineer can have compassion for.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Children of Dust will be hitting a bookstore near you on Oct 13th. Stay tuned here at Sepia Mutiny for an interview with Ali Eteraz later this week. Also, be sure to check out Children of Dust‘s event site for book tour listings – the most recent one in NYC on Oct 15th with Asia Society. Finally, follow Ali Eteraz on his site or by twitter.

I’ve often thought about this story. There are so many more like it — incidents of mistaken identities, faulty detentions, stereotyping, and violent acts in the wake of September 11th. We’ve read about them in the press and slowly, literature is beginning to tackle this dark period of recent American history as well; a time that unfolded in what Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic artist, Art Spiegelman, described so aptly as “in the shadow of no towers.”

A few years ago, Ask Me No Questions by Marina Budhos was one of the first young adult offerings to address the challenge of growing up South Asian and Muslim in an America altered by 9/11. First time novelist Nisha Meminger takes on a similar theme in her new YA novel Shine, Coconut Moon, just published by Simon & Schuster.

When her turbaned uncle appears at the doorstep of her suburban NJ home just four days after the 9/11 attacks, 16 year old Samar is caught off guard. Raised in a single-parent household by an Indian-American mother who cut off ties with her Sikh family many years before, Samar has no connection to her cultural roots and traditions. She is skeptical of this man, Uncle Sandeep, who claims to want to reconnect with his estranged sister because “we’re living in different times now … and I want to be close to the ones I love. The world is in turmoil–we’re at war. Anything could happen at any moment.”

As Samar gets to know her uncle, she begins to learn about Sikhism and gets to know her grandparents. She even visits a gurdwara for the first time in her life. This prompts her to start questioning her mother’s decision to raise her to think of herself “like everyone else.” She begins to question her identity; wondering whether she is a coconut — someone who is brown on the outside and white on the inside–someone who may physically appear to be Indian but doesn’t know who she really is. At the same time, she is shocked and saddened by a series of troubling events in her community that affect her personally: her uncle is attacked by a bunch of teenage boys who goad him to “Go back home, Osama!” and the local gurdwara is set on fire.

In his compelling Guardian article “The End of Innocence” Pankaj Mishra writes, “‘Post-9/11′ fiction often seems to use the attacks and their aftermath too cheaply, as background for books that would have been written anyway.” Shine, Coconut Moon does not fall into this category. Most definitively shaped by the effect of 9/11 on minority immigrant communities, this is an ambitious coming of age novel for young adults that seeks to demonstrate the effects of fear mongering on the lives of ordinary minority teens who saw themselves as American before 9/11.

Below the fold is an excerpt from the novel, as well as a Q&A with, Neesha Meminger where she talks about her novel writing process and the real-life incidents that inspired it. And, for those in the NYC area, there is a book launch party and reading this Saturday, March 14th at 7 pm at Bluestockings Bookstore. EXCERPT

Shine, Coconut Moon tackles the complicated subject of minority groups defending and distinguishing themselves from the “terrorists” after 9/11. In this particularly poignant scene, Samar finds herself engaged in a conversation with a Sikh student and a Muslim student at her school:

Balvir’s words pour out, like a faucet suddenly turning on. “Sammy, I was just telling Shazia that the temple I go to with my family was set on fire yesterday.” … Her face is tight. “I wasn’t there, but my grandmother was. She said a window was smashed and a burning ball came flying through. It hit the drapes and they burned straight up to the ceiling.”

Shazia shakes her head. “I’m so sorry, Balvir. It’s amazing that whenever there’s social or political unrest, it’s the churches, synagogues, and temples that get targeted first.”

“But why?” I whisper. “Why those places?”

She sighs and shakes her head again. “I don’t know. …”

Balvir continues as if she hasn’t heard a word. “What’s wrong with people?” she demands, her eyes becoming teary. “Sikhs are not Muslims!” She turns quickly to Shazia and says, “No offense.”

Then she continues, spitting words like a machine gun. “Sikhism has only been around for the last five centuries, with over twenty million followers in the world! It has nothing to do with Islam.” She wraps her arms around her bent knees …

After a lengthy pause, Shazia clears her throat. “Balvir, you want to distinguish between Sikhs and Muslims because of .. what? Do you think that the violence will be less if you do?” … Shazia shifts uneasily but continues. “Please don’t be upset by my saying this, but if you think your family is targeted, imagine my brothers Khalel and Ahmed.”

Q & A with Neesha Meminger

Q. How much of this story is semi-autobiographical (sans the 9/11 connection, of course)?

Some parts of SHINE are, indeed, semi-autobiographical. For the parts that are not, I drew upon personal experience to flesh them out and lend them authenticity. The experiences with racism are certainly based on my own clashes as a teen and child as well as those of friends and relatives.

I try to write everything based on Truth as I know it — to get as close to that tiny glowing ember of Truth that is at the center of everything, and use it to guide me through my scenes. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. But I think readers can tell when that nugget isn’t there. So each of my characters has a bit of me in them; if they didn’t, they wouldn’t breathe on the page.

Q. This is a novel much prompted by the events following 9/11. Was it difficult to write? Did you purposely start out wanting to write a book with this theme, or did you find that a coming of age novel shifted its focus as events started unfolding?

This novel definitely did not start out with a 9/11 theme. It originally was an epic about the relationship between Punjabi, Sikh mothers and daughters weathering the rifts and chasms of migration — both geographical and emotional. But as I wrote and delved deeper into the story I really wanted to tell, the 9/11 theme kept simmering to the surface in the oddest of ways.

I kept having flashbacks to Canada, where I grew up in the early 1970s, when there was a huge backlash against the wave of South Asian immigrants. Then Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, had flung wide the doors of immigration to India and Pakistan and people poured into the the major Canadian cities looking for work. The backlash, of course, was because these new immigrants were taking jobs away from “real” Canadians, and not only that — they couldn’t even speak English.

I was very young then, but scenes from those days have obviously been seared into my memory. The burning gurdwara scene is one from real life. The gurdwara next door to us was set on fire with the words “Pakis Go Home” painted on the sides of the building. A Sikh man was hung from a lamp post with his own turban. Turbaned men were clear targets and beatings were regular occurrences. I remember at least two incidents where South Asians in the apartment building where we lived threw their children out of their balconies and leapt to their own deaths behind them. It was a time of despair, alienation, isolation, and fear. This is a part of history that doesn’t often get exposure in mainstream Canadian media, but it is alive and kicking in the memories of a whole generation of South Asians.

I drew upon those experiences and that time of backlash and hostility as I wrote about the 9/11 experience in the novel. During the 70s, we were all busy trying to make the distinction that we were from India and not Pakistan, or Sri Lanka and not Pakistan and we were, therefore, not Pakis. And those of us who were from Pakistan were busy inventing stories about where our families were really from. It was an immediate response not only to the ignorance around us, but to our fear as well.

During the 9/11 backlash, everyone was busy proclaiming “I am an American!” and American flags were draped around every single South Asian, Middle Eastern, and African shop window. Sikh websites went into “educate” mode, showing what the difference was between Sikhs and Muslims and that Sikhs were not Muslims — again making that distinction that I remember trying to make all those years ago as a child. As if any bat-wielding ignoramus full of rage and hostility would even care, or would pause for a moment to consider, “Oh, crap; I think I have the wrong brown person!” But it’s a natural reaction to living in a brutal or hostile environment. There’s the hope that disassociating yourself from the object of hatred is going to offer some sort of protection.

That same fear that I grew up with was palpable once again after 9/11, and I realized how very rooted SHINE was in that experience.

Q. I don’t know of any other YA books with Sikh protagonists. Do you? Was that part of your impetus in writing this book – to fill a gap?

I know Shauna Singh Baldwin has written beautifully about the Sikh experience during Partition in What The Body Remembers, but I’m not aware of any YA novels with Sikh protagonists. Would love it if there was. I wasn’t really thinking about filling gaps when I was writing, honestly. I wrote about the Sikh experience because it’s what I know; I wanted to tell this particular story and I couldn’t move on to any others until this one was out of me.

Q. Samar’s mother raises her without any knowledge of her religion – not ever taking her to a gurudwara or telling her about the ten gurus. Why did you choose to have your protagonist’s lack of knowledge about her cultural traditions imposed upon her rather than something she was averse to?

That was definitely a conscious choice. I think children rebel against the things that don’t make sense to them, if only to explore the “other side” — what has been kept from them, or hidden. If religion is thrust upon them and is a stifling experience, it would make sense for them to rebel. If anti-religion is thrust upon them, the same thing is true I would imagine. A lesbian friend of mine raised her daughter to be critical and wary of religion, taught her to redefine “family,” and created a very left wing, progressive environment for her children. Her daughter grew up to become a Jehovah’s Witness, had a child early, and began zealously converting “the Gays.”

In SHINE, Samar’s mother rebels against the religion she was raised in, only to have her own daughter rebel against the “anti-religion” she embraced instead. I loved that twist, and the idea that, as parents, we often think we have the answers — only to have those answers unravel into a million new questions.

Q. Uncle Sandeep and his sister (Samar’s mother) were both raised in the US. This, to me, represents a shift from other South Asian YA books which always depict culture clashes between generations of parents and children, where parents are immigrants. I’m curious about your thinking on this.

This was also a very conscious decision. I have cousins and nieces and nephews (not to mention my own children) who are growing up with parents like me — people who grew up here in the west. We have a very different experience than our parents. Some of us are in mixed marriages, some are single parents, some of us are redefining marriage entirely, and we are now raising our own children. I was born in India, but my experiences are deeply rooted in the adjustment. My parents were completely informed by their experiences in India. So I wanted to write a novel for the children of the children of immigrants — the next generation, so to speak.

At the same time, I also wanted to speak to the experience of these parents who are trying so hard to help their kids assimilate (so as to avoid the kind of racism OUTSIDE the home and strict controls INSIDE the home that they, themselves, might have experienced) — well intentioned folks who know the pain of not fitting in and getting wedgies and bullying (or worse), only to go home to expectations of straight As and a certain level of perfection. Though, clearly, the assimilation route has pitfalls of its own.

Q. What was the toughest part of this writing process? Tell us about your path to publication.

The toughest part of this process was getting the durn thing published! LOL. Seriously — I think I am too thin-skinned for this part of the process and have had to develop a far thicker skin in response to the feedback I received from agents and editors as I sent SHINE around.

But it was a great process and one that strengthened me as a writer and as a person, overall. The hardest part is finding an agent and editor who not only “get” your story, but are not afraid to champion it amongst their colleagues and peers.

The other day while reading Boing Boing I came across a book review that might just become my first desi fiction book. I say “might” because I can’t guarantee it until it happens given my fickle history. The book is titled Cyberabad Days: Return to the India of 2047 and is a collection of science fiction short stories:

Cyberabad Days returns to McDonald’s India of 2047, a balkanized state that we toured in his 2006 novel River of Gods, which was nominated for the best novel Hugo Award. The India of River of Gods has fractured into a handful of warring nations, wracked by water-shortage and poverty, rising on rogue technology, compassion, and the synthesis of the modern and the ancient.

In Cyberabad Days, seven stories (one a Hugo winner, another a Hugo nominee) McDonald performs the quintessential science fictional magic trick: imagining massive technological change and making it intensely personal by telling the stories of real, vividly realized people who leap off the page and into our minds. And he does this with a deft prose that is half-poetic, conjuring up the rhythms and taste and smells of his places and people, so that you are really, truly transported into these unimaginably weird worlds. McDonald’s India research is prodigious, but it’s nothing to the fabulous future he imagines arising from today’s reality. [Link]

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p>With only two episodes left of Battlestar Galactica, I know I am going to be jonesing for some tales of human-robot hijinks. The short story mentioned below seems promising:

Vishnu at the Cat Circus: the long, concluding novella in the volume is an account of three siblings: one genetically enhanced to be a neo-Brahmin, one a rogue AI wallah who is at the center of the ascension of humanity’s computers into a godlike state, and one who remains human and bails out the teeming masses who are tossed back and forth by the technological upheaval. A story of character, Vishnu blends spirituality and technology to look at how the street might find its own use for things, when that street is rooted in ancient traditions that are capable of assimilating enormous (but not infinite) change. [Link]

Has anyone already read this? Please share your thoughts.