I’ve been having a hard time with this solo-self-isolation. All members of my family are thousands of miles away, experiencing their own lockdowns. Music, books, cleaning, and cooking are losing their charms after the 2 weeks I’ve been doing this! And I fear there will be weeks more. As a person with disabilities that make…
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World Social Justice Day
The United Nations has declared February 20th as World Social Justice day. In this era, social justice is like a carrot dangling before humanity while the vast majority of us are being beaten with sticks. So, social justice is an aspirational desire, a desire to remediate the wrongs of past times and current ways of…
My Dida’s House
Reading the stories of so many Indian women, I am reminded of this, my only heirloom. I want to tell too, of my hidden memories. My Dida’s house, the noise, the open sewers, the eternal mangy cat with her multi-hued descendants. The ceaseless summer war between cat and human, mosquito and human. The long afternoons…
A Rapist in Your Way
Today’s piece pays homage– and it must– to the brave women of Chile and around the world who are standing up for their right to be free from sexual and gender-based violence. Currently, Mexico leads the world in murder of women and other forms of sexual violence. The United Nations, whose research wing may be…
Snowscape
SNOWSCAPE The landscape is still-born Birth of winter brings blood to the snow someone is not walking but standing awkward space the corner of December Breaths are frozen leaving the pale orifices of mouths as though they were not inanimate Moving away fleeing the refuge of bodies And someone wanting the comfort of another thinks…
Traveller’s Lament
I used to love the roads as well as blood loves vein fleeing from running to the geographies of other maps where my race charted like a cartographer’s fantasy finds itself obscured by the deviance of our desire in all my darkness i have never lost the way nor forgotten the words of this lamentation…
Strange Fruit: Death and Democracy in the United States
This brief essay looks at the change in racist violence over the last century, making links between state and non-state actors.
Say Their Names! From the Borders to the Camps!
Say their names. Those who are being detained and subject to inhumane policies of family separation, those who die in the arms of frightened parents who cannot protect them, those who are terrorized in prisons built for little children. Say their names… Do not let the amnesia of profit fill the ether.Yes, I have again…
Ouroboros
Ouroboros: The Snake Who Eats His Own Tail I’ve been thinking alot about the state of the earth lately. We are not living here, we are holding the planet hostage. And the ransom is too little, too late… In Greek mythology, Ouroboros symbolizes completion, wholeness, even the infinite. For me it has come to symbolize…
To See the Sea
This post is about a place where I have experienced great pleasure, great awe, and deep sadness — the ocean. I have been fortunate enought to play and swim in the waters of two great oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific. I have also learned to overcome my fear of the water, to see with…
Loteria: A Homage to Mexico
A vibrant take on the centuries old game of Loteria and a homage to the beauty and rich power of Mexico!
Linguistics II
(Kaushalya Bannerji, The Faces of 5 O’Clock, Sistervision Press, Toronto, 1996) a poem is a dream with many endings just like words are shapes that have no form but human
Fractured Feminisms: The Applicability of United Nations Frameworks and Instruments Copyright Kaushalya Bannerji, 2006
In this piece I wish to examine the ways in which women’s human rights have been put forward over the last 30 years by international human rights organizations. The United Nations (the U.N.) provides a key example of international human rights accords pertaining to the rights of women. I use the issue of domestic violence…
The Nobodies
The Nobodies ( Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latina America, 1971) Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that one magical day good luck will suddenly rain down on them—will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn’t rain down yesterday, today, tomorrow, or ever. Good luck doesn’t even…
I Wanted to Write a Dyke
KAUSHALYA BANNERJI I wanted to write a dyke poem in your face rhetorical a poem unbound angry as my curves aching as the words you never see me throw I wanted to write a dyke poem struttingjeans ungirdled fists that caress like fingers a poem as inspiring as Bonnie as Thelma and Louise as defiant as Lila…
Ear to the Ground 