Join us for a special reading with the Open City fellows. Open City documents the pulse of metropolitan Asian America as it’s being lived on the streets of New York right now. Join us for a reading with our Muslim Communities fellows, Humera Afridi, Roja Heydarpour, Raad Rahman, Sarah Khan and Sumaya Awad, who’ve written narrative nonfiction on the Muslim American communities of New York City over the past six months. We’ll view Sarah’s short film on the mother of Matin Siraj, an entrapped Muslim American, and the fellows will share their experiences and talk about their Open City stories that document the hopes and fears of Muslim Americans. In conversation with Open City editor, Noel Pangilinan.
RESERVE A SEAT!
$5 SUGGESTED DONATION | OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Humera Afridi‘s roots lie in the land of the Sufis—Pakistan—whose tolerant and pluralistic culture has been severely challenged in recent times. She is a proud New Yorker, passionate about this city of robustly-spirited residents. Humera’s writing has appeared in several publications, including Granta, Guernica, The Journal of Postcolonial Studies and the New York Times. Her essays and stories are included in the anthologies And the World Changed (Feminist Press 2008); 110 Stories. New York Writes After September 11 (NYU Press, 2002), and Leaving Home (Oxford University Press, 2001). Humera was a writer for The New York Women’s Foundation, a community philanthropy working to achieve sustained economic security and justice for women and girls. She is currently a Monday columnist at 3 Quarks Daily.
Roja Heydarpour is a writer and editor. Born in Iran and raised in New York City, she has worked for the Daily Beast, the New York Times, Al-Monitor, Columbia Global Reports, and Devex, among others. She also teaches citizenship classes at the Bay Ridge and Kensington branches of the Brooklyn Public Library, teaching a mix of students ranging from Chinese to Azari to Tajik to Pakistani and Bangladeshi.
Raad Rahman is a writer and a communications, advocacy and partnerships specialist. She regularly consults with international human rights groups working to foster freedom of expression, such as the Center for Inquiry, PEN America, and i-Probono. She has previously worked in various capacities with UNICEF, the International Center for Transitional Justice, and the Asia Society, in a career spanning the UK, India, Bangladesh, Jamaica, the USA, and Hungary. Her writing has been published in the Guardian, Guernica, VICE, the Rumpus, Roads and Kingdoms, UNICEF, and has been quoted by the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, and the New York Times Now. In 2013, Harvard’s Kennedy School named her an emerging leader.
Sarah K. Khan writes about food and culture. She creates multimedia work that includes photography, film, maps, and the occasional song or poem. Her work derives from academic, clinical and ethnographic field research that intersects migration, gender, race, climate change, environmental degradation and bio-cultural diversities. Recently returned from a Senior Research Fulbright-Nehru Scholar Fellowship in India, Sarah is in post-production of a film series on Indian women farmers. She has spent over 20 years researching Asian and Middle Eastern nutrition, public health, medicine, and traditional ecological knowledge systems and launched The Queens, NY, Migrant Kitchen Series.
Sumaya Awad is a 23-year old Palestinian-American Muslim activist and writer focused on defending the rights of immigrants, refugees, and the dispossessed. In 2014 and 2015, Sumaya worked with Syrian refugees in Jordan and Muslim migrant workers in Hong Kong and Chile. Here in the U.S., she has been active in the fight for Palestinian human rights and advocacy for Syrian refugees, as well as in the indigenous resistance against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Sumaya has published political articles in the Feminist Wire, Truthout, and In These Times, and has been featured in the Middle East Solidarity Magazine where she discussed Middle Eastern politics and islamophobia in the Trump era. Sumaya grew up in Amman, Jordan and Iowa City, Iowa. She earned a Bachelors in History and Religion from Williams College in 2016, where she wrote a senior thesis in the form of a historical novel on the Palestinian Nakba. She hopes to pursue a career in journalism and law.
This event will be livestreamed on the Asian American Writers’ Workshop Facebook page.
NOTE ON ACCESSIBILITY
*The space is wheelchair accessible. No stairs. Direct elevator from ground floor to 6th floor.
*We strongly encourage all participants of the space/event to be scent-free.
If you all have any other specific questions about accessibility, please email Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org with any questions on reserving priority seating.
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