Featured Fem | Meet Nashwa Khan

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THE FEM

IMG_7611Fem: How have your identities shaped your writing?

Nashwa Khan: I believe that even fiction is rooted in non-fiction. Inevitably, even when intentionally avoided we write about our truths and identity seeps into the equation. Even when “talking back“ to dominant literature or orientalism in writing I find my own experiences at the core of analysis. Writing that is not about my own identity, for instance  partaking in the popular creative writing exercise of writing a character based on my “opposite”  I find my intersecting identities as foundational in understanding myself in reference to the world. Arguably, it is impossible not to anchor work in reference to self, thus identity beyond being foundational in shaping my work is intertwined in it. For me I think my understanding of my positionality and identity are iterative and although my identity shapes my writing, writing has also shaped my understanding of my…

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“Nope, You Really Can’t Say That”: My Love/Hate Relationship with The Mindy Project

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Wrote this a bit ago

Media Diversified

by Nashwa Khan

Fox-The-Mindy-ProjectLiving in what can sometimes feel like a South Asian feminist echo chamber, we become accustomed to never questioning those we idolize. As a result, years have gone by without Mindy Kaling’s body of work being critically examined within our community. Many black women have made observations of Kaling’s anti-blackness on social media. Shamefully and repeatedly I have also witnessed South Asians jump to Kaling’s defense.

The Mindy Project is a US sitcom aired on Fox which focuses on the life of Mindy Lahiri, a doctor working in an Obstetrics and Gynecology clinic in New York. The show intertwines the staff’s personal and professional lives. Lahiri is the only female doctor at the practice over the first two seasons, and only racialised woman until Season One, Episode 22 where Xosha Roquemore is introduced as Tamra, a nurse at the practice. The sitcom stars its creator, Mindy Kaling…

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46 examples of Muslim outrage about Paris shooting that Fox News can’t seem to find

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A Center of Christian-Muslim Engagement for Peace and Justice:

Screen-Shot-2015-01-08-at-3.57.44-PM-800x430Every time an extremist who is Muslim commits an act of terrorism, people ask where the moderate Muslim voices condemning violence are. (Interestingly, as a Jew, I don’t usually get asked to condemn extremism when it is perpetuated by Jewish fundamentalists like Baruch Goldstein, who shot 29 praying Muslims do death, and injured 125, at the Cave of the Patriarchs, or Yigal Amir, who killed Israeli Prime MinisterYitzhak Rabin.) And the same thing is happening following this week’s deplorable, pathetic, and tragic killing of 12 people at the offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

Not surprisingly, much of the “where is the Muslim outrage” outrage is coming from… Fox News, as Media Matters notes. Fox’s own Monica Crowley, for example, said that Muslims “should be condemning” the attack and that she hadn’t “heard any condemnation… from any groups.” Fox News’ America’s Newsroom guest Steve Emerson complained, “you don’t see denunciations of radical Islam, by name, by…

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Mamool for Breakfast

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Hi loves, I don’t entirely know what this will develop into or what the value of my words are in this world but after much encouragement and multiple notebooks with scribbles in corners as well as a private online journal I figured I wanted to take a leap. I find writing to be so vulnerable for me, I often bare my heart. I find so much power, understanding, closure and healing can be gained through writing, as cliche as it sounds the pen is often much mightier than the sword.  So here it goes, glimpses into parts of me rarely seen.

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