For a people whose culture was systematically discriminated, stolen, assimilated and erased, speaking matters. Speaking matters as it functions as a means of not forgetting what happened and is happening. It’s exciting to see these artists walking surely through the thick cloud of prejudices against Kurds and insisting on speaking their stories in Kurdish and hopefully this is just the beginning.
Read MoreI'm an 18-year-old Pakistani […] I grew up with random people making me feel like I am a burden to my dad. I grew up with my dearest ones telling me that I must not dream too big, as one day I'll have to give up on those dream for a man’s fragile ego. I was taunted by my relatives for not knowing how to cook. I was instructed to bow down to my husband’s will. I was taunted in the middle of traffic when people beside me whispered: "How shameless for a female to drive."
Read MoreJadi Rana sent the Zoroastrians a full glass of milk, to indicate that his kingdom was filled to the brim. In response, the Zoroastrians poured sugar into the milk and gave it back, without spilling a single drop.
Read MoreI could relate to Devi a lot. Maybe it is because Devi wears striped shirts and mom jeans — things I wear every day, like a cartoon character -- maybe it’s her way of dealing with trauma, maybe it’s that the only emotion she expresses in public is anger and that she is constantly fixated on doing things that would look good on her university applications, or maybe it’s simply her relationship with her mother.
Read MoreAesthetics like Kaling’s seem unaware that you can be attached to your culture, informed by it, but also break it down, question it, tear it apart to create holes in it so more voices can come through. It is uncomfortable work, but it is possible –— I know many Indians and South-Asians across the world that do it every day.
Read MoreIlker Hepkaner and Sezgin Inceel are co-hosts of Yine Yeni Yeniden 90’lar, a podcast which analyzes 90s Turkish pop music from feminist and queer lenses. They wrote about the first pop songs they remember, and how it relates to issues of nostalgia and belonging.
Read MoreHollywood celebrates representation politics and white saviourism as it did in Green Book, The Help or Driving Miss Daisy. It tries to be something new when in fact, it stays very loyal to Hollywood’s legacy.
Read MoreWe can’t talk about climate change without talking about occupied lands, disability, displaced populations and gender equality. It’s a crisis yes, but it’s not transcendent. It’s important, yes; but not more important than any ongoing human rights struggle.
Read MoreWhen I watched the movies I watched and listened to the music I listened to, I felt like Rapunzel, looking through a window at people living their lives and desperately trying to emulate it up in my own little tower. I didn’t like looking at the white world through a window and not being able to experience that life in my peripheral country, but I couldn’t help it.
Read MoreIstanbul’s particular legacy of continual destruction – that of nature, history and the city itself – is certainly a source of great chagrin and resignation for its denizens. But not just that: a great deal of fight, discourse, resistance, civil solidarity and determination swirls around these issues, renewing one’s faith in humanity in new ways every day.
Read MoreAs if suffering nearly nine years of what the United Nations has deemed the “crime of extermination” at the hands of a totalitarian dictatorship wasn’t enough, Syrians still have to deal with Westerners determined to whitewash Bashar al-Assad and his regime’s barbaric use of chemical weapons.
Read MoreThere was no colloquial equivalent for the word “lesbian” in my mother tongue, and that may have contributed to my feelings of shame and solitude for a large part of my childhood.
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