Be a Bone Marrow Donor. The parents of six-year-old New Jersey boy Owen Bahadur Lang, who was diagnosed with severe aplastic anemia, are seeking a bone marrow donor who is his perfect match. They’re hoping to add to the ranks of donor registries more potential donors who are South Asian, Caribbean or come from a multiracial background. Find a registry drive to join and be a potential donor.
Basement Bhangra Says Goodbye. But its spirit goes on. Hear DJ Rekha talk about 20 years of presenting the monthly club night that became a cultural, political, and creative phenomenon, and what’s next. BB’s final blast on Sunday in NYC’s Central Park included trailblazers Panjabi MC and Apache Indian with rising artists like Anik Khan and Horsepowar, plus a performance from all-girls bhangra team Shaan Mutiyaaran Di (SMD). Thanks for the beats, Basement Bhangra!
Thank you to @basementbhangra for 20 years of fun + for hosting the final party at #SummerStage in #CentralPark! pic.twitter.com/OBBkb0oq9G
— SummerStage (@SummerStage) August 6, 2017
Where We Belong, Oak Creek to Oklahoma. Saturday was the the fifth anniversary of the Oak Creek tragedy in Wisconsin. SAADA encouraged people to host small gatherings to show and talk about work from artists, including musician Zain Alam’s “Lavaan” — clips of Sharanjit Singh Dhillonn’s family home movies from 1950s and 60s Norman, Oklahoma, set to a score. For Alam, who spoke to PRI about his project, home movies showing kids “learning to walk, getting up and falling back down again connected heavily with present moments where the Sikh community has been targeted since 9/11.”
Hear from survivors of the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting, five years after the attack. pic.twitter.com/bhqv6GXSZk — AJ+ (@ajplus) August 5, 2017
Where the Brown Women At? There’s no dearth of South Asian actresses, as actress Rukhmani K. Desai helpfully reminds us. But we’re not really seeing them as romantic leads on screen. Versha Sharma of NowThis News and writers Nadya Agrawal and Imran Siddiquee sat down to talk about brown women on screen and how they’ve been portrayed — or not portrayed — as romantic leads in recent TV series and films, including in the South Asian-led feature film, Kumail Nanjiani’s Big Sick:
Brown women, especially South Asian women, deserve to have their stories told on screen pic.twitter.com/jxD2oHKzJP — NowThis (@nowthisnews) August 5, 2017
The Asian American Poets Issue. The July/August issue of Poetry is the product of a new partnership between the magazine and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. Read Rajiv Mohabir’s “Coolie,” Tishani Doshi’s “Monsoon Poem,” Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s “Sea Church,” and dive into the rest of the issue.
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Hope you enjoyed today’s filter coffee, or as my grandparents called it, kaapi. Have a biscoot!
Time pass! #filtercoffee #parlegbiscuits A post shared by Karthik Rangappa (@karthikrangappa) on
Pavani Yalamanchili is an editor at The Aerogram. Find her on Twitter at @_pavani, and follow The Aerogram at @theaerogram and on Facebook.
