Hot News Mix: The Love Lives of Muslim Men, Asian & Black Power, Yellowface + More

Salaam, Love. If you’re looking for stories about the love lives of Muslim men, check out new book Salaam, Love: American Muslim Men on Love, Sex, and IntimacyEdited by Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi, the collection offers glimpses into the hearts (and bedrooms!) of 22 writers from varied ethnic, racial and religious perspectives. Ahmed Ali Akbar, interviewed on The Aerogram about Rad Brown Dads, contributed to the book. [LoveInshAllah]

Asian, Black, Power. In honor of Black History month, 18 Million Rising is hosting a #NotYourAsianSidekick hangout this Thursday focusing on Black-Asian coalition building. The hashtag began as an online exploration of Asian American feminism and lit up nearly 100 million Twitter feeds. 18MR is a non-profit founded to promote Asian and Pacific Islander civic engagement, influence and movement by leveraging the power of technology and social media. [18MR]

New Year, Old Yellowface. AsAmNews shares that alongside #NotYourAsianSidekick, a group called Yellow Peril Faction is planning a protest this Saturday against 39 years of yellowface on Saturday Night Live. (Related: Contributing editor Rohin Guha’s coverage of SNL’s brownface Aziz Ansari skit.) The latest offender? The opening monologue with Melissa McCarthy, aired on the Lunar New Year weekend, a couple of weeks after How I Met Your Mother’s co-creator apologized for the series’ yellowface episode. Jeff Yang wrote about the SNL monologue at the Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog:

But it was almost as if you knew there weren’t enough yuks in just having McCarthy and Moynihan punching it out, Shaw Brothers style (and you were right). So to underscore the joke, you put a little yellow icing on the cake, bringing in a squinting, eyebrow-quirking Taran Killam in a Nehru jacket to play the fight’s narrator, complete with stilted accent and gong. [WSJ]

Find out why Philip at You Offend Me You Offend My Family thinks that John Belushi’s Samurai character should not be “lumped in with the rest of the show’s problematic racist portrayals.” [YOFYOMF]

Career v. Family: The Big Lie. Tanya Selvaratnam’s new book is full of lies! Here are two: 1) “Women can delay motherhood until we’re ready and if we’re not able to get pregnant naturally, then science will make it happen for us.” 2) “We don’t need feminism anymore.” Her CNN opinion piece offers more information and thoughts on the economics and social policy aspects of parenthood. Here’s the video trailer for her new book The Big Lie: Motherhood, Feminism, and the Reality of the Biological Clock, and hey…is that DJ Rekha sneaking in a read between sets?

Pavani Yalamanchili is a co-founder and editor of The Aerogram. Email her at editors@theaerogram.com. Find The Aerogram on Twitter @theaerogram or on Facebook.

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