Sneak Peek: Bushra Rehman Podcast

Bushra Rehman: I'm a deep New York City kid. And I used to teach poetry to public school children in all the boroughs. And one of the exercises we always did was to celebrate our neighborhoods. And one day I was writing with them with the kids, and I started writing about my home neighborhood of Corona. And I realized there's so much power in finding the beauty of where we come from. And especially when where we come from is a place that is often misunderstood. It's an under resourced neighborhood. People are afraid to go there. But when you're from that neighborhood, there's so much just life and family and love and community that I really wanted to celebrate in this novel, and specifically my Pakistani Muslim Community that I really wanted to celebrate. And as we know in this country there is a lot of Islamophobia. And I think that what happens is that this Islamophobia makes our communities become more insular, more private, and then it just becomes a loop where then people know less about us. And so this book is really meant to crack that open, to open the door to just bring our stories into public awareness.