press kit - Bushra Rehman

PRESS KIT
Corona
A novel by Bushra Rehman
From Sibling Rivalry Press
Print ISBN: 978-1-937420-39-0
eBook ISBN: 978-1-937420-48-2
Release Date: 08/01/2013
5 x 8 Perfect-Bound Paperback
Print Retail Price: $14.95; 154 Pages
eBook Retail Price: $3.99 for Kindle, Nook, iPad
Featuring Cover Art by Chitra Ganesh
ABOUT CORONA:
Razia Mirza is a Pakistani woman from Corona, Queens, who grew up in a
tight Muslim community surrounding the first Sunni masjid built in New York
City. When a rebellious streak leads to her excommunication, she decides
to hit the road. Corona moves between Razia’s childhood and the comedic
misadventures she encounters on her journey, from a Puritan Colony in
Massachusetts to New York City’s Bhangra music scene. With each story,
we learn more about the past she’s escaping, a past which leads her to
constantly travel in a spiral, always coming closer to but never quite arriving
home.
BUSHRA REHMAN
Bushra Rehman’s mother says Bushra was born in an ambulance flying
through the streets of Brooklyn. Her father is not so sure, but it would
explain a few things. Bushra was a vagabond poet who traveled for years
with nothing more than a greyhound ticket and a book bag full of poems.
Rehman’s first novel, Corona, is a dark comedy about being South Asian in
the United States and was noted among this year’s Best Debut Fiction by
Poets & Writers. Rehman’s co-edited the anthology Colonize This! Young
Women of Color on Today’s Feminism which was included in Ms. Magazine’s
100 Best Non-Fiction Books of All Time. Her writing has been featured on
BBC Radio 4, WNYC, and KPFA and in The New York Times, India Currents,
Crab Orchard Review, Sepia Mutiny, Color Lines, The Feminist Wire and
Mizna: Prose, Poetry and Art Exploring Arab America. Read more at www.
bushrarehman.com.
PUBLICITY
INFORMATION
If you would like to host
Bushra at a panel or
request a review copy
please contact
corona.novel@gmail.com
ABOUT SIBLING RIVALRY PRESS:
Founded in 2010, Sibling Rivalry Press is an independent publishing
house based in Alexander, Arkansas. Our purpose is best defined by
the incomparable Adrienne Rich, who said to Michael Klein in a 1999
interview:
There’s a lot of what I would call comfortable poetry around. But
then there is all this other stuff going on — which is wilder, which is
bristling; it’s juicier, it’s everything that you would want. And it’s not
comfortable. That’s the kind of poetry that interests me — a field
of energy. It’s intellectual and moral and political and sexual and
sensual — all of that fermenting together. It can speak to people
who have themselves felt like monsters and say: you are not alone,
this is not monstrous. It can disturb and enrapture.
Our mission, therefore, is to publish work that disturbs and
enraptures.
READ MORE AT WWW.SIBLINGRIVALRYPRESS.COM
PRAISE FOR CORONA:
“There are books that you admire, and books that you love. I fell head over heels for
Corona, and I want everyone to read it. These stories have the heft of a novel and
the elliptical grace of poetry. Rehman’s hot-blooded, ferociously funny, and deeply sensitive protagonist travels from the Muslim community of Queens to roadside
Florida to the fogged windows of San Francisco and the Lower East Side. Along the
way she falls into and out of love, takes frightening, exhilarating risks, repeatedly saves her own life, and comes into sharp-focus like a shaken photograph. She is
about to gleefully dynamite every narrow stereotype you might have about a young
Pakistani woman from Corona. A stunning debut from a vital new writer.”
Karen Russell, author of the novel Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove
“Endearing, irreverent, and engaging. Bushra Rehman’s epic journey into various
worlds big and small not only exposes the sordid fabric of Americana but does it
through the riotously humorous lens of a sharp second generation, Queens-bred
Desi New Yorker. In Razia, she has created a unique character that is daring, hilarious, vulnerable, and fierce. You will want to keep travelling with her long after the
book ends.”
DJ Rekha
“Bushra Rehman is a lot like her borough—plainspoken, artful, always alert, and alive
to the rhythms of the world that thrive within the worlds of Queens. A master of
mood, her stories brim with bittersweet wit and insight. Corona will have you laughing until you cry and weeping until you smile.”
Jeff Chang, author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
and Who We Be: The Colonization of America
“Corona, is a fragmented, poetic, on-the-road adventure told from the perspective
of the charismatic Razia Mirza.”
Heather Baysa, Village Voice blog
“Rehman gives a warm poetic take on the life of a Muslim girl coming to terms with
life in both pre- and post- 9/11 America.”
Publishers Weekly
“[Rehman’s] Corona is vibrant and dynamic, a crossroads where various ethnicities, languages, religions, and cultures rub against each other, sometimes clashing,
sometimes mingling, but in the process creating a place that is entirely new. Next to
Corona the rest of the country seems strange — alien, absurd, and stagnant..”
Chaitali Sen, LA Review of Books
“Rehman uses humorous and honest powers of observation to tell more about
America than any academic book, and reminds us that we come of age our entire
lives.”
Kjerstin Johnson, Bitch magazine
“This is one of these short books that you finish in a few hours and it resonates with
you for weeks, maybe years and possibly for the rest of your life.”
Ed Lin, author of Snakes Can’t Run and Waylaid
“Razia is a character we don’t often see in the emerging genre of contemporary
Muslim fiction.”
Deonna Kelli Sayed, Love, Inshallah
“Corona is a poet’s novel. Bushra Rehman’s narrative voice is strong and musical.
It leaps off the page and speaks directly to you, as if you were catching up with a
long-lost friend [...] Corona brings a new topic to the table of South Asian American
literature; this is not a book about model minority aspiration and assimilation, but a
book about fierce individualism and noble poverty[...] This fragmented, musical novel should be taught in classrooms because it breaks the prettiness of memory, brings
irreverent humor where it should, shows the crisscross of ethnic neighborhoods in
New York City, and celebrates love in the midst of violence. ”
Zohra Saed, co-publisher at UpSet Press
New York Q&A: Queens Native Bushra Rehman On Her Debu...
http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/4275342/
Q&A: Queens Native Bushra Rehman On
Her Debut Novel and Growing Up Pakistani
Muslim in Queens
By Heather Baysa
published: July 31, 2013
Bushra Rehman's first novel, Corona, is a fragmented, poetic,
on-the-road adventure told from the perspective of the
charismatic Razia Mirza. After coming of age in a tight Muslim
community surrounding the first Sunni Masjid built in New
York City, a rebellious streak leads to Razia's
excommunication, prompting the young heroine to flee.
Stories that alternate between childhood memories and the
misadventures of her young adulthood slowly reveal glimpses
of the past that Razia is escaping and the Queens
neighborhood that has shaped her life.
Rehman's poems, stories, and essays have been featured on
BBC radio and in the New York Times, among other
publications, and she co-edited the anthology Colonize This!
Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism. Here, via
e-mail, she talks about the Muslim community in her native
borough, being a new mother, and why her protagonist aspires
to be shameless.
I know you're not supposed to ask fiction writers this,
but Razia's story seems very personal. What parts of
this character are based on you?
Jaishri Abichandani
Most people will think Razia’s life is my life. I wish! Corona is
a cocktail of truth and fiction. I cut up some of my memories,
added lots of lies, and created bizarre collages from the scraps.
Details:
Corona
By Bushra Rehman
Sibling Rivalry Press, 150pp.,
1 of 4
It's true, we're not supposed to ask the question, but it’s
always on everyone’s mind. Including mine. I think authors
get offended because perhaps there’s an implication, or an
author’s paranoia that there is, that autobiographical fiction
reveals a lack of craft or imagination. But I think it takes a
great deal of craft to make your life interesting to someone
else—and a great deal of imagination to live a life worthy of
fiction.
I also think it’s a sensitive topic because I’m Muslim.
11/15/13 6:41 PM
New York Q&A: Queens Native Bushra Rehman On Her Debu...
http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/4275342/
$14.95
Non-Muslims have often said to me: “Oh, I read this novel
about a Muslim woman who (insert oppression),” and they
think it’s real. I have to remind them they’re reading fiction.
So I should say for the record: Razia’s life doesn’t represent the lives of all Muslim women. Not all
Muslim women are stoners who get jobs at re-created 17th-century villages so they can dress up in
costumes from the 1600s.
Razia is a Pakistani Muslim raised in Corona, Queens, a community where several
ethnicities and religions cross paths. What was growing up in Corona like for you?
It was a special place. There were hundreds of cultural bubbles, each community making its own
world. Then they threw us in public school where all those bubbles hit up against each other and burst.
Razia is a Pakistani from Queens, which is very different than being a Pakistani from Pakistan. She’s
spent most of her life praying five times a day, reading Quran, and going to extra religious services on
the weekends, all the while wearing skin-tight acid-wash jeans, getting her hair feathered, loving
Whitney Houston, and falling for boys breakdancing in the schoolyard. She’s a Queens girl through
and through, but she’s also a closet beatnik who devours poetry and dreams of jumping freight trains.
Her religion and the culture of Queens form her being. She can no more reject them than reject her
physical body, so when she is excommunicated from her Muslim community, she struggles with
feelings of anguish and exhilaration. She’s always wanted to be a vagabond, but when she’s thrown
into the wide world outside of Queens, it takes her time to find her footing.
Of all the places Razia could have run off to, why Salem, Massachusetts, working in a
re-enactment village?
I loved writing about a Pakistani woman working as a Puritan in [the story] "Pioneer Spirit." When I
was a child, I thought living history museums were places where English immigrants were so
successful in preserving their culture, they’d completely lost track of time and place. The culture
Razia’s community is trying to preserve is also locked in time: the Pakistan they left in the '70s. If
someone from her community went back home, it would be as if a 17th-century Puritan went to
modern England. People would say, “You know, we stopped wearing bonnets a long time ago.”
Also, it’s a little-known fact, but Salem, Massachusetts, is where the first South Asians settled in the
United States. They were sailors who worked for the East India Trading Company. They jumped ship
and blended into the Native population. So it makes sense that when Razia jumps ship, she heads
straight for Salem.
Corona is a novel, but the story is told in fragments and memories. In this way it feels
very poetic. Do you have a background writing poetry?
Yes, the seed of this book was a series of prose poems I wrote about Corona, where I wanted to show
the beauty of a place others might just see as a run-down, impoverished neighborhood. As the book
started to become a novel, I became really interested in writing a story that was structured like a poem
with omissions, illogical leaps, and dislocations in time and space. One of the key moments, Razia’s
disownment scene, is never written about directly, only alluded to again and again. It is the void, the
black hole around which all the action of the novel circles. So I guess the structure of the book is also
based on the avoidance of pain.
2 of 4
11/15/13 6:41 PM
New York Q&A: Queens Native Bushra Rehman On Her Debu...
http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/4275342/
Stories about Razia's rebellious young adulthood are interspersed with stories from her
childhood. Why did you decide to arrange the stories in a nonlinear fashion?
I wanted readers to step into Razia’s chaotic reality, to have a feeling of being displaced in time and
space. Also, when placed side by side with how she grew up, her misadventures seem even stranger. In
"The Grass Pulled Up," Razia and her girlfriend are hitchhiking to Key West and get picked up by a
born-again Christian couple. There’s a situational comedy right there, but read along with the story
before it, "Skin," the reader can see Razia was once just as religious as the couple—so religious, her
idea of childhood play was burning porn to save the souls of the beautiful women in the magazines.
The story "The Old Italian" is all of the sudden very dark. It ends by claiming that, as the
new immigrant group to move to the neighborhood, "We didn't know how to take care
of life. We didn't know how to grow anything, and when we touched the world, it died."
Do you believe that, or did you believe it at a time?
This story is about the ways neighborhoods change in New York, about “white flight” specifically. In
this story, the Italian neighbors are unhappy that Pakistanis and Dominicans are moving into Corona.
Razia, as a child, starts to internalize this hatred. This is why she says the statement above. I wanted to
include this feeling because, later in the book, Razia is accused of being shameless, and she is
shameless precisely because she has experienced shaming. At some point she just grew tired of this
feeling and decided she would be shameless. Being free from shame is a beautiful freedom.
You've just had a baby and now you're releasing your novel. How are you managing both
those things at the same time?
Well, at this very moment, I’m rocking her chair with one foot while writing to you. I was reading this
interview with Ani DiFranco where she was asked how motherhood affected her work, and she said it
affected her work by interrupting it. I laughed out loud because it’s so true. It’s this strange tension of
having no time to write and all the time in the world to write, because she’s a newborn and I’m sitting
still for hours every day holding her.
As difficult as it is, I do think having this interruption, this dreaming space, this nothing space, will be
helpful for me as a writer. I’ve learned how to type with one hand, and I’ve slowly been working on the
second Razia book during marathon feeding sessions. I’m noticing the world of the book is opening up
in a way it wasn’t before I had Rosina. I’m less afraid to make slash-and-burn edits or add material
where Razia is emotional and vulnerable. The intensity of the love I feel for my daughter has definitely
broken me open.
I also feel more driven as a writer. If I can help support us with my writing, I can spend more time
working from home, closer to Rosina.
3 of 4
11/15/13 6:41 PM
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Photo Credit: Jaishri Abichandani
Bushra Rehman, Architects of Change Honoree, Speaks About Her New Novel Corona and Her
Personal Connection to Queens
By Rina Desai, Chhaya CDC
September 2013
Rina: Your novel Corona was recently released. Can you tell us a little bit about the book and your
inspiration behind it?
Bushra: Corona is a dark comedy about being South Asian in the United States, a poetic on-the-road
adventure told from the perspective of Razia Mirza, a Pakistani woman from Corona, Queens. Razia grew
up in a tight Muslim community. She has a rebellious streak, and when she gets disowned from her
family, she decides to hit the road. Corona # !$&* !
misadventures she encounters on her journey, from a Puritan Colony in Massachusetts to New York
!%* " # !! $!$!"%"$! !! ! *
! (*)$! exercis %* $!"!$$" !!$!"!"*! !
and more hybrid poem-stories kept coming up. The more I wrote, the more I wanted to show the beauty
of a place that others would just see as a run down impoverished neighborhood. At the same time, I was
writing these funny stories about a Desi girl who gets into all kinds of dangerous and hilarious situations.
As I kept writing, the stories lines converged into one book.
Rina: How much of the book was taken from your own experiences or emotions growing up in Queens?
Bushra: Much of the imagery is drawn from my childhood in Queens. The sofas that people would put
out in their front yards, the Halal meat stores, the rose gardens and grapevines growing everywhere like
! !""!!! "!$ $&'
Since the Queens stories are all told from the point of view of a child, I had to invent dialogue and recreate memories. In the recreation, many real events became fictionalized. For the later stories, I
fictionalized some slightly true stories for comedic effect. So this is definitely a work of fiction and not
memoir.
Rina: How did the experience of writing your debut novel compare to your poetry and essay writing?
Bushra: It took me ten years to finish Corona from start to finish. So I was changing as a writer even as
# % !&) re
long sections of poetry, but by the last story Bhangra Blowout! it looks, tastes and feels a little bit more
like fiction. For me, writing fiction feels like going on long journey, writing poetry feels like an August
thunderstorm, and writing essays feels like a conversation where I do all the talking. I love writing all
#!) # "!% Rina: How have you used your writing to speak out about issues of race and gender?
Bushra: In Corona, it was really important to me to capture a positive portrait of a Pakistani immigrant
community in Queens, the laughter, the struggles, the love and beauty because our community is under
!$ ) # !! !
#!! ! ' (! when you come in and hear the conversation they are just making corny jokes and drinking chai. When
Razia grows up and hits the road trying to be a beatnik, she sees that traveling as a Pakistani woman is
very different than traveling as Jack Kerouac.
) ! # ! # "% # #%
!!!)
stani woman from Queens and I write about what moves
) #%# Rina: Bushra: ) %%)%"% #%!
and community are not just lofty concepts, we need to have legal and financial advocates who are
ensuring our homes are not taken from us, that are communities are not being destroyed.
What speaks to me is the idea of home. When I was young, so many families I knew were pioneers and
set roots in the hard rock soil of Queens. They all bought homes which I find now as the story that
legends are made of. And it was difficult to navigate. I always remember stories of people being cheated
in one way or the other or losing all their earnings and savings because of some tricky person. Even as a
child you take in those feelings and emotions. I wish there had been a Chhaya that my community could
have gone to back then.
Rina: Congratulations on the birth of your child! What parts of Corona and/or Queens are you most
excited to introduce her to as she grows up?
Bushra: )" "## #
over the world, listening to music and literature in multiple languages, meeting children with a variety of
$)" &!# % " !
all over Queens, for her to play with the children of the families I grew up with.
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
THE ORGANIZATION
DONATE
THE REVIEW
REVIEWS : FICTION : ARTICLE
‘Corona’ by Bushra Rehman
Review by Theodosia Henney
June 23, 2014
In her 2014 Lambda Literary Award nominated debut novel Corona, Bushra Rehman describes
a life in vignettes; a young second-generation Pakistani woman named Razia Mirza, who is
passionate, drifting, bright, and unshakably resilient. In a fine rebuke of linear chronology,
Razia’s tales dart back and forth from her childhood in Corona, Queens to a wild tapestry of
locations, all filled with characters both odd and entirely believable. Her adventures find her
hitchhiking through Florida, navigating the Bhangra scene of New York City, working as a tour
guide in a Massachusetts Puritan Colony, living with drunk anarchist Italians, and falling in love
with unlikely people and places.
The scenes from Razia’s young life are wholly compelling: neighborhood children are fleshed out
with a heroic kind of cruelty, families negotiate the balance of their traditions and routines with
the demands of their environment, and bright, invisible lines divide each community, each
family, and each person. As Razia’s story deepens, it becomes evident that she has been expelled
from her community and is estranged from her family. Rehman handles the bittersweet tension
within her character beautifully, allowing Razia to both run away from, and run towards, her
beginnings in Corona, as though that one small borough generates enough gravitational force to
pull the rest of the world into orbit around it.
One of the most remarkable aspects of this work is the delightfully self-aware absurdity present
in so many of Razia’s thoughts and situations. The dialogue is fresh, the characters irrepressably
vibrant and idiosyncratic, and Razia observes it all with the alert wit of one who is selfpossessed, yet able to recognize the ways in which she is caught up in a net of systems, values,
and inequalities that are beyond her immediate control.
While much is revealed in each vignette, Razia’s life is never confined to the text- many
important events happen off-page, and are only hinted at or mentioned in passing. This gives the
impression that, while Razia may be sharing part of herself with the reader, it is entirely at her
own discretion- she maintains her secrets, and the reader can only hope she will divulge more.
Rehman’s book is a sharp, enthralling narrative told with as much heartache as aplomb; she
takes a small borough in Queens, and from it builds a vital world pulsing with color and heat,
inhabited by characters drawn with razor-like precision and a tenderness cultivated by loss.
Corona
By Bushra Rehman
Sibling Rivalry Press
Paperback, 9781937420390, 150 pp.
August 2013
ABOUT : THEODOSIA HENNEY
Theodosia Henney is a queer circus enthusiast who enjoys travel, singing loudly in the car, and
handstands. She has no idea what she is doing with her life, but she has so far enjoyed the notknowing. Her poems and flash-prose have appeared in several journals, and have received
nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Micro Award. In between trapeze and juggling she
edits poetry at Cactus Heart Press. You can visit her corner of the internet at theodosiahenney.com
Tags: *Bisexual, *Lesbian, 26th Annual Lambda Literary Award Finalists, Bushra Rehman, Corona, Fiction, Sibling Rivalry Press
FURTHER INTERVIEWS:
WBAI-Asia Pacific Forum, September 14, 2013: Corona: An Ode to
Queens
KPFK-Flip the Script, September 9, 2013: Interview with Queens Author,
Bushra Rehman
Love, Inshallah Radio, August 1, 2013: Corona-Not the Beer- But the
Place in Queens
WBAI-Asia Pacific Forum, July 13, 2010: Bushra Rehman Reads
SAJA Forum, November 24, 2008: And the World Changed:
Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women
BBC Radio 4, December 9, 2006: Sing Your Own Psalms, MuslimAmerican poets
WNYC-The Brian Lehrer Show, May 5, 2006: Statue of Poetry