Fariha Róisín and Zeba Blay for Like a Bird

Sep
10:00pm
Fariha Róisín and Zeba Blay for Like a Bird

By Loyalty Bookstores
Fariha Róisín and Zeba Blay, hosts of the groundbreaking Two Brown Girls podcast, return for a special edition celebrating the launch of Fariha's debut novel Like a Bird. This event will be held digitally via Crowdcast. Click here to register for the event with a donation of any amount of your choice. Donations will go to Black Lives Matter DC. You can pre-order the order the book below and there will also be an option to buy the book during the event.
ABOUT THE BOOK
"Like A Bird is such a generous text, teeming with layered and beautifully living characters. A flaw of so much book praise is the quest to make every book universal. This book sings, specifically, to a people, while leaving the door open wide enough for anyone else to walk through." –Hanif Abdurraqib, bestselling author of They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us and Go Ahead in the Rain
Taylia Chatterjee has never known love, and certainly has never felt it for herself. Growing up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, with her older sister Alyssa, their parents were both overbearing and emotionally distant, and despite idyllic summers in the Catskills, and gatherings with glamorous family friends, there is a sadness that emanates from the Chatterjee residence, a deep well of sorrow stemming from the racism of American society. After a violent sexual assault, Taylia is disowned by her parents and suddenly forced to move out. As Taylia looks to the city, the ghost of her Indian grandmother dadi-ma is always one step ahead, while another more troubling ghost chases after her. Determined to have the courage to confront the pain that her family can’t face, Taylia finds work at a neighborhood café owned by single mother and spiritualist, Kat. Taylia quickly builds a constellation of friends and lovers on her own, daring herself to be open to new experiences, even as they call into question what she thought she knew about the past. Taylia's story is about survival, coming to terms with her past and looking forward to a future she never felt she was allowed to claim. Writing this for eighteen years, poet and activist Fariha Róisín’s debut novel is an intense, provocative, and emotionally profound portrait of an inner life in turmoil and the redemptive power of community and love.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fariha Róisín is an Australian-Canadian writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Vice, Fusion, Village Voice, and elsewhere. Her work often explores Muslim identity, race, pop culture, and film. It also examines the intersection of queerness and being a femme of color while navigating a white world. She is the author of the poetry collection, How to Cure A Ghost, and the guided journal, Being in Your Body.
ABOUT THE IN CONVERSATION PARTNER
Zeba Blay is a Ghanaian-born film, television, and cultural critic. She is the Senior Culture Writer at the Huffington Post, and one of the most prominent Black female voices in film criticism and pop culture writing. Her work has appeared in Slant, Afropunk, The Village Voice, The New York Times, Film Comment, Film Quarterly, Shadow and Act, Indiewire, Essence, and MTV's Decoded. Her first book, Carefree Black Girls (based on the hashtag she coined in 2013), will be published in Fall 2021.
hosted by
Loyalty Bookstores