I have a book coming out in early 2021.

A thread on access & whose story gets to be told in Pakistan:

For decades, Karachi, Islamabad, and Lahore have dominated the English-speaking upper middle class and rich world of Pakistan. Books that come out in English here are by default the expression/longing/understanding of the privileged.

English writers in Pakistan are often asked to exoticise & make their narratives authentic --authenticity here means 'we want you to write about bombs, weddings, monsoons, migration, dual identity, incessant warfare' +

+ and not the actual often micro-aggressed mundane lives of these writers and the macro-aggressed/deprived living experiences of their fellow countrymen lower in class to them.

In short: Write about bombs and elite weddings. But we don't want your desi noir or genre stories.

And even if writers like myself could write abt the lives of folks who're not as privileged as I, I didn't live that life. It would still be *my* story, *my* lived experience of "them".

This is why it's so important to encourage indigenous publishing houses who search out gems.

So important to encourage awards like @TheSalamAward through which a 13-yr old girl in Thatta or Mardan can send us a story, her dream--and with luck we can watch her grow.

This is why so important to encourage translation work and establish translation houses in India/Pakistan who are funded by national and private entities without any strings attached.

Why @asymptotejrnl's work's so important.

Why Muhammad Umer Memon & @microMAF's work so imp.

Thus, the work of someone like me is FAR less important than the work of, say, anyone who translates Intizar Husain or Anwar Masood (Punjabi poet).

Or one who's devoted their life to translating or highlighting more Pashto, Balochi, Saraiki, Sindi and other regional artists.

I could say much more, but that's perhaps an essay for sometime.

Meanwhile, please support awards & venues like @TheSalamAward @desi_writers and @themissingslate. They have done WAY more than you'll ever know to bring indigenous literature to the mainstream.