Essays, Reviews & Interviews
Why I Lied to Everyone in High School About Knowing Karate
Longreads
"I wasn’t exceptional. I wasn’t a child prodigy, or a good student or a talented writer. I wasn’t popular. And I didn’t know karate. This was who I truly was, a composite of negatives, a person defined by all she is not."
We Shitholers Shouldn't Have to Tout Our Successes
LA Review of Books
When did “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” turn into “Give me your PhDs, your neurosurgeons, your top-performing telecommunications sales executives”?
Safe but Not Okay: When White Supremacists Came to Our Town
LA Review of Books
Jabeen Akhtar on what it was like being a resident of Charlottesville during the August, 2017 Unite the Right rally.
Islam Hasn’t Had Our Friedrich Schleiermacher: A Conversation with Ayad Akhtar
LA Review of Books
Interview with Pulitzer prize-winning playwright, novelist, and screenwriter Ayad Akhtar.
Dear Donald Trump: An Open Letter From Jabeen Akhtar
LA Review of Books
Jabeen Akhtar gives Donald Trump advice on how to deal with Pakistani parents.
The Evolution of Comics from Batman to Burkas
LA Review of Books
Looking back on comics’ engagement with socioeconomic, political, and cultural events, it’s no surprise that as we step into this century, brown, mustache-twirling terrorists have begun stirring up trouble in the comics universe. And Captain America isn’t the only one fighting them.
Why Am I Brown? South Asian Fiction and Pandering to Western Audiences
LA Review of Books
In much contemporary literature, South Asians are exotic little creatures fluttering about in glass jars for the bemusement of monocle-clutching Western observers.
The 17 Elements of a (Bad) South Asian Novel
Publishing Perspectives
Cliches about family, heritage, culture and dead grandmothers.
Too Pre-Occupied to Bring About Change?
DNA Magazine
The occupy Wall Street movements seem to be islands of passionately discontented people floating about on the open sea, with no direction, leadership or clear targets.
My Mother, the Rebel
Good Girls Marry Doctors
A personal essay on the difficulty of being a teenage rebel when your mother is a radical animal rights activist.
Turning Over a Bad Leaf
Grazia
Jabeen Akhtar on the backlash that followed her 2006 protest against animals in circuses.
Fiction
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Listen to a podcast of "Ants on the Wall" performed by voice actor Jennifer Sims
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