Category Archives: News

Maya’s Slim Chance – Bone Marrow Donor Needed

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maya.jpgHere at Sepia Mutiny, we have covered many bone marrow campaigns over the years. As you know by now, South Asian Americans have a 1:20,000 chance of finding a match in the bone marrow registry which is a stark difference to Caucasians who have an 80% chance of finding a match. To put that in terms of numbers, as of Jan ’09 there were 5,408,623 Caucasians in the donor registry, and only 139,460 South Asian donors in the registry. The mutiny has helped to publicize the the Help Vinay & Sameer campaigns, which added 25,000 new South Asian names to the national registry.

But there is a new little girl that needs our help, the precious four year old Maya Chamberlain.

In September, 4-year-old Maya Chamberlin was diagnosed with a rare blood disease known as HLH. Her chances of survival depend on finding a suitable bone marrow donor…. Maya’s mother, Dr. Mina Chamberlin, says her daughter’s illness, hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, affects the immune system. [kpcc]

The reason that makes a match especially tough? She’s half desi.

The pool of potentially mixed-race donors is made even more difficult because blood relatives of patients often don’t qualify, and trying to find a volunteer with the right racial combination can be extremely tough, experts said. Marrow transplants are also more complex than those involving organs. [latimes]

> “It’s difficult with Maya because she comes from a mixed genetic background,” Chamberlin says. “I myself am from India and my husband is Caucasian — German and English descent — so the combination of the two is making it more difficult to find a match.” > > A donor’s compatibility is based on their HLA — or human leukocyte antigen — type. “And HLA is basically inherited. So the probability of finding a suitable donor is highest among people of your own race,” Chamberlin says. > >She says the chances of finding a donor are “pretty low — pretty, pretty low… But it is not hopeless. I mean, I know there is that one person out there.”[[kpcc](http://www.scpr.org/news/2009/12/27/4-year-old-girl-faces-long-odds-in-search-for-dono/)] Continue reading →

Mother Murdered for Being Strict

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Danish Minhas.jpgI think most Desis can empathize with the overly strict Desi household growing up as a teenager in the U.S. But this story has a tragic ending. (h/t Muna)

From the beginning, Houston police say, they doubted 17-year-old Danish Moazzam Minhas’ story about finding his mother’s bloody body in their apartment.

> The Lee High School student told investigators he’d spent the entire night out and came upon the crime scene when he returned home that morning in late November. The attacker, Minhas told detectives, must have surprised 43-year-old Tabassum Khan while she was counting money she planned to spend on bills and the traditional Muslim feast of Eid. [[chron](http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6801520.html)] Fingerprints left at the scene were tracked back to a classmate of Minhas. The classmate, Nur Mohamed, told cops he was hired by Minhas to kill his mother for $4,000. He only collected $1,000. > He is now charged with solicitation of capital murder, authorities said, and has confessed to arranging the killing because he felt his mother was too strict. Continue reading →

Flying While Brown Deja Vu

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airport-security-line.jpgWith news that the failed Nigerian underwear bomber was an actual real threat, the international community is rumbling in rapid reactions. My plans of going to South Asia this next month went awry when just a couple of weeks ago India suddenly changed their visa regulations; all people holding a tourist visa to India now need to wait two months before re-entry, leaving many tourists who use India as a home base to travel around South Asia in flux. The reasoning given? American Headley’s support in the Mumbai bombing. (FYI, rules changing daily on this, so keep updated if you will be traveling soon).

In addition to heightened visa security, the world is experiencing heightened airport security as well.

TSA is mandating that every individual flying into the U.S. from anywhere in the world traveling from or through nations that are state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest will be required to go through enhanced screening. The directive also increases the use of enhanced screening technologies and mandates threat-based and random screening for passengers on U.S. bound international flights.[tsa]

I haven’t had to travel on an airline yet but have been following tweets of my world traveling friends and it seems that there is no consistency to airport security. I am quickly reminded of how in the post 9/11 backlash racial profiling at airports were rampant and I needed to have a special phone call made each and every time I flew because I had the classic Muslim last name. It seems like the new TSA regulations are setting up racial profiling to be acceptable all over again.

According to information currently known about the new standards, all passengers traveling to the United States from 14 countries will be subject to heightened security screenings, including full-body pat-downs and luggage searches. These countries include Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

> The new standards will undoubtedly lead to the targeting of passengers from Muslim-majority countries. Rather than developing more effective policies that focus on behavior, the new standards categorically target individuals for additional scrutiny based upon ethnicity, religion, and country of origin. Moreover, the measures promote existing misperceptions about these communities as threats to security and harm the U.S. government’s reputation, both domestically and abroad, towards ensuring civil rights and equality.[[saalt](http://saalt.org/attachments/1/South%20Asian%20Organizations%20Express%20Concerns%20About%20New%20Airport%20Security%20Screening%20Standards.pdf)] Continue reading →

And There’s Another One. Hansen Clarke.

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Hansen Clarke.jpgAt first there was Gov. Bobby Jindal from Louisiana. Then there was Nikki Haley from South Carolina. Now, there is a new contender in the Desi-Running-For-Governor category. Hansen Clarke from Michigan announced today that he is running for Governor in 2010.

State Sen. Hansen Clarke tossed his hat in the race for the Democratic nomination for governor Tuesday, only hours after Lt. Gov. John Cherry withdrew from the race, vowing “no more excuses and no more passing the buck.” The 52-year-old Detroit Democrat, [joins] an increasingly crowded primary field…[michiganmessenger]

> Clarke served six years in the House before being elected twice to the Senate. A lawyer, he also ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Detroit. [[chicagotribune](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-mi-governorsrace-cl,0,4191053.story)] I know what you are thinking. He’s 52?!?!? At least, that’s what everyone around me is saying. I like to think Desis age well. And yes, he is Desi. Bangladeshi, to be accurate. > Hansen Hashem Clarke… was first elected to the Michigan State Senate in 2002 and re-elected in 2006. He is son of Mozaffar Ali Hashem, a Bangladeshi, and Telma Ali, an US citizen. His father was born at Sridhara village of Beani Bazar upazila in Sylhet district. [[newnation](http://nation.ittefaq.com/issues/2008/01/02/news0109.htm)] >

> An only child, Hansen Clarke grew up in a working class neighborhood on Detroit’s lower east side. His father passed away when he was only eight years old and his mother supported the family with a job as a school crossing guard. Food stamps helped fill in the gaps. [[michigansenate](http://www.senate.michigan.gov/clarke/about.php)] In 2007, Hansen went with the [Bangladeshi American Public Affairs Committee (BAPAC)](http://www.bapac-us.org/) to Bangladesh. Here’s [a video of him speaking ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDSeF3YyOvY)to his father’s village on that trip and it seems like [he’s trying to build a partnership with Bangladesh](http://nation.ittefaq.com/issues/2008/01/02/news0109.htm) (though how much of it is campaign talk, who knows). Continue reading →

Best South Asia Books of the 2000s

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The 2000s were a great decade for books related to South Asia in western publishing. Earlier it seemed that there was a very limited quota for South Asia related material in American publishing — but that’s ended.

I took some heat from readers for the narrowness of some of my earlier polls, so for these polls I decided to open up the voting with longer lists. I think a non-South Asian writer could potentially write as well about South Asian life as a desi, so I decided to open the lists up to non-desi writers who have made a mark, especially folks like William Dalrymple.

I also felt that it would be unfair to put new novelists, whose names might not yet be familiar to a lot of people, in contest with established Big Name authors. So I divided the fiction list into two — one for established writers (who were either not writing their first books in the 2000s, or whose first books were runaway successes), and one for “up and comers,” who did publish first novels in the 2000s. Doing it this way also allows me to point to a number of Sepia Mutiny reviews and Q&As that my co-bloggers and I have have done over the past few years.

Below I’ve put some comments, where I have something to say about a particular book. There are a few books on the polls I haven’t actually read — so I refrained from making any comments. There are also a few books I have read where I decided not to comment. However, even if there’s no comment below, the books might still be on the poll; my silence should not be taken as an attempt to influence the vote.

Finally, I’m sure I still missed many names that readers might find important, especially on the “up and comers” poll. Unfortunately the way this free poll service works, it’s not possible for me to go back and change a poll. However, I can always amend the text of the post itself if need be. Please mention other titles or authors in the comments. Continue reading →

End of Decade Polls #2, #3 #3A: Sports and Cinema

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The results of poll #1, on the most influential Desi musician of the 2000s, are pretty clear — with about 200 votes cast, A.R. Rahman wins by a significant margin, with M.I.A. as the second most influential Desi musician of the 2000s.

The topic of the next poll was strongly suggested by the comments following the first one — sports. I tried to use what the commenters were suggesting to guide my choices.

While I am at it, however, I am also doing a poll for the best Desi film of the 2000s. Here, it seemed wrong to put artsy “diaspora” films up against commercial South Asian cinema (Bollywood, Tollywood, etc.), so I created a poll #3 — for commercial cinema — and a poll #3A — for specifically South Asian diaspora cinema.

Choosing the films for the commercial cinema category was challenging, and I kept finding that certain films had a natural pairing (for instance, Lagaan, by Ashutosh Gowariker, goes with Swades). I also realized that some of the most influential commercial films were known not for their directors, but for writers and producers; Vidhu Vinod Chopra, whose name was associated with both Munnabhai films, only wrote the first one. Similarly, Karan Johar’s name is associated with several important films he produced rather than directed. And the directors for many Yash Raj Films are unknowns, but the films have a certain “stamp” to them. So I used the idea of the “filmmaker,” which could be the writer, director, or producer.

I’m sure my approach will seem a little unusual to some folks, but hopefully it’s coherent enough, and you see something there you want to vote for. (At the very least, my approach solved the problem of how to pick just 10 commercial films from over the entire decade.) Finally, people who really know regional cinema might want to create your own “Best Of 2000s” lists in the comments — I simply haven’t seen very much Telugu cinema, for example, so I don’t have any Telugu filmmakers listed here.

All three polls after the fold. Continue reading →

Desi Women of the Decade: Poll #4

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Desi Women of Decade.jpg

Back in my younger mutinous days, when I was the youngest in the bunker, I wrote this post on “cool” desi women under the age of 30. I wrote it because I wanted to highlight other Desi American women in my age range who were “doing something”. A list like that didn’t exist then. We have since had many more young folk added to the mutinous blog roll in the bunker and there are even more Desi women than ever doing amazing things.

I too am jumping on the ’00 decade list making band wagon. In the past decade, I went from being a nascent 20 year old to a pseudo-mature 30 yr old. But more significantly, I think of how in 2000, as a desi girl in the U.S., I didn’t have any South Asian American females that I could turn to – as role models, as women breaking barriers, as women in the media. It was alienating and isolating, to not see Desi women breaking glass ceilings. I didn’t realize that there were things that desi girls could do outside of the “model minority job list” – I had no one really to look towards. In these past ten years, the South Asian American community has grown with leaps and bounds. Strong desi women have coming out of the wood works. They are on big screens, on the shelves of major book stores, and profiled in the news. Desi women are running for office, going to space, starting and directing non-profits, and running companies. I am so proud of to be a Desi woman of this decade, to be a part of a community giving the next generation of Desi girls role models to look up to.

So here is my mutinous list of the top 20 most influential South Asian American Women of the Decade (in alphabetical order). Please vote on the woman that you feel has been most influential to you in the poll at the bottom of the post. Continue reading →

End of Decade Poll #1: Desi Popular Music

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It only just hit me that this is the end of the 2000s decade — the “aughts,” as they are sometimes called, though mainly in meta-journalism articles about what the decade should be called. (Most people I know simply say “the 2000s,” and don’t think twice about it.)

Critics have begun posting their “best of” lists for the year and the decade, and I’m thinking that over the next two weeks we’ll do something similar (see ex-SM blogger Siddhartha Mitter’s “Best World Music” album of 2009 here, for instance). Only, I’m not so interested in explaining how great I personally think certain people are; I would rather hear opinions from readers. It’s a blog; we can do that. (To be clear, I don’t have anything against critics’ best of lists.)

The first poll is music. In the next few days, we might do: most influential desi novel, best desi film, most overrated celebrity, and most influential desi politician. (Suggestions for other polls?)

In the comments, please feel free to ‘write in’ the names of people who ought to be on the list but aren’t, or to discuss why you voted as you did.

Poll is below the fold. Continue reading →

Follow Up on Glenn Beck, Ganges, Cipro, etc.

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Again via Media Matters, it appears that Glenn Beck has made a very brief, minimal apology about his comment about the “river that sounds like a disease” last week:

Pretty weak, no? It reminds me a bit of trying to convince a little kid to say “sorry” for something he’s done. You coax and coax, and when he finally says “sorry” in a half-hearted, minimal way you realize that there’s no remorse there whatsoever; he’s just doing it to get you to leave him alone. Glenn Beck is, apparently, that naughty little kid.

This little stab at an apology comes as the story has been starting to pick up steam in the Indian media, and as a growing number of Indian American groups have been speaking out about it. Arzan mentioned to me that he’s seen coverage of the story on a few Indian television channels, and there is also a smattering of print coverage in the Indian Express, Zee News, and Times Now.

The Indian American groups cited in the coverage have included the AAPI (Indian doctors), USINPAC, and … Rajan Zed. (Rajan Zed is still apparently the first, and maybe only, Hindu leader in the U.S. on everyone’s speed dial.) Where is everyone else?

A group called the Forum For Hindu Awakening, has also apparently filed a complaint against Beck with the FCC, though I do not expect that to amount to much.

Is that the end of it? (Next we will find out that Beck is also a paid spokesman for one of the companies that makes “Cipro,” too.) Continue reading →