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Feminism January 16, 2013
Rape in the ‘New India’
Exploding the myth of the “two Indias,” the brutal attacks on women have shown that there is only one, where social Darwinism reigns.
Lakshmi Chaudhry
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Regions and Countries January 15, 2009
Slumdog President
Many Indians believe Obama's victory makes all things possible for people of color--but for all the good will, there is little mention of India's ever-present racism.
Lakshmi Chaudhry
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Politics December 3, 2008
Mumbai’s 9/11 Meme
We have much to fear from easy evocations of 9/11, but in India, it is a call to the world to recognize their loss.
Lakshmi Chaudhry
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Election 2008 February 7, 2008
California Dreaming
The Golden State's lesson for Clinton and Obama is that they each need to craft a more daring politics of transcendence.
Lakshmi Chaudhry
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Cultural Criticism and Analysis December 30, 2007
Amnesia at the Multiplex
Two films address US adventures in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with a big dose of historical amnesia, political pandering, moral superiority and outraged innocence.
Lakshmi Chaudhry
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Cultural Criticism and Analysis November 15, 2007
Will the Real Generation Obama Please Stand Up?
The cranky, quirky and sometimes progressive politics practiced by a generation once considered slackers could be a deciding factor in this presidential election.
Lakshmi Chaudhry
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November 14, 2007
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November 5, 2007
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October 29, 2007
Aliens in America
Most fish-out-of-water stories are told at the expense of the poor fish. But not so with Aliens in America, which may well be the best television show you're not watching. Well, you'd first have to find that misbegotten offspring of the WB/UPN marriage, the CW channel.
Your efforts will be well rewarded with a very funny comedy that takes on racism, the war on terror, Islam, and that most hallowed of American institutions: high school. How can you resist a show that throws together a devout Pakistani teenager and small-town America?
Hollywood is usually at its excruciatingly racist worst when it comes to any plot that involves foreign exchange students of the non-white variety -- think Long Duk Dong slobbering over Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles. The joke is always at the expense of the "fish."
Lakshmi Chaudhry
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October 22, 2007
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Rebecca Solnit, as usual, offers plenty of food for thought in her essay, "Finding Time." As often with Solnit, I was both impressed by her insight, and impatient of her tendency to draw tenuous connections to all her pet issues/peeves, irrespective of the subject at hand.
Who can resist a piece that begins, "The four horsemen of my apocalypse are called Efficiency, Convenience, Profitability, and Security, and in their names, crimes against poetry, pleasure, sociability, and the very largeness of the world are daily, hourly, constantly carried out. These marauding horsemen are deployed by technophiles, advertisers, and profiteers to assault the nameless pleasures and meanings that knit together our lives and expand our horizons."
Solnit offers some wonderful insights into the ways in which our lives are shaped by the tyrannical regimen of these four values, but the only downside is that much of it leads inexorably to a litany of the standard complaints against automobiles, commerce, McMansions, consumerism etc. There's even the obligatory admiring nod to those darned Europeans.
Lakshmi Chaudhry