Parathas and parakeets: remembering grandma’s eternal kitchen

Ciaran Thapar talks about how Indian food has helped him maintain a connection with his heritage after the passing of his grandmother

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Denial, shame and the Armenian Genocide

by Robert Kazandjian The identity I was constructing for myself collapsed around my L.A-Gear-clad feet when I was six or seven. My friend Kirilos arrived from Sudan, and joined our school. The teacher, encouraged by my proud declarations of Egyptian heritage, told me to speak ‘your language’ with him. ‘Parev, inch’pes es?’ (Hello, how are… Read More

Transracial doesn’t mean what Rachel Dolezal thinks it means

By Ellie Freeman I am transracial. But I am nothing like Rachel Dolezal. This week, Rachel Dolezal, the head of the Spokane, Washington chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was revealed to be a white woman masquerading as a black woman. Just when you couldn’t imagine anything more contemptible… Read More

Home truths, or Swedish for beginners

by Mara Lee The fundament of home is the community and the feeling of belonging. The good home doesn’t know of any privileged or left out people, no pets, and no stepchildren. Here, nobody looks down on one another. Nobody tries to obtain advantages at somebody else’s expense. The strong neither oppresses nor plunders the… Read More

As a Mixed-Race Woman, in the Game of Racial Top Trumps My Blackness Always Wins

Shifting race: how language fails the ‘mixed-race’ experience by Varaidzo The idea of ‘race’ has no fixed definition considering the term has no biological basis. Yet all of us from minority backgrounds know what it is to be racialised, to be lumped together into a group with others who share our physical attributes, for this… Read More