Publication: "Letter-Poems to Shauki Masi: Diasporic Queer South Asian Muslim Reflections on the 5 Pillars of Islam"

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​[image description: a handmade purple card that centers an old photograph of a woman of south asian descent, who is wearing a black graduation gown over a white sari and holding a diploma. the bottom left corner of the card is covered with a sheer purple ribbon, which holds a cigarette in place.]

​During a graduate course called QTPOC Arts and Activisms that I took in 2018, I was given the following assignment: to create something for the Día de los Muertos altar at the Eena Haws Native American Longhouse. I made a card/letter-poem for my ancestor, Shauki Masi, who had passed away in 2017. I continued this practice of writing to Shauki Masi long after the course concluded. 

As I re-read what I'd written over a year or so, I was struck by some of the themes that emerged about queer South Asian kinship, belonging, and world-making. I decided to try to weave together the letters into a larger piece. The idea to dedicate individual letters to the pillars of Islam was inspired by Halal If You Hear Me, a poetry anthology centering women, queer, and trans Muslim voices, edited by Fatimah Asghar and Safia Elhillo. (The collection is divided into sections for each of the pillars.) I presented the finished piece as part of a panel, Queer/Trans Muslim Storytelling: Diasporic World-Making, at the National Women's Studies Association conference in San Francisco in 2019. I was touched and honored to see how the letter-poems resonated with folks at the conference. This gave me the courage to submit the piece to Meridians, where it was eventually published in 2021. 

When I left the PhD program at the end of 2020, one of my regrets was that my dissertation wouldn't be finished. My dissertation chapters were inextricably interwoven into conversations with Shauki Masi's ghost, including and expanded beyond the letter-poems. It felt profoundly disrespectful to abandon the project partway, even though I knew that the dissertation was neither the sum nor the purpose of this ongoing haunted queer diasporic kinship practice with Shauki Masi. It, therefore, means a lot to me to see "Letter-Poems to Shauki Masi: Diasporic Queer South Asian Muslim Reflections on the Five Pillars of Islam" in print. It represents one part of how I try to honor responsibilities to Shauki Masi as well as to my larger communities.

Note: Updated on 09/13/21 to add image description.