Quick Dutch break

I’m off to Amsterdam tonight. See you back on Monday!

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Open thread: Guilty pleasures

I want to share with you a dark and shameful secret. So sit back and make yourself comfortable because it will be a guilt-ridden confessional joyride. Now, being a feminist supposedly involves being humourless and super-ethical about everything. All that makes it real difficult to deal with guilty pleasures sometimes. That’s because such pleasures often [...]

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Book review: Ombak Bukan Biru by Fatimah Busu

Fatimah Busu has a gift for telling stories of social alienation. Her stories are often a provocative social critique of Malay society but are easily accessible and good for philosophical rumination. In Salam Maria, her protagonist is a misfit, a social castoff who is forced to the depths of the forest to live with those [...]

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Busy

Dear Readers,
Cycads is going to be temporarily stalled this week to make way for concert rehearsals and workshop meetings. The concert is this coming Sunday and I will be playing my man J.S. Bach’s praeludium in A-Flat BWV 886 (from his Well-Tempered Clavier Book 2) and for my choir. Also, I’ve been just dead tired [...]

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I need serious cheering up aka weekend round-up of favourite reads 16-18/1

There are days when I feel like tearing my hair out and never leave my flat. I’ll just return to the world when my hair grows out again. But following my better judgement, I’m going to have to recover from an agonisingly disappointing week for a couple of days with delicious cooking, fine entertainment on [...]

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Every woman’s “big day” – what is it for?

Originally written by Bidisha at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free under the title, Wedlock throws away the key:
Wedlock. It’s the kind of word that ought to send chills down a modern woman’s spine. It describes with deadly aptness the prison-like qualities of that institution and evokes a cold sense of confinement and consignment. An Englishman’s [...]

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Weekend round-up of favourite online reads 11/1

My current obsession with feminist science fiction led me to brilliant reviews of Vandana Singh’s The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet at both The F-Word and Ultrabrown. In my earlier post on Islam and feminism in SF I mentioned a few times about how the genre is used to critique some grand narratives [...]

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Notes on Islam and feminism in science fiction

I’ve been reading a lot about feminist science fiction lately, mostly of out fascination for its philosophical what-ifs and fantastic plots and situations. And as a casual reader of the genre rather than a fan, I am intrigued by the questions raised by feminist science fiction writers about culture and heteronormativity (guest contributor Gareth shares [...]

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Book review: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin

By special guest contributor, Gareth:
A few months ago, Alicia asked me why science fiction was such a boy thing and what is the point of the genre. I cobbled together an answer about science fiction being used to create a narrative space removed from the here and now into which pertinent questions and ideas can [...]

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Idealising Islamic womanhood, internalising whiteness

The meteoric rise of Malaysian actress Wardina and singer Waheeda in the last few years was by no means an accident. For decades, women who wore the tudung (hijab) had longed for high-profile role models who shared their values and dress code. Representation is, of course, a good thing, but their popularity can be partly [...]

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