Let Me Touch Your Mind: an interview

The ever friendly and probing DJ Marilynn interviewed me on her radio show Let Me Touch Your Mind. It was brief, but she allowed the conversation to go beyond the issues contained in my novella, sort of the political mise en scene of A Footbridge to Hell Called Love. 

You can listen in here: 

Moazzam on air - 89.5 FM

Before I left to meet Marilynn at KPOO, the radio station on Divisadero, I had written a handful of notes, words and phrases that would describe the novella, but our conversation went in a different direction. I'd like to take this moment share them here with you. 

FHCL is a love letter to San Francisco - perhaps a certain kind of San Francisco. But it's also a critique and/or protest as well - a probe into the city's self-absorbed, narcissistic image as being liberal and/or progressive without questioning its silences. The narrative of FHCL may read as if it's only a love story or a story about a man in search for love, yet beneath that layer exist spaces which are political, spaces which, by and large, are not touched by American fiction. The novella also creates a road map to avoid falling into the habit of neo-orientalism, quite popular among South Asian American authors, by becoming a native informant - explaining the "complex" east, detailed India or Pakistan, as authentically, accurately, as possible with subconscious ease.