Swati Sudarsan
Bookstagrammer when I'm not writing - @booksnailmail for book gems, book drops, & decolonized recs
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The Permission
The dead hamster was half a permission. Now, Radha just needed the other one to die. Twelve hours ago she had spotted the dead hamster, and felt the ice of freedom sluice over her arteries. It was premature, given the other was still sitting lumpishly in its unspinning wheel. Radha had only 6 more hours until Ronnie came back to campus, by when she needed the other hamster dead. If not, she feared she would never be able to break up with him.
Swati SudarsanPublished 3 days ago in Criminal
Detransition, Baby is already my favorite book of 2021
The perfect book does not exis--- *me slapping you with this book* Detransition, Baby is funny, riveting, and expansive - it cares about the cis gaze without catering to it. Peters dedicates the book to “divorced cis women” because at the heart of this novel is the idea that failing at womanhood is a brand, if not a sisterhood (cisterhood? - lol?)
Swati SudarsanPublished 15 days ago in Humans
A Lineage of Hometown Dilutions
See here is a home. I did not call it home until I left it. When I left, I saw how the walls came first, and then we set the bones. The bones are imports, spices, and incense - they make coming into our home a sensory experience, a hometown-ception. The hometown we are in holds a home, and that home is a microcosm of a hometown we left. We are legion, who come from a lineage of hometown dilutions.
Swati SudarsanPublished 22 days ago in Humans
Wellness 2021: How My Indian Wedding Inspired Me to Decolonize Beauty Shopping
2020 was the year the Internet collective adopted #ShopSmall and #ShopLocal as the unifying rallying cry. However, seeing these hashtags everywhere pushed me to think about what #ShopSmall as a blanket statement actually accomplishes?
Swati SudarsanPublished about a month ago in Marriage
Wanna be on Top?
Tyra Banks - a household name. Easy to love, easy to hate. However you feel about her, she is undeniably a powerhouse. I discovered Tyra in early high school, when I got my first laptop (a Dell that rivals the weight of medical textbooks). Before then, we had been a strictly no-cable family. This meant watching lots of PBS, my brain forming new synaptic connections due to educational shows thinly veiled as entertainment until 4 pm, when the channel transitioned to adult programming. Finding America's Next Top Model on a free stream site felt illicit back then - I would watch under the covers for hours after my parents had gone to bed. They always wondered why their 14-year-old had dark circles.
Swati SudarsanPublished about a month ago in Viva
