09 Mar 2025
“I worte myself into being”: Everett’s “Reimagination” of Twain’s Huck Finn
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Everett’s James “reimagines” one of the most quintessential American classics, Twain’s Huck Finn, a novel that, in Earnest Hemingway’s words, marked the beginning of all modern American literature. Everett’s narrator, Jim—who reinscribes himself as James—tells the story of the antebellum South in his amphibian escapade along the bends of the Mississippi. Everett’s twenty-fourth novel does more than replacing the narrative perspective of a playful and rebellious Huck who runs away from his abusive father and “civilizing missions” of his caretakers. Everett amplifies the tenuous agency of Twain’s Jim, allowing James to show readers what a teenage white boy could not perceive. James refashions his dynamic agency through his seamlessly signifying linguistic maneuvers, intellectual insight, graphic portrayal of the horrors of slavery, and fearsome revolting spirit.
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To read full review, click here.
06 Mar 2024
Rhetoric in the Digital Town Squares
Special Session for 2025 MLA Convention in New Orleans, Jan. 9-12
This panel discusses rhetorical strategies the new/social media users employ to voice for justice, push propaganda, and create or remix content to amplify visibility in attention economy. Please email ~250-word abstract and a brief bio to sarbagya.kafle1@louisiana.edu.
Deadline for submissions: Monday, 25 March 2024
Contact: Sarbagya Kafle, University of Louisiana at Lafayette (sarbagya.kafle1@louisiana.edu)
06 Dec 2023
This working timeline showcases exchange of ideas, inspriation and solidarity between the South Asia and the United States.
15 Jun 2023
Brown Africa by Aahuti
(This poem was first published in Nepali as “Gahungoro Africa” in Mulaykan magazine in 2051 B.S. and also includied as the opening section in Aahuti’s 2010 A.D. book Nepalma Varna Vyavastha ra Varga-Sangharsha)
My red blood
Holy human blood
When it trickles becoming blue sweat beads
You collect them forming bunds in your delicate cupped hands
When I try to smell the fragrance of that labor
You humiliate me and keep me away
Dare to meet my gaze, priest
I am an ‘untouchable’ of 20th century!
A brown Africa in this round geography!
I want justice
I want freedom!
Your temple’s sculpture smells of my smithy,
Karahi on your trivet smells of my sweat
Dare to meet my gaze, pious man!
Either dare to smolder my existence and maintain your religion
Or have courage to tear or burn the pages of scriptures that humiliate me
I am a blacksmith who made the god of your temple
A brown Africa in this round geography!
Sniff the clean floor of your settlement
Each piece of your settlement smells of my blood
Dare to meet my gaze, clean man!
Either dare to fill water in my blood veins
Or have courage to clean the garbage of your brain
I am a Chyame who collects garbage of your settlement!
A brown Africa in this round geography!
Tear the entertained glands of your mind
Where is heard the melodic susurration of my music
Dare to meet my gaze, a conscious man!
Either dare to leash me with animals and feed me grass
Or have courage to differentiate yourself from the animals
I am a Gaine, a Badi who bows sarangi and plays madal.
A brown Africa in this round geography!
Feel my life sunken in soil
Where is found a pool of my tears
Dare to meet my gaze a satiated man!
Either dare say that your morsel doesn’t smell of my tear
Or have courage to respect my Dalit life
I am a Musahar ploughman who swims in soil with your oxen!
A brown Africa in this round geography!
From the shoes at your feet to the cap on your head
From distant horizon of your vision to your heart beats
Where am I not? I am everywhere!
How can you make me ‘untouchable,’ ‘touchable’ man?
Either dare to stand at the witness box of the history
Or have courage to change yourself
Dare to meet my gaze, priest!
I am a 20th century ‘untouchable’!
A brown Africa in this round geography!
I want the account of my humiliated history
I want freedom at any costs!
(Translator: Sarbagya Kafle, June 15, 2023, 11.00 pm)