Corona Press
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PRESS KIT Corona A novel by Bushra Rehman From Sibling Rivalry Press Print ISBN: 978-1-937420-39-0 eBook ISBN: 978-1-937420-48-2 Release Date: 08/01/2013 5 x 8 Perfect-Bound Paperback Print Retail Price: $14.95; 154 Pages eBook Retail Price: $3.99 for Kindle, Nook, iPad Featuring Cover Art by Chitra Ganesh ABOUT CORONA: Razia Mirza is a Pakistani woman from Corona, Queens, who grew up in a tight Muslim community surrounding the first Sunni masjid built in New York City. When a rebellious streak leads to her excommunication, she decides to hit the road. Corona moves between Razia’s childhood and the comedic misadventures she encounters on her journey, from a Puritan Colony in Massachusetts to New York City’s Bhangra music scene. With each story, we learn more about the past she’s escaping, a past which leads her to constantly travel in a spiral, always coming closer to but never quite arriving home. BUSHRA REHMAN Bushra Rehman’s mother says Bushra was born in an ambulance flying through the streets of Brooklyn. Her father is not so sure, but it would explain a few things. Bushra was a vagabond poet who traveled for years with nothing more than a greyhound ticket and a book bag full of poems. Rehman’s first novel, Corona, is a dark comedy about being South Asian in the United States and was noted among this year’s Best Debut Fiction by Poets & Writers. Rehman’s co-edited the anthology Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism which was included in Ms. Magazine’s 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of All Time. Her writing has been featured on BBC Radio 4, WNYC, and KPFA and in The New York Times, India Currents, Crab Orchard Review, Sepia Mutiny, Color Lines, The Feminist Wire and Mizna: Prose, Poetry and Art Exploring Arab America. Read more at www. bushrarehman.com. PUBLICITY INFORMATION If you would like to host Bushra at a panel or request a review copy please contact [email protected] ABOUT SIBLING RIVALRY PRESS: Founded in 2010, Sibling Rivalry Press is an independent publishing house based in Alexander, Arkansas. Our purpose is best defined by the incomparable Adrienne Rich, who said to Michael Klein in a 1999 interview: There’s a lot of what I would call comfortable poetry around. But then there is all this other stuff going on — which is wilder, which is bristling; it’s juicier, it’s everything that you would want. And it’s not comfortable. That’s the kind of poetry that interests me — a field of energy. It’s intellectual and moral and political and sexual and sensual — all of that fermenting together. It can speak to people who have themselves felt like monsters and say: you are not alone, this is not monstrous. It can disturb and enrapture. Our mission, therefore, is to publish work that disturbs and enraptures. READ MORE AT WWW.SIBLINGRIVALRYPRESS.COM PRAISE FOR CORONA: “There are books that you admire, and books that you love. I fell head over heels for Corona, and I want everyone to read it. These stories have the heft of a novel and the elliptical grace of poetry. Rehman’s hot-blooded, ferociously funny, and deep- ly sensitive protagonist travels from the Muslim community of Queens to roadside Florida to the fogged windows of San Francisco and the Lower East Side. Along the way she falls into and out of love, takes frightening, exhilarating risks, repeated- ly saves her own life, and comes into sharp-focus like a shaken photograph. She is about to gleefully dynamite every narrow stereotype you might have about a young Pakistani woman from Corona. A stunning debut from a vital new writer.” Karen Russell, author of the novel Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove “Endearing, irreverent, and engaging. Bushra Rehman’s epic journey into various worlds big and small not only exposes the sordid fabric of Americana but does it through the riotously humorous lens of a sharp second generation, Queens-bred Desi New Yorker. In Razia, she has created a unique character that is daring, hilar- ious, vulnerable, and fierce. You will want to keep travelling with her long after the book ends.” DJ Rekha “Bushra Rehman is a lot like her borough—plainspoken, artful, always alert, and alive to the rhythms of the world that thrive within the worlds of Queens. A master of mood, her stories brim with bittersweet wit and insight. Corona will have you laugh- ing until you cry and weeping until you smile.” Jeff Chang, author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation and Who We Be: The Colonization of America “Corona, is a fragmented, poetic, on-the-road adventure told from the perspective of the charismatic Razia Mirza.” Heather Baysa, Village Voice blog “Rehman gives a warm poetic take on the life of a Muslim girl coming to terms with life in both pre- and post- 9/11 America.” Publishers Weekly “[Rehman’s] Corona is vibrant and dynamic, a crossroads where various ethnici- ties, languages, religions, and cultures rub against each other, sometimes clashing, sometimes mingling, but in the process creating a place that is entirely new. Next to Corona the rest of the country seems strange — alien, absurd, and stagnant..” Chaitali Sen, LA Review of Books “Rehman uses humorous and honest powers of observation to tell more about America than any academic book, and reminds us that we come of age our entire lives.” Kjerstin Johnson, Bitch magazine “This is one of these short books that you finish in a few hours and it resonates with you for weeks, maybe years and possibly for the rest of your life.” Ed Lin, author of Snakes Can’t Run and Waylaid “Razia is a character we don’t often see in the emerging genre of contemporary Muslim fiction.” Deonna Kelli Sayed, Love, Inshallah “Corona is a poet’s novel. Bushra Rehman’s narrative voice is strong and musical. It leaps off the page and speaks directly to you, as if you were catching up with a long-lost friend [...] Corona brings a new topic to the table of South Asian American literature; this is not a book about model minority aspiration and assimilation, but a book about fierce individualism and noble poverty[...] This fragmented, musical nov- el should be taught in classrooms because it breaks the prettiness of memory, brings irreverent humor where it should, shows the crisscross of ethnic neighborhoods in New York City, and celebrates love in the midst of violence. ” Zohra Saed, co-publisher at UpSet Press New York Q&A: Queens Native Bushra Rehman On Her Debu... http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/4275342/ Q&A: Queens Native Bushra Rehman On Her Debut Novel and Growing Up Pakistani Muslim in Queens By Heather Baysa published: July 31, 2013 Bushra Rehman's first novel, Corona, is a fragmented, poetic, on-the-road adventure told from the perspective of the charismatic Razia Mirza. After coming of age in a tight Muslim community surrounding the first Sunni Masjid built in New York City, a rebellious streak leads to Razia's excommunication, prompting the young heroine to flee. Stories that alternate between childhood memories and the misadventures of her young adulthood slowly reveal glimpses of the past that Razia is escaping and the Queens neighborhood that has shaped her life. Rehman's poems, stories, and essays have been featured on BBC radio and in the New York Times, among other publications, and she co-edited the anthology Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism. Here, via e-mail, she talks about the Muslim community in her native borough, being a new mother, and why her protagonist aspires to be shameless. I know you're not supposed to ask fiction writers this, but Razia's story seems very personal. What parts of this character are based on you? Jaishri Abichandani Most people will think Razia’s life is my life. I wish! Corona is a cocktail of truth and fiction. I cut up some of my memories, added lots of lies, and created bizarre collages from the scraps. It's true, we're not supposed to ask the question, but it’s always on everyone’s mind. Including mine. I think authors get offended because perhaps there’s an implication, or an author’s paranoia that there is, that autobiographical fiction reveals a lack of craft or imagination. But I think it takes a great deal of craft to make your life interesting to someone Details: else—and a great deal of imagination to live a life worthy of Corona fiction. By Bushra Rehman Sibling Rivalry Press, 150pp., I also think it’s a sensitive topic because I’m Muslim. 1 of 4 11/15/13 6:41 PM New York Q&A: Queens Native Bushra Rehman On Her Debu... http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/4275342/ $14.95 Non-Muslims have often said to me: “Oh, I read this novel about a Muslim woman who (insert oppression),” and they think it’s real. I have to remind them they’re reading fiction. So I should say for the record: Razia’s life doesn’t represent the lives of all Muslim women. Not all Muslim women are stoners who get jobs at re-created 17th-century villages so they can dress up in costumes from the 1600s. Razia is a Pakistani Muslim raised in Corona, Queens, a community where several ethnicities and religions cross paths.