Hi, welcome! I’m Fazeela (she/her/hers). Pyaar means love in Urdu and Hindi. This digital zine espouses the political values of the radical slogan, All Power to the People. Thus, the portmanteau, radical love ♥ to the people. The unsustainable imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy that we all live under is on its way out. This zine utilizes storytelling, popular education, critical race and gender pedagogies and dreaming in efforts to shift culture and birth the new world.
I mainly grew up in a suburb of Buffalo, NY and quickly learned that the world has multiple perspectives, even though only a few are visible. Our household consisted of my Indian-Muslim-Gujarati immigrant parents, maternal grandparents, two sisters and I. My parents individually emigrated to the US in the ‘70’s (thanks to affirmative action for “Backwards Castes” in India!), met in the US, quickly married since their union was copacetic (both Muslims from Gujarat), then had us.
Normal, to me, was walking in from school with my 6 foot grandfather reading the newspaper while doing yoga with his legs pretzeled above his head, eating meals on the floor on a thali, driving to Toronto in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s just to eat Alphonso mangoes (and possibly smuggling some back over the border) and adroitly straddling cultures. Questioning everything also became a norm.
I obtained undergrad and grad degrees (and an exorbitant amount of student loan debt) in Organizational Behavior, Spanish, Women’s Studies, Social Welfare Policy and Law. I have traveled a ton, made a ton of mistakes and grew a ton (just not vertically). Professionally, I work in race and poverty law with a focus on critical race and gender studies, reproductive justice, community organizing and social welfare policy. I now call Brooklyn home, where I live with my Sun.
Audre Lorde once said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare”. I agree. I know I need community care and a space to unwind (and sometimes only think of lipstick colors ) and I thought others would too.
I love to dance, perform “musicals” out of mundane everyday tasks, read, have long deliciously spicy meals with friends and family and aimlessly meander around cities.
Enter, engage, comment, and most of all, have fun!
Feel free to contact me at pyaartothepeople@gmail.com
Cover Art: Ayqa Khan