Zine Shine returns with a fantastic curation
BYLINE: Bushra Azim Boblai, Arts & Culture Editor
The annual zine showcase held by local magazine retailer, Issues Magazine Shop, is back! Running from July 9–26, the festival showcases the talents of local and national zine makers who submit their designs for independently produced publications that range in size, genre, and message.
Toronto locals can buy art, photography, and literary productions for prices that range from $4–$45 –– something for everyone.
My personal favourites this year are Yasmeen A and Demah A’s To my land, I return, a collection of photographs of pro-Palestinian posters torn down in Chicago, and Benjamin Winter’s Tiny Toronto Bike Tours, a flipbook of bike routes and stops across many Toronto neighbourhoods. I also loved Ro Agalawatte’s Potluck, a collection of recipes from Toronto home cooks and chefs from a variety of cultures.
Brown Girls are Magic: A South Asian Fantasy panel at Book Bar
BYLINE: Juliet Pieters, Associate Arts & Culture Editor
Book Bar is a combined bookstore and bar that recently opened its doors to “thinkers and drinkers.” On July 8, the bar hosted a South Asian fantasy panel featuring authors Mona Tewari, R. A. Basu, Shalini Abeysekara, Kritika H. Rao, and Anuja Varghese. The talk was moderated by book content creator Jananie K. Velu.
The panel focused on South Asian representation in the fantasy genre: South Asian women written by and for South Asian women. Authors discussed the orientalist portrayals of South Asian culture in popular fantasy universes like George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series and how their novels challenge surface-level and inaccurate portrayals of their cultures.
Tewari, Abeysekara, and Rao also discussed reclaiming historical narratives from colonialist and racist portrayals in the fantasy market. They also emphasized the importance of women’s voices leading these narratives in a genre saturated with protagonists who are men.
Additionally, Tewari said that she wanted to give her characters a story beyond a dismissive footnote in a historical retelling of the Portuguese colonization of South India in the sixteenth century. The authors showed a great passion for their work and their cultures, and imbued a sense of pride and power in South Asian fantasy as a rising subgenre.
Doubts about Austen adaptation allayed with spectacular British Vogue campaign
BYLINE: Bushra Azim Boblai, Arts & Culture Editor
The last time Netflix adapted a Jane Austen novel into a movie, it was a crash-and-burn disaster. Their 2022 adaptation of Persuasion had a stacked cast with names like Dakota Johnson, Henry Golding, and Richard E. Grant –– one of the greatest character actors alive. Despite the film’s cast teeming with talent, the millennial-cringe dialogue and awkward directorial decisions gave us masterpieces like “Now we’re strangers. No, worse than strangers. We’re exes.”
The release of the latest adaptation of Sense and Sensibility’s trailer two weeks ago inspired similar concerns among Austen fans and fans of period films. Accusations of ‘iPhone face’ –– which describes how many modern actors get the same cosmetic procedures, leading to a dearth of unique facial features –– were lobbed at the leads. The film’s tagline, “Being agreeable never did a woman any good,” also is at odds with the novel, which is an exploration of how hard it was for upper-class English women in the Regency period to live unconventional lives.
But Netflix’s team has thrown their naysayers off with a phenomenal British Vogue August cover and photoshoot by Hungarian photographer Szilveszter Makó. The photographer, who is renowned for using chiaroscuro light effects to create stunning portraits that evoke the feel of surrealist paintings, has outdone himself for the magazine’s August edition.
My favourite picture is of the film’s lead and cover star, Daisy Edgar-Jones — who plays Elinor Dashwood, and George MacKay — who plays her character’s romantic interest, Edward Ferrars — posed standing together. There is a feeling of the viewer scandalously interrupting a domestic scene of intimacy with the blown-out candle dying wisp of smoke, and Edgar-Jones’ skirt slightly undone while the two pose solemn and proper.
BYLINE: Juliet Pieters, Associate Arts & Culture Editor
The Jasad Heir is the first book in the Scorched Throne Duology by Egyptian-American author Sara Hashem. The book takes place in a fantasy world of five kingdoms: Orban, Omal, Lukub, Nizhal, and Jasad. Jasad is particularly known for its powerful magic. The book follows Sylvia, the fugitive heir to the kingdom of Jasad, as she is persecuted by Nizahal soldiers who ultimately force her to compete in the Alcalah — a tournament of trials taking place across the realm. Sylvia must choose between loyalty to Jasad and her wish to survive and live a life of peace.
The book is a masterful representation of scheming, with Sylvia outsmarting her captors and setting traps for her competitors. Readers are guaranteed a book that is nearly impossible to put down.
“Jesus Was a Sailor” by Stephanie Wambugu
BYLINE: Bushra Azim Boblai, Arts & Culture Editor
This short story, part of Kismet Magazine’s fifth issue and its first in print, has captivated me completely. The title, which references Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne,” hints at the anguish and heartwringing that lies in its tale.
The story is told from the perspective of a young heartsick woman who is in a situationship with a journalist covering issues like ICE violence, and who eventually sets sail on the Gaza flotilla. The seriousness and moral righteousness of this man’s work, which is about the genocide in Gaza, evokes a deep insecurity in the protagonist about her own art, which centres on her intimacy issues with men.
The short story is both earnest and full of spiky, targeted barbs aimed at the sociology of young intellectual workers in the West. The narrator’s gradually increasing frustration with being left out of this man’s personal life, when seemingly the whole world is aware of all his ongoings, had me gasping with laughter.
I appreciated Wambugu’s commitment to the neoimperial selfishness of her American character. The story is both a psychological profile and a picture of universal yearning for connection that young people across time and place have had.
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