Mahmud Rahman's Blog

Four years ago, Mills College in Oakland California announced its financial crisis was so severe it would be closing. The news hit hard among students, staff, faculty, and alums. I had worked at the college twice, for a total of 17 years, and I shared a long post on Facebook. Many of my friends among […]

I was living in Dhaka, Bangladesh, from 2006 into 2009. When I arrived, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party was in power, active in rigging the scheduled elections. Facing opposition protests, the military took over, installing a military regime with a civilian face. The change was midwifed by numerous foreign powers. There were a lot of promises […]

I shared this on social media and wanted to post it on my blog. From afar, I’m trying to process news and scenes from Bangladesh after the fall of Hasina’s tyranny. Every revolution brings to the surface pent-up emotion and energy. I thrill to scenes from Bangladesh where young people speak out and take steps […]

I wrote this for a Facebook post from Philadelphia, Monday morning, August 5, 2024. I’d woken up an hour earlier to the news that Hasina had fled Bangladesh. My wishful thinking yesterday: If the police/army say we won’t shoot, this could end. Today I’m happy to celebrate the end of a regime that killed more […]

It is the 25th of March in Dhaka again, 53 years since the Pakistani military crackdown in 1971. For those of us who went through that time, certain events are seared into our memories. Over the years I’ve tried to write some of them down. Other times I’ve tried rendering that time in fiction. Here […]

Twenty-five years ago today, I lost one of my closest friends to cancer. I penned a note five years ago on Facebook; today I share it on my blog. There’s so much more I could say about Patsy—her life, our friendship—but some of the essentials are here. I’ve revised it only a tiny bit. On […]

In 2021, we read 82 stories, 8 translations. Stories from India, Mauritius, Australia, China, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, France, UK, US, Central America, Ireland, Japan, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Chile, Taiwan, Tasmania, Russia, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada.

The reading club was launched in March 2020, as we went into Covid-19 lockdown. This year we read 59 stories, many written originally in English but also translations from many languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Bengali, Malayalam, French, Polish, Spanish, Korean, and Japanese.

In 2022, we read 73 stories, 62 writers, 9 in translation. Writers from India, Pakistan, Nigeria, U.S., U.K, Ukraine, China, Germany, Russia, Ecuador, Ireland, Egypt, Japan, Australia, Kenya. Stories included: reworked folk tales, science/speculative fiction, noir, literary fiction.

When Covid-19 isolated us at home in March 2020, some of us worried about how to continue community. I thrive on connection. On Facebook I read that a friend in Delhi was starting an online book club. The time didn’t work for us here in the Bay Area, so I thought we’d start our own. […]