Aruni Kashyap, Madhuri Sastry and Bhakti Shringarpure discuss the rapidly increasing presence of AI which is causing a cognitive vertigo. Love it, hate it, need it or resist it, there is no denying that the pervasive presence of AI in all aspects of life has caused an upheaval. It is easy to denounce the use of AI in technologies of warfare and to rail against the environmentally disastrous AI data centers but when it comes to the worlds of research and creativity, the lines blur rather too quickly. Even as Google or Siri or Alexa are integrated into our lives, is it wrong to have ChatGPT or Claude take our projects a few steps further? How far is too far? Do you even recall consenting to this technology on our phones, cars, homes and computers? At the Radical Books Collective, we are concerned with how AI impacts reading, writing, publishing and pedagogy but more importantly, we want to engage with its moral and ethical dimensions. We may not have answers or solutions but we will ask the right questions.

Aruni Kashyap is a writer, translator, and academic. He is the author of The Way You Want To Be Loved, The House With a Thousand Stories, and the forthcoming How to Date a Fanatic. He has edited the story collection How to Tell the Story of an Insurgency and is the translator of four novels from Assamese to English. He is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing program at the University of Georgia (Athens).

Madhuri Sastry is a writer and editor with a background in human rights law. She is the Culture Editor at The Polis Project and has written for Bitch Media, Slate, Catapult and Guernica, among several other publications.

Bhakti Shringarpure is a writer, editor and creative director of the Radical Books Collective.

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Join our live book chat about How To Date A Fanatic (Harper, 2026) by Aruni Kashyap. Moderated by Bhakti Shringarpure. Buy the book here.

Event will be livestreamed on Substack, YouTube, Facebook and X on Friday, July 25, 2026 at 1pm New York. Set a reminder below to join!

About the book
In this compassionate, poignant novel set in contemporary India, a young professor searches for connection and love during a time of political and cultural upheaval. As political tensions rise precipitously across India, Rohit returns to Delhi University to teach and gets caught in a web of unrequited love with his friend Dhruv. To alleviate his inevitable heartbreak, Rohit seeks relationships with other men in the city, until he meets and embarks on a delicate new romance with the effervescent Sayan, a literature student he hopes will be the answer to getting over Dhruv.

Rohit’s life soon becomes more complicated as the country’s political tensions erupt on campus, sparking a turbulent student-led movement that entangles Rohit when Dhruv joins the fray, a tipping point that changes Rohit’s life forever. Set against the vibrant, volatile tapestry of modern India, Rohit and his friends must learn to navigate the challenges and triumphs of queer life to survive in an unpredictable political landscape. Propulsive, tense, and charged with humor and tenderness, How to Date a Fanatic is an exploration of identity, connection, and the enduring hope for a better future in a rapidly changing world.

About the author
Aruni Kashyap is a writer, translator, and academic. He is the author of The Way You Want To Be Loved, The House With a Thousand Stories, and editor of the story collection How to Tell the Story of an Insurgency. He is the translator of four novels from Assamese to English. Aruni is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing program at the University of Georgia (Athens).

About the moderator
Bhakti Shringarpure is the creative editor of the Radical Books Collective.

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Aruni Kashyap is a writer, translator, and academic. He is the author of The Way You Want To Be Loved, The House With a Thousand Stories, and the forthcoming How to Date a Fanatic. He has edited the story collection How to Tell the Story of an Insurgency and is the translator of four novels from Assamese to English. He is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing program at the University of Georgia (Athens).

Madhuri Sastry is a writer and editor with a background in human rights law. She is the Culture Editor at The Polis Project and has written for Bitch Media, Slate, Catapult and Guernica, among several other publications.

Bhakti Shringarpure is a writer, editor and creative director of the Radical Books Collective. She is the author of Cold War Assemblages: From Decolonization to Digital and the forthcoming Leila Aboulela: Writing as Refuge. She produces and hosts the Radical Futures podcast.

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Previous Book Clubs and Events

Celebrity wellness influencer Gwenyth Paltrow recently shocked the world with an ad selling real estate in Israel even as the settler colonial state’s genocide of Palestinians is being documented in real time. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi instituted an International Yoga Day for the world while being engaged in fascism, censorship and violence towards Indian Muslims at home. Tradwife influencers stand for wholesome and healthy lifestyles alongside the notion that women should hark back to an idyllic time when white, Christian, male supremacy prevailed. There has been outrage about Israeli soldiers who spend their R&R traveling around India pursuing meditation, wellness and spirituality after committing genocide at home. The global wellness industry is priced at $6.8 trillion having doubled in size from just a decade ago. It is a big dirty business and this conversations unpacks it’s complicity with racism, fascism, patriarchy and violence.

Join Alyson K. Spurgas, Madhuri Sastry and Bhakti Shringarpure on Wednesday, July 8th, 12pm New York, 7pm Paris. Event will be livestreamed on Substack, YouTube and X. Set a reminder below to join:

Alyson K. Spurgas is writer, researcher and Associate Professor of Sociology at Trinity College (Hartford). She is the author of Diagnosing Desire: Biopolitics and Femininity into the Twenty-First Century (2020) and the co-author of Decolonize Self-Care (2022).

Madhuri Sastry is a writer and editor with a background in human rights law. She is the Culture Editor at The Polis Project and has written for Bitch Media, Slate, Catapult and Guernica, among several other publications.

Bhakti Shringarpure is a writer, editor and creative director of the Radical Books Collective. She is the author of Cold War Assemblages: From Decolonization to Digital and the forthcoming Leila Aboulela: Writing as Refuge.

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Join our live book discussion about Homosexual Intifada: A Queer Palestinian Anthology (Interlink Books, 2026), edited by Hannah Moushabeck and George Abraham. Moderated by Bhakti Shringarpure. Buy the book here.

Event will be livestreamed on Substack, YouTube, Facebook and X on Friday, July 10, 2026 at 1pm New York. Set a reminder below to join!

Homosexual Intifada is a powerful and groundbreaking anthology spotlighting the voices of queer Palestinian writers from both the diaspora and homeland. This first-of-its-kind collection features a dynamic range of LGBTQ+ Palestinian perspectives through deeply personal essays, short stories, poetry, comics, photo essays, and memoir. Centering queer Palestinian identity and experience, this essential volume explores themes of displacement, assimilation, belonging, and love across geographies—from Jerusalem and Ramallah to New York, Beirut, and beyond. These stories, often silenced or misrepresented in Western media, challenge false narratives, boldly reclaim agency, and dismantle stereotypes.

Contributors include celebrated and emerging queer Palestinian authors such as Noor Hindi, Mejdulene Bernard Shomali, Elias Jahshan, Randa Jarrar, and more. More than just a literary work, Homosexual Intifada is a radical act of visibility. It challenges the pinkwashing of queer identities in service of imperial agendas and affirms the existence, resilience, and diversity of LGBTQ+ Palestinians worldwide. This collection is a vital contribution to queer literature, Arab identity, and decolonial thought.

About the editors
Hannah Moushabeck is a Palestinian American writer and book worker. She is the author of Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine and co-owner of Interlink Publishing, the only Palestinian-owned publishing company in the United States.

George Abraham is a Palestinian American poet and author of When the Arab Apocalypse Comes to America and Birthright, as well as the co-editor of Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry.

About the moderator
Bhakti Shringarpure is the creative editor of the Radical Books Collective.

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A conversation between Yassmin Abdel-Magied and Bhakti Shringarpure about her novel At Sea.

Buy the book here.

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At Sea is propulsive novel of ambition, greed, and the deadly fury of Mother Nature, as a female driller takes charge of an isolated offshore oil rig with an entirely male crew. When Zainab, an expert driller, is tasked with overseeing a high-stakes oil rig operation, she leaves behind her pregnant sister to embark on the most challenging assignment of her career. But there’s a catch. The rig is teetering on the edge of disaster—and Zainab is the only woman among a crew of hardened men who want absolutely nothing to do with her. At the helm, but forced to prove herself at every turn, Zainab investigates the issues that have plagued the operation. When all her warnings are ignored, she quickly grasps that the real danger may lie in the cold calculations and base desires of the men determined to finish the operation as quickly and cheaply as possible. As tensions rise and secrets unravel, Zainab races to prevent the looming catastrophe that threatens the rig, the lives of the crew and the welfare of the sea before it’s too late.

About the author: Born in Sudan, Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s first job as a teenager was in a coal mine in rural Australia. After graduating with first-class honours in Mechanical Engineering, Abdel-Magied trained and worked as an MWD (Measurement While Drilling) contractor and drilling engineer. She is a also screenwriter and award-winning social advocate. Abdel-Magied’s debut literary novel At Sea was a Dua lipa Service95 ‘Must Read’ for 2026. Previous titles include action packed teen fantasy Silverbrook: Yumna and the Golden Horse, the essay collection Talking About A Revolution and two novels for younger readers, You Must Be Layla and the award-winning Listen, Layla. She is currently a writer on British continuing drama Emmerdale and her original drama series Cruise Control is in development with the BBC. Abdel-Magied is the creator of Keep Eyes on Sudan and adviser on the Sudan Digital Archive. She is dedicated to the civilian movement in Sudan and the celebration and amplification of Sudanese culture. Follow her on Instagram and on Good Chat with Yassmin Abdel-Magied on Substack.

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Buy the book here.

About the novel
At Sea is propulsive novel of ambition, greed, and the deadly fury of Mother Nature, as a female driller takes charge of an isolated offshore oil rig with an entirely male crew. When Zainab, an expert driller, is tasked with overseeing a high-stakes oil rig operation, she leaves behind her pregnant sister to embark on the most challenging assignment of her career. But there’s a catch. The rig is teetering on the edge of disaster—and Zainab is the only woman among a crew of hardened men who want absolutely nothing to do with her. At the helm, but forced to prove herself at every turn, Zainab investigates the issues that have plagued the operation. When all her warnings are ignored, she quickly grasps that the real danger may lie in the cold calculations and base desires of the men determined to finish the operation as quickly and cheaply as possible. As tensions rise and secrets unravel, Zainab races to prevent the looming catastrophe that threatens the rig, the lives of the crew and the welfare of the sea before it’s too late.

About the author
Born in Sudan, Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s first job as a teenager was in a coal mine in rural Australia. After graduating with first-class honours in Mechanical Engineering, Abdel-Magied trained and worked as an MWD (Measurement While Drilling) contractor and drilling engineer. She is a also screenwriter and award-winning social advocate. Abdel-Magied’s debut literary novel At Sea was a Dua lipa Service95 ‘Must Read’ for 2026. Previous titles include action packed teen fantasy Silverbrook: Yumna and the Golden Horse, the essay collection Talking About A Revolution and two novels for younger readers, You Must Be Layla and the award-winning Listen, Layla. She is currently a writer on British continuing drama Emmerdale and her original drama series Cruise Control is in development with the BBC. Abdel-Magied is the creator of Keep Eyes on Sudan and adviser on the Sudan Digital Archive. She is dedicated to the civilian movement in Sudan and the celebration and amplification of Sudanese culture. Follow her on Instagram and on Good Chat with Yassmin Abdel-Magied on Substack.

About the moderator
Bhakti Shringarpure is the founder and creative director of the Radical Books Collective.

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A live book club chat about The Extended Universe: How Disney Killed the Movies and Took Over the World (Haymarket Books, 2026) by Vicky Osterweil. Moderated by Sherry Zane.

About the book: A provocative history of Disney’s rise to cultural dominance, pulling skeletons from the corporate closet to decode the political messages hidden in all of your favorite childhood movies. In The Extended Universe, Vicky Osterweil takes us on a quest to discover how Disney’s “imagineers” have made it impossible to reflect on the wonders of growing up without thinking of Disney’s movies, amusement parks, and merchandising. Drawing on extensive interviews with filmmakers, screenwriters, union organizers, and Disney “adults” alike, Osterweil unearths reactionary political commitments and maleficent legal maneuvers so cartoonishly evil they would make one of Walt’s own animated villains blush. Along the way, Osterweil braids together corporate skullduggery with a not entirely unsympathetic analysis of some of Disney’s most famous movies. The result is an entertaining and convincing case that Disney’s entire business model has been built upon a ruthless and fanatical insistence on intellectual property rights—from Steamboat Willie to Avengers: Infinity War and beyond! Buy the book: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2525-the-extended-universe

Watch it on YouTube

About the author: Vicky Osterweil is a Philadelphia-based writer, agitator, and worker whose first book, In Defense of Looting, described historical struggles for liberation in the US. She is a member of the anarchist journal CAW and has written about the intersections of film, politics, and culture for publications such as The Paris Review, Art in America, Al Jazeera America, The Baffler, Dissent, Lux Magazine, and The New Inquiry, where she was also a culture editor for many years.

About the moderator: Sherry Zane is a historian, cultural critic and scholar whose research explores the intersection of visual culture, public memory, and feminist historiography. Her recent essay Michael Jackson, Palestine and the Erasure of Solidarity was published on Radical Books Collective. Her article “’I Did It for the Uplift of Humanity and the Navy’: Same-Sex Acts and the Origins of the National Security State, 1919–1921” was published in the New England Quarterly in 2018 and has since been featured in The MIT Press Reader and 19th News. She writes at The Lioness Archive substack:

The Lioness Archive’s Substack

Feminist Writings from a Canceled Academic

By Sherry Zane

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I am always ashamed when I mourn the destruction of monuments. How dare I indulge and grieve empty historical sites when actual human beings are being blown up into bits? All these questions surface as the weekend-long bombing of the 5000-year old city of Tyre in Lebanon has left ancient sites destroyed and several dozen dead.

Palestine’s greatest griot Mahmoud Darwish has a poem titled “The house murdered” (translated here by Fady Joudah) that reconciles the dilemma. Darwish contemplates the whole life of a house, a world that vanishes within one minute of a strike. It is a simple reversal of perspective. An attempt to contemplate life through objects that may seem lifeless. “In each thing there’s a being that aches...the memory of fingers, of a scent, of an image. And houses get murdered just as their residents get murdered. And as the memory of things get murdered—wood, stone, glass, iron, cement—they all scatter in fragments like beings.” We must seek meaning, memories, history, breath in these fragments.

Darwish makes a list of things that scatter, break, shard as a bomb bursts through: “And the lease contract, the marriage and birth certificates, the utility bills, identity cards, passports, love letters, all torn to shreds like the hearts of their owners. And the pictures fly, the toothbrushes, hair combs, make-up accessories, shoes, underwear, sheets, towels, like family secrets hung in public, in ruin.”

Everywhere we turn, a ruin.

Strikes on Qeshm and Goruk in Iran; strikes all over Lebanon; strikes as always in Gaza; Dutch police strike a pregnant Palestinian women; police strike and arrest over 700 people all over France for celebrating football match victory; German police draw guns at pro-Palestine protesters; police strike protesters outside an ICE detention center in New Jersey and a mayor imposes a curfew; police strike furious protesters who wanted bury their dead from Ebola in Democratic Republic of Congo; police strike anti-goverment protesters in La Paz, Bolivia, etc. Rinse and repeat.

Same news, different place. A world rising up. A world struck down.

I have nothing meaningful to say about what we can do anymore but I take solace in South African writer Sisonke Msimang’s words from almost a year ago: “The role of everybody is to be at the front lines of fighting for justice, right? There is a demand as a human being to show up in the world in particular ways, which is always difficult. It’s difficult in all times to show up with honesty and integrity in the world. And then in a time of genocide, it is more important than ever.”

The world is in a crisis so acute and so massive that every solution on the table and every strategy of resistance feels like we’re trying to put square pegs in round holes. The savagery and hatred at the core of all this is profound that there we are in a perennial state of cognitive vertigo. But we have to keep trying, we have to keep at it.

Love and solidarity❤️‍🔥
Bhakti Shringarpure

There has been a lot of activity at the Radical Books Collective. We’ve had so many wonderful guests and conversations. I’ve been terrible at sending out updates but please check these out!

—Two incredibly illuminating conversations on Sudan and Palestine, and the role of the media:

—Our Books Clubs are back and rolling! We had two conversations; one on the evils of Disney and another on forests in African novels:

About the book
A provocative history of Disney’s rise to cultural dominance, pulling skeletons from the corporate closet to decode the political messages hidden in all of your favorite childhood movies. In The Extended Universe, Vicky Osterweil takes us on a quest to discover how Disney’s “imagineers” have made it impossible to reflect on the wonders of growing up without thinking of Disney’s movies, amusement parks, and merchandising. Drawing on extensive interviews with filmmakers, screenwriters, union organizers, and Disney “adults” alike, Osterweil unearths reactionary political commitments and maleficent legal maneuvers so cartoonishly evil they would make one of Walt’s own animated villains blush. Along the way, Osterweil braids together corporate skullduggery with a not entirely unsympathetic analysis of some of Disney’s most famous movies. The result is an entertaining and convincing case that Disney’s entire business model has been built upon a ruthless and fanatical insistence on intellectual property rights—from Steamboat Willie to Avengers: Infinity War and beyond!

Watch on YouTube

About the author
Vicky Osterweil is a Philadelphia-based writer, agitator, and worker whose first book, In Defense of Looting, described historical struggles for liberation in the US. She is a member of the anarchist journal CAW and has written about the intersections of film, politics, and culture for publications such as The Paris Review, Art in America, Al Jazeera America, The Baffler, Dissent, Lux Magazine, and The New Inquiry, where she was also a culture editor for many years.

About the moderator
Sherry Zane is a historian, cultural critic and scholar whose research explores the intersection of visual culture, public memory, and feminist historiography. Her recent essay Michael Jackson, Palestine and the Erasure of Solidarity was published on Radical Books Collective. Her article “’I Did It for the Uplift of Humanity and the Navy’: Same-Sex Acts and the Origins of the National Security State, 1919–1921” was published in the New England Quarterly in 2018 and has since been featured in The MIT Press Reader and 19th News. She writes at The Lioness Archive substack.

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A book discussion on Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think by Ainehi Edoro. Moderated by Bhakti Shringarpure.

About the book: Forests in fiction are often understood simply as settings, symbols, or remnants of a premodern past. Yet many African novelists have turned to the forest to experiment with worldbuilding and to imagine new futures. This groundbreaking book explores the life of the forest in African fiction, showing how writers have used it to reinvent the novel’s formal, aesthetic, and political possibilities.

About the author: Ainehi Edoro is a Nigerian literary scholar who focuses on African literature and digital culture. She is the founding editor of Brittle Paper, a leading platform for African literary culture, and faculty of English and African cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Buy the book here: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/forest-imaginaries/9780231565073

Watch on YouTube:

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Featuring journalists Ism’ail Kushkush and Raghdan Orsud. Even as Sudan enters the 4th year of devastating war, media coverage remains abysmal. Madhuri Sastry and Bhakti Shringarpure speak to two Sudanese journalists about why the deadliest conflict in the world has become the the casualty of today’s media attention economy.

Isma’il Kushkush is a journalist who has contributed to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, The Atlantic, Granta, Guernica, Nieman Reports, Columbia Journalism Review, Smithsonian, The Nation, the Associated Press and others. He was based in Khartoum, Sudan, for eight years, and has been acting bureau chief for the New York Times in East Africa. He was a Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation Fellow at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and an Ida B. Wells Fellowship recipient with Type Investigations.

Raghdan Orsud is a digital ecosystems and media development specialist with 15+ years working at the intersection of technology, information integrity, and development programming. She’s built misinformation monitoring systems, designed digital initiatives for public-interest media, and advised organizations operating in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. As Co-founder of Beam Reports, she’s now channeling that expertise into building smarter tools for stronger information ecosystems.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Listen to previous episodes of It’s Not You, It’s The Media here: https://www.radicalbookscollective.com/s/its-not-you-its-the-media

Watch previous episodes of It’s Not You, It’s The Media here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLstXMEF0r05bhdfv7yCt5V2KXTdK4cO5F

Buy the book here.
About the book
Forests in fiction are often understood simply as settings, symbols, or remnants of a premodern past. Yet many African novelists have turned to the forest to experiment with worldbuilding and to imagine new futures. This groundbreaking book explores the life of the forest in African fiction, showing how writers have used it to reinvent the novel’s formal, aesthetic, and political possibilities.

About the author
Ainehi Edoro is a Nigerian literary scholar who focuses on African literature and digital culture. She is the founding editor of Brittle Paper, a leading platform for African literary culture, and faculty of English and African cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Buy the book here: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/forest-imaginaries/9780231565073

Join Madhuri Sastry and Bhakti Shringarpure for a live recording of It’s Not You, It’s The Media with guests Ism’ail Kushkush and Raghdan Orsud.

Thursday, May 14th, 12pm New York, 6pm Khartoum.

Event will be livestreamed online on Substack, YouTube and X. Set a reminder below to join:

Isma’il Kushkush is a journalist who has contributed to the New York Times, the Washington Post, New York Review of Books, New Yorker, The Atlantic, Granta, Guernica, Nieman Reports, Columbia Journalism Review, Smithsonian, The Nation, Associated Press and others. He was based in Khartoum, Sudan, for eight years, and has been acting bureau chief for the New York Times in East Africa. He was a Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation Fellow at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and an Ida B. Wells Fellowship recipient with Type Investigations.

Raghdan Orsud is a digital ecosystems and media development specialist with 15+ years working at the intersection of technology, information integrity, and development programming. She’s built misinformation monitoring systems, designed digital initiatives for public-interest media, and advised organizations operating in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. As Co-founder of Beam Reports, she’s now channeling that expertise into building smarter tools for stronger information ecosystems.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Listen to previous episodes of It’s Not You, It’s The Media here: https://www.radicalbookscollective.com/s/its-not-you-its-the-media

Watch previous episodes of It’s Not You, It’s The Media here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLstXMEF0r05bhdfv7yCt5V2KXTdK4cO5F

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Madhuri Sastry and Bhakti Shringarpure speaking with guest Robin Andersen, author of The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza. (OR Books, 2025). They discuss why the media framing of October 7th narrative became pivotal to manufacture consent for the genocide in Gaza. Andersen explains that the New York Times, in particular, played an outsize role in framing this October 7th origin story. However, Andersen argues that this has led to the downfall of establishment media since popularity of Israel is at an all time low in the US. They also discuss the current media ecosystem, and the need to dismantle existing ways in which journalism is practiced.

Buy the book here: https://orbooks.com/catalog/the-complicit-lens/

“Gaming the Iran war and the Gaza Genocide Syndrome” by Robin Andersen https://mondoweiss.net/2026/03/gaming-the-iran-war-and-the-gaza-genocide-syndrome/

Watch it here:

Listen to previous episodes of It’s Not You, It’s The Media here: https://www.radicalbookscollective.com/s/its-not-you-its-the-media

Watch previous episodes of It’s Not You, It’s The Media here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLstXMEF0r05bhdfv7yCt5V2KXTdK4cO5F

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We get to know the young women —Deka, Hibo, and Asma—as they prepare for their high school exams, hang out together, and navigate romantic relationships. A core issue in the film is the class difference between the three friends, which will determine their life trajectories. One of them might be forced to get a job and give up on education altogether while the wealthy one is already planning to take off to university in Paris. The Franco-Somali film is set in a Muslim country, and cultural markers of Islam are part of the film’s universe.

The first time I taught this film, it was to a large lecture class of 200 students, and even though there was no real discussion time, some students commented on liking the film because the protagonists overcame oppressive Muslim traditions in an oppressive Muslim country. I was able to correct the students in person and remind them that this theme - or stereotype, really - does not exist in the film. If anything, the film ultimately explores universal challenges about girlhood and friendships across class differences while depicting risqué themes like a teen miscarriage and an affair with an older married man.

The next two times I taught Dhalinyaro, the film was assigned for online classes and I did not have the privilege of tackling these prejudices in person. Last year, for a short-answers assignment about the film, I noticed that several students responded by making up an alternate plot, insisting that these three women are depicted as overcoming oppression in their traditional Muslim society. One of them wrote about a wholly made-up character called “Fatima.”

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It was frustrating, but not shocking, because I am aware that Western society suffers from chronic levels of Islamophobia. Either Muslims are depicted as violent and extremist, or their women are in need of saving. In fact, savior narratives about Muslim women are ingrained in the West and Western media, blasted through news, films, books, and without a doubt, taught in schools and university classrooms, too.

During this academic year, I assigned Dhalinyaro again, and the responses to a similar short-answers assignment proved disastrous. In a class of 40 students, nine made up a character that did not exist in the film. This character had a very Somali name: Ifrah. Fourteen students fabricated the plot. Some wrote about protagonists having to choose an oppressive Muslim arranged marriage, while others wrote, as usual, about the women overcoming tradition and, yet again, oppression.

This time around, the culprit was obvious: AI. Even though this is an example of an “AI hallucination,” it was me who felt I was hallucinating. I came across Ifrah and the fabricated stereotypical plot so many times that I began to doubt that I might have missed something. It all sounded so believable. I felt like I was losing my mind and rewatched the film. I did not find Ifrah.

I am aware that the use of AI is common and widespread, and educators are fed up with seeing entire assignments written up by AI platforms. It has also been a bit sickening to see the extent to which educators themselves are being persuaded to use AI to generate assignments, lesson plans, lectures and so on. It’s a vicious loop. I have had a distance from academia over the past three years, and have been spared a lot of the institutional back and forth on this subject.

Yet another reason that I have not had to contend with AI is because I tend to teach works of literature and film that AI has not yet incorporated into its system. A mixed blessing, to say the least. And I learned this the hard way.

Several months ago, I used ChatGPT for the first time. I have been working on a biography of Sudanese writer Leila Aboulela, (forthcoming this September via Routledge) and as I rushed to write the final chapter, I could not remember a particular plot point in one of her novels. I asked ChatGPT a couple of different questions, and it did the same two things that my students must have encountered: It fabricated a character with a Muslim sounding name, and it also made an error in my plot question, telling me that this character went on to live in the novel even though I clearly recalled that he had died. I told ChatGPT that this character does not exist, and it told me that it was so sorry to disappoint me, adding that it will try harder in the future. Disarming and sweet. I fell for it. I let it go.

I would soon learn, however, that AI’s racism runs deeper.

A few weeks later, I was in discussions with the publisher about the cover image for my Leila Aboulela biography, and the series co-editor and friend, Lily Saint, texted me the art that she had generated on an AI platform while fiddling around for cover ideas. We could barely believe it.

The style of the head scarf and the darker skin AI selected for this depiction, I’ve learned, are typical features of how AI incorporates stereotypes of religion and race based, in this case, on the name only. But this made no sense to me, given that Aboulela is the author of several novels, and has been reviewed and profiled in multiple media outlets. Several dozen academic articles have been written about her, she has awards and booklist mentions, and has a strong presence in video and audio platforms. She is literally all over the Internet. All in English too. AI platforms, however, had not ingested any of this. And racist outputs run amok.

Racial capitalism is at the core of AI infrastructure. We have been hearing about how it’s having ruinous effects on the environment because AI data centers require billions of cubic liters of drinking water in order to cool the servers, and their carbon emissions levels are disastrous. And of course, these data centers are only built in poor neighborhoods.

My meagre experiments with AI have illustrated what many have told me: AI will grow so strong that one day, it will appear to have a mind of its own, but that for now, the logic is human: It mostly regurgitates what it has been fed.

AI thus becomes a reflection of all that is anti-Muslim in our culture —it is fed on media and art that are controlled by and favor white publications, white media perspectives, white visuals — so it is not wonder that it repackages and vomits up those precise racist perspectives. As we contend with monstrous levels of anti-Muslim hatred in the world today, it is no surprise that the AI we get in the Western world is also Islamophobic.

Love and solidarity❤️‍🔥
Bhakti Shringarpure

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Book Clubs are back!

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…And, in case you missed it!

Join Madhuri Sastry and Bhakti Shringarpure for a live recording of It’s Not You, It’s The Media with guest Robin Andersen, author of The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza. (OR Books, 2025).

Buy the book here.

Event will be livestreamed on Substack, YouTube and X on May 7, 2026 at 1pm EST. Set a reminder below to join.

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About the book
This vitally necessary and carefully researched book examines the way US establishment media ran interference for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, aligning its coverage with Israeli military narratives whilst downplaying, and even condoning, the wholesale massacre of Palestinians. Commencing with the October 7, 2023, attack, The Complicit Lens scrutinizes mainstream journalism, contrasting it with social media reports and international news coverage. It reveals how legacy media presented Israeli violence as defensive and justified, casting doubt on IDF bombings, employing passive language to deflect blame for atrocities, and repeating Israeli talking points, often word-for-word. Andersen documents the targeting of journalists and aid workers in what has become the deadliest conflict for each on record. She spotlights the editorial censorship that prohibited the use of terms such as “genocide” and “massacre” in the reporting of Palestinian deaths. And, as global protests against the Gaza genocide gathered strength, she examines the hostile media portrayal of these uprisings, particularly those led by young people and Jewish organizations. (Co-published with the Institute for Palestine Studies).

About the author
Robin Andersen is professor emerita of media studies at Fordham University and an award-winning author of a dozen single- and co-authored books. Her work examines film, television, and media coverage of war, the environment, politics, and elections. She edits the Routledge Focus Book Series on Media and Humanitarian Action, serves as a Project Censored Judge, and contributes to the annual State of the Free Press. Andersen is on the Board of Directors of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), where she also writes regularly, and is an Izzy Award Judge for the Park Center for Independent Media. Her writing has appeared in CounterPunch, LA Progressive, The Progressive, Salon, Common Dreams, and ScheerPost, among others.

Listen to previous episodes of It’s Not You, It’s The Media here: https://www.radicalbookscollective.com/s/its-not-you-its-the-media

Watch previous episodes of It’s Not You, It’s The Media here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLstXMEF0r05bhdfv7yCt5V2KXTdK4cO5F

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Listen to previous episodes of It’s Not You, It’s The Media here: https://www.radicalbookscollective.com/s/its-not-you-its-the-media

Watch previous episodes of It’s Not You, It’s The Media here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLstXMEF0r05bhdfv7yCt5V2KXTdK4cO5F

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When a group of students and feminist faculty collectively complained about sexual harassment at their institution - Goldsmiths, University of London - a suite of deflective actions from the university ensured that the complaint never saw light of day and that the harassers stayed protected. In what became a long, drawn out battle against the institution, Ahmed fiercely advocated for all those who complained, and eventually blew the whistle on the university. The atmosphere turned so hostile and abusive towards her that it became untenable to work there, and Ahmed resigned.

When the resignation became public and the practices of the university were exposed, Ahmed was flooded with stories from all over the world. People wrote to her sharing that they had gone through something similar: They had been harassed, their complaints had been blocked, and some had even lost their jobs. “And that’s actually what enabled the research,” Ahmed explains.

Listen to the podcast here.

“It was the kind of connections that are possible when we disclose information that professionalism tells us to keep hidden.” Saying “No” to her institution allowed Ahmed “to be part of a political movement that was not bound by one specific institution, but was actually thinking about what are these structural problems that are not being dealt with.”

Ahmed’s book, NO! The Art and Activism of Complaining, published by Feminist Press (New York, 2026) is an astounding analytical work that exposes the deep rot within institutions of all types. Workplaces in most professions are hotbeds of injustice and oppression, and disproportionately impact women, queer and trans people, people of color, and people with disabilities. NO! emerges from research compiled over several years, as people began telling Ahmed their stories of sexual harassment, racism, sexism, transphobia and ableism in the workplace. Ahmed became a friend, teacher, parent, activist, therapist and scholar all rolled into one, and cultivated what she calls a “feminist ear” in order to listen to and learn from grievances, reports and complaints.

Institutional violence, Ahmed found, was a structure not an event, and is continually replicated by those in power in order to keep themselves in power. The complaint can be one way in which this unchecked power can be disrupted, exposed, and sometimes even ruptured. In NO! Ahmed offers an anatomy of a complaint: what happens when it’s made, how it travels within the system, which complaint is repressed and which is quickly resolved, who complies, who resists, who benefits, and who is cast out.

Ahmed believes that it is nearly impossible for an official complaint to ever become a vehicle for justice, but it is the act of complaining that is ultimately invaluable. The complaint itself, and the solidarities that emerge when a complaint is out there, becomes a tool for power mapping; a means of understanding exactly where power lies, who holds it, and how it moves. Along the way, it exposes the administrators who are invested in preserving the status quo despite pretending to care about helping the person being harassed.

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In this wide-ranging conversation, Ahmed discusses the art and activism of complaining by taking apart the nuts and bolts of workplace culture that purports to do one thing, but often does the exact opposite. She interrogates the nature of professionalism, the push for confidentiality, the culture of open secrets, hollow (non) performative gestures, the faux interest in diversity, gender and disability justice, and the institutional gaslighting of the persons who complain about being harassed. In fact, the last years of genocide in Palestine have proven just how low institutions have sunk. Complaints have been manufactured in order to justify the disciplining, harassment and the firing of people who have been outspoken about Palestine.

“So I think that everything you do because you do not believe that it is okay to genocide a people can be used against you,” Ahmed says. “The very language of oppression can be used against you. The very language of being a victim can be used against you. Identity politics can be used against you. Universalism can be used against you. Anything can be used against you.”

Ahmed thinks it’s time to get louder and more creative. This might mean turning your complaint into a placard or a prayer or a poster, or even a post-it, where it can be seen. Complaints may not become instruments of justice, but they can be deployed to raise consciousness.

“We’re in a time of grotesque imperial wars,” Ahmed says. “We have to keep complaining and keep protesting.”

And on a personal note, it was an honor to speak with Ahmed who work has been foundational for me. I am grateful for revolutionary, resistant and deeply generative concepts she has brought into the world and for her tireless work to ensure that those being crushed by institutions are seen, heard and feel empowered.

Buy NO! The Art and Activism of Complaining here: https://feministpress.org/products/9781558613683-no

Love and solidarity❤️‍🔥
Bhakti Shringarpure

Recent publications and upcoming events on the Radical Books Collective

1) Join us for a livestream on Tuesday, April 21st at 1pm EST titled “Good Wife, Bad Wife: Jackie, Diana, Michelle, Meghan, Rama, Melania...” We ask: whether its adoration or demonization, why is the media obsessed with the wives?

2) A conversation with scholar and editor Nikhil Pandhi about his book Love in a Time of Caste: A Dalit-feminist Anthology of Love Stories. Listen here or watch below👇🏾

3) A conversation with writer Tareq Baconi about his queer, Palestinian memoir Fire in Every Direction. Listen here or watch below👇🏾