Pallavi Dhawan

Pallavi Dhawan is a writer and lawyer living in Los Angeles. She is an alumna of VONA/Voices, the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, and Hedgebrook. She is working on her first novel.

BOOK

Graffiti

Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands

Edited by Pallavi Dhawan, Devi S. Laskar, & Tamika Thompson

Through poetry, short stories, and essays, the works in Graffiti expose lives that move in unexpected ways, rendering characters who don’t fit the cultural tropes we cling to. Graffiti shows what writers-of-color do when they are given permission to scribble, scrawl, romanticize, and speculate, without being politicized or exoticized.

PRAISE FOR GRAFFITI

I love the originality of the voices in Graffiti, the brave new writers I've discovered here, in addition to several I admired already. I love the concept of writing beyond whiteness, being unconcerned about any gaze other than our own. Kudos to the editors for collecting work that is at once meaningful and playful. I hope this book will find its way into the hands of many readers. It just might transform them. Mashallah!

—Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, author of The Forest of Enchantments

The voices in Graffiti howl with a collective energy and strength that is unmatched. These writers have the capacity to both tear you apart and heal you in one fell swoop. Each piece offers an opportunity for us to examine the ways in which communities of difference can band together to create a space for a revolution to take shape and flourish. Graffiti isn’t just a brilliantly composed collection, it is an absolutely essential one. I feel fundamentally changed after having read this powerful anthology.

—Alex Espinoza, author of Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime

Graffiti springs forth like an anthem from a future, where, unaware of the white gaze and ethnic codification, people of color are one.

—Reyna Grande, author of The Distance Between Us