Ashfaque Swapan

One wonders with a resigned sigh: Is life not depressing enough? Here we are, in the United States, saddled with President Donald J Trump, the leader of the free world who on any given day can blithely contradict in the afternoon what he says in the morning.

The passing away of Toni Morrison shook up America, well as it should.

A few days may have passed, and the news media may have moved on, but US President Donald Trump’s racist rant on Twitter on July 14 has ripped open a raw wound for US immigrants of colour (this writer included), that will take a long, long time to heal.

As the Cricket World Cup heads to its final, it’s beginning to pack enough drama to put the most maudlin daytime soap to shame.

THERE is a telling anecdote about how Mashrafe Mortaza, Bangladesh’s talismanic ODI captain, developed his skills as a fast bowler. He was not a kid lucky enough to go to some fancy-pants sports training academy to hone his skills. Mortaza once recounted that he

Impelled largely by curiosity and not a little by the inner kid in me that is still in awe of fairy tales, I went to the cinema to watch a Disney film, a pleasure I strictly avoid.

For those of us who lived in the US through the horrendous build-up to the 2003 illegal war on Iraq, the growing sabre rattling in the United States against Iran brings a nasty feeling of déjà vu.

With whisker-thin majorities, Republican candidate Donald J Trump flipped the Democratic bastions of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to beat Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 to become America’s 45th president. Obama-Trump voters...

We at the Seba Bangla Library in Atlanta recently screened Tauquir Ahmed's Fagun Haway (In Spring Breeze). The film, based on the 1952 language movement, is a mixed bag—while it truly soars in concept and approach, its execution is flawed.

Way back when George W Bush was in the White House, comedian Bill Maher made a wickedly funny observation: How badly do you have to suck to lose a popularity contest to Saddam Hussein?

For a perennially homesick expat living 10,000 miles away in Atlanta, February is a special month. It's that particular time in the year when Bangla lovers renew their pledge to nurture their language and culture.

Imagine, dear reader, a youthful village belle. Transport yourself back 50 or 60 years ago. She lives with her husband and her in-laws in a farming homestead in rural East Bengal. It's been a few years since she arrived in her new home.

It struck us like a bolt of lightning around the end of November.

Americans vote on November 6 in a momentous mid-term elections. Polls suggest that the total Republican grip on federal power is about to be shattered as Democrats regain the House.

July is less than a month away, and festival fever is beginning to take hold among the estimated 10,000-strong Bangladeshi expatriate community in greater Atlanta. All hands are on deck for the 32nd FOBANA convention, the upcoming Bangladeshi jamboree to be hosted at the World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta. All told, at least 5,000 attendees are expected, by conservative estimates.

It was a lovely spring morning when my friend Arif and I drove down to Montgomery, Alabama. A new memorial, National Memorial for Peace and Justice, opened here on April 24—dedicated to African Americans who had been the victims of extrajudicial killings in the post-Civil War United States.

AMAR Mitra's literary achievements are formidable. His works of fiction have won India's coveted Sahitya Akademi Award (for the novel Dhrubaputra) as well as West Bengal's Bankim Puraskar (for the novel Ashwacharit).

Here in Atlanta, in the land of fried chicken and grits, Pahela Baishakh is celebrated with great fanfare. As the chill of winter gives way

Fifty years ago, America's iconic civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr, was slain in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4. In the United States, King's following words are famous to the point of being clichéd, but they bear repeating nonetheless: “I have a dream that little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Dr Afzalunnessa, retired professor of anaesthesiology, was conferred an honorary doctorate by the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University at its third convocation on February 19 in recognition for her four decades of service to anaesthesiology in Bangladesh.