BROWN GIRL EPIPHANY by arushi (aera) rege

BROWN GIRL EPIPHANY is centered around the experience of being a queer, first-gen Indian-American, struggling with balancing identity and cultural background. It discusses the experiences of not knowing whether you're good enough in your own skin, the struggle of reconciling your culture and your heritage to your identity and the area you live in, the gap between what you do and what you mean, love across different cultures, and the struggle of being another brown person in the desert.

arushi (aera) rege is a queer, chronically-in-pain, Indian-American senior in high school. They tweet occasionally @academic_core and face the perils of instagram @arushiaerarege. They are the proud author of exit wound (no point of entry) and twin exit wounds (twin points of entry). They are the EIC of ink&ivy lit, Bus Talk, and Draupadi Interviews. You can find their website at arushiaerarege.carrd.co.

“In BROWN GIRL EPIPHANY, rege most certainly does not hold back with their gritty and insightful reckonings on personhood in all its shapes and forms. From the raw truth in "the autumn i learnt what loss meant / i was just another brown girl in the desert" to desire verging on desperation in "what i mean is i need you / to pretend the skies aren’t red / to pretend this isn’t how the world ends / what i mean is / my skin is the same color / as the storm," every line teems with emotion and a wish to be more than the current body. Throughout this chapbook, they explore uncharted intersections of grief, love, fear, death, and a world half-dull and half-ablaze with a tone caught between steel and shift, all through poems gloriously varying in syntax, length, and subject. In every thoughtful word, Rege commands the reader's attention, reckons with their identity as a human, lover, and family member, and continues to carve out their own special, tender plane in the literary field.” —Jenny Chu, poet & EIC of Rosetta Lit 

“arushi (aera) rege’s BROWN GIRL EPIPHANY is an invitation into the process of contemplating grief: in the self, in another, and in the world. Through poignant repetition, rege’s raw voice gleams off of their words. Their dedication to not giving the reader even brief silence adds to the collection’s power. Aware of this effect, rege writes: ‘you sit there, staring at me.’ And what else can we do but stare at this grief. In BROWN GIRL EPIPHANY, loss simmers, bubbles, boils, and remains on us.” —Aldrin Badiola, editor-in-chief of Artists from Maryland