Bushra Rehman grew up in Corona, Queens but her mother says she was born in an ambulance flying through the streets of Brooklyn. Her father is not so sure, but it would explain a few things.
In the vein of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, an unforgettable story about female friendship and queer love in a Muslim-American community. Razia Mirza grows up amid the wild grape vines and backyard sunflowers of Corona, Queens, with her best friend, Saima, by her side. When a family rift drives the girls […]
THE RUMPUS By Tamiko Byer October 31st, 2018 Poet, novelist, and teaching artist Bushra Rehman knows a Queens bully when she sees one. In her first novel, Corona, and now in her new poetry collection, Marianna’s Beauty Salon, Rehman depicts a tough and tender New York City. Her writing is rooted in her experience of […]
Literary Hub By Tamiko Byer October 5, 2018 Bushra Rehman “Writing from life can be a tricky business,” notes Rehman. It’s an art that Rehman has deftly honed in both her poetry and fiction, and which she teaches in her long-running “Two Truths and a Lie” course. Rehman’s novel, Corona, and her recent poetry collection, […]
Publisher’s Weekly September 2018 In Rehman’s debut collection, indelible truths permeate slice-of-life recollections and blustery fantasies of desire. Alienation and intimacy, a sensation of stasis, and the comforts of a Queens immigrant household all mark the speaker’s physical and emotional universe. Rehman sardonically illuminates social shifts, such as the tensions of a world kept at […]
The Queens Tribune By Thomas Moody August 2018 In the final chapter of Corona, Bushra Rehman’s debut novel, a bread truck breaks down on a cold Queens winter night on the street the neighborhood has unofficially reserved for abandoned cars. What seems like the whole of Corona looks on from their houses, waiting to see […]