Corona
a dark comedy about being Desi in the US

Bushra Rehman

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. Bushra was a vagabond poet who traveled for years with nothing more than a Greyhound ticket and a book […]

Writing

Two Truths and a Lie: Writing Autobiographical Fiction Part II

First published on Poets & Writers online, September 2, 2013 Go to Part I One of the drawbacks of writing autobiographical fiction is that the people in your head are not imaginary. They’re real. They’re the people you love the most and are most afraid of losing. In the workshop Two Truths and a Lie: Writing […]

Two Truths and a Lie: Writing Autobiographical Fiction Part I

First Posted on Poets & Writers on August 26, 2013. Go to Part II The first question people always ask me about my novel Corona is if it’s true. Yes, like me the character is a Pakistani who grew up in Corona, Queens, worked as a Puritan in a living history museum, and hitchhiked up and down […]

Bushra Rehman on a Book and a Baby

First Posted in Poets & Writers online on August 9, 2013. “I just gave birth to a book and a baby. It turns out that in the time it took from the acceptance of my manuscript to the moment of its publication, I could create a small human being in my body. I’d never thought […]

Corona: The Soundtrack

RAZIA MIRZA ON CORONA: THE (IMAGINARY) FILM SCORE “CORONA is filled with music, whether it’s references to specific artists (I tortured my fellow passengers on a road trip by bringing mix CDs that only contained Tom Waits) or entire underground music scenes (I fell hard for a Bengali mathematician I met at Basement Bhangra). The […]

Corona reviewed in The Four Quarters Magazine

“WHEN THE POLITICAL IS PERSONAL AND THE PAST, CONTINUOUS” By Bhaswati Ghosh December 8, 2013 “For second-generation immigrants born to South Asian immigrant parents in the Western world, life is a two-fold quest. While their parents float in self-created bubbles by popping open the time capsules in which they arrive from their home country, the […]

Corona reviewed in the Village Voice

“Q&A: Queens Native Bushra Rehman On Her Debut Novel and Growing Up Pakistani Muslim in Queens” By Heather Baysa July 31, 2013 “Bushra Rehman’s first novel, Corona, is a fragmented, poetic, on-the-road adventure told from the perspective of the charismatic Razia Mirza. After coming of age in a tight Muslim community surrounding the first Sunni […]

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Corona Soundtrack

Check out the playlist behind Corona. Curated by Bushra Rehman.

"Bushra Rehman on

CORONA (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013)

CORONA is filled with music, whether it’s references to specific artists (I tortured my fellow passengers on a road trip by bringing mix CDs that only contained Tom Waits) or entire underground music scenes (I fell hard for a Bengali mathematician I met at Basement Bhangra). The songs in this playlist are either mentioned in Bushra’s book or approximate markers of the time period the stories took place. If CORONA was ever made into a movie and Bushra had a gazillion dollar budget, this might be the soundtrack."

Recent Press

NPR.org
To Achieve Diversity In Publishing, A Difficult Dialogue Beats Silence

Poets and Writers Magazine
Interview with Karen Russell

Village Voice
Q&A: Queens Native Bushra Rehman On Her Debut Novel and Growing Up Pakistani Muslim in Queens

Publisher's Weekly
Fiction Book Review: Corona

Muslimah Media Watch
Survival and Shame in “Corona” by Bushra Rehman

SAMAR Magazine
Book Review: Corona by Bushra Rehman

Giant Robot Magazine
Q&A With Author Bushra Rehman

LA Review of Books
Place and Transformation: Four New Works of South Asian–American Fiction

Bushra Rehman