There is now a Center for California Literature! Long overdue. Please come to the kickoff event with Aja Monet, Ryan O’Connell, Roxane Gay, and myself on Oct. 3 at the wonderfully named Giovanni’s Room in LA.

All my escalators worked for me today. How about yours?

Netanyahu had fewer attendees than an 8am panel at the MLA.

It was never about criminality or invasions or about the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants. Trump and the MAGA movement hate immigrants overall. THEY START WITH THE MOST VULNERABLE AND WILL GET TO EVERY IMMIGRANT OR REFUGEE EVENTUALLY. That will include birthright citizenship too.

If Trump says this, then hopefully many of the people who listened to him today will understand that this is a racist, cruel, and ultimately self-destructive policy for so many countries that actually benefit from the cultures, values, and labor that immigrants bring.

Great summary of the Voices for Gaza event this past Sunday--you can donate at the QR code you see here.

We have been shadowbanned on this event and yet we are nearly sold out…come help us sell out and show your love and support for Palestine and Gaza. www.ticketmaster.com/voices-for-g...

Thinking about our commandant-in-chief, who loves to mock but can’t bear being mocked

It worked. We’re not talking about the Epstein files.

War on Drugs. War on Terror. War on Antifa. Americans love fighting wars they can’t win.

The Democratic Party is a joke. thehill.com/homenews/hou...

None of this is a surprise. Remember that Trump supposedly was motivated to run for president after Obama roasted him.

Definitely Dear Leader territory. And Republicans are upset if you say the word “fascism.”

If white supremacists are willing to march en masse in honor of Charlie Kirk, saying things like “Say his name! Take back our world! Take back our land!”-- Then maybe they understood Charlie Kirk pretty well.

Sally Rooney, Deborah Levy, Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux and Pulitzer winner Viet Thanh Nguyen are among 20 authors urging French president Emmanuel Macron to resume a “lifeline” programme for evacuating Palestinian writers, scholars and artists from Gaza.

The Republican Party that hated racial quotas sure does seem to like racial quotas

Making a rare trip to Indiana to speak at Notre Dame this Friday. The university brings out people to do an intellectual warm-up act before a football game weekend. Notre Dame has a long-time rivalry with USC, and Notre Dame has won many more games than USC, which I will be sure to bring up.

Another compelling factor was Israeli troops’ “extensive and deliberate” targeting of Palestinian children, Mr. Sidoti said. Medical workers testified they had treated many children with direct gunshot wounds to the head and upper body.

VOICES FOR GAZA is this Sunday in NYC, a fundraiser for Palestinian children. Hear about why you should come and support this important event from the writers and artists who will be speaking: Seema Jilani, Mosab Abu Toha, Hala Alyan, Hannah Lillith Assadi, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Aasif Mandvi

The stupidity and brutality and racism of Make America Great Again can't be emphasized enough. How does this make the USA "great" or restore its economy or create American jobs or enhance US prestige overseas? It obviously doesn't. Trump, Miller, Homan, ICE, Rubio believe only in unleashed power.

I’m a proud UC Berkeley graduate and I am appalled and angered by this McCarthyism. Judith Butler—just to cite one example— is not an antisemite but a principled philosopher devoted to justice for all, not just particular populations.

“The retired general [said] more than 10% of Gaza’s 2.2 million population had been killed or injured – “more than 200,000 people”. That estimate is…close to the current figures provided by Gaza’s health ministry, which Israeli officials have frequently dismissed as Hamas propaganda.”

Two US senators say Israel is deliberately engaging in ethnic cleansing, including starving Palestinians. And the USA is complicit.

Killing people we disagree with is wrong in every way, whether it’s Melissa Hortman or Charlie Kirk. This is especially true in a country awash with guns and run by fascists looking to amplify their already militarized policies. No thoughts and prayers. Down with fascism and up with gun control.

I’ll be live on @democracynow at 8am Eastern time talking about this — and a lot more, of course

Less than 2 weeks away! This fundraiser will be an amazing night of readings from Palestinian authors Mosab Abu Toha, Hala Alyan, & Hannah Lillith Assadi, along w/ myself & Seema Jilani, a pediatrician who’s been in Gaza and who works with INARA, an organization that supports children in war zones.

The Supreme Court bans affirmative action in university admissions but is okay with racial profiling on American streets. That pretty much sums up white supremacy--heads I win, tails you lose, all legal.

The Jaipur Literature Festival is one of the most famous in the world. This isn’t it, but rather the International version that appears in different US cities. I’m glad to be back in one of my favorite cities, Seattle, in conversation with legend Shawn Wong.

Trump is a bully. He likes picking on the weaker and more vulnerable so he can “win.” Eventually he’ll get this country involved in a war it can’t win—at tremendous human cost.

So you’re really going to believe a president who tells you he killed eleven Venezuelan drug smugglers when the same president ordered a Navy SEAL mission into North Korea that only resulted in the SEALs killing three innocent North Korean fishermen?

This was uncomfortable reading! Jeremy Irons should play him in a movie

The USA is never going to win its many wars on drugs because Americans love their drugs too much. But a lot of people--most of them nonwhite--have died and will die because the USA loves going to war.

I love East LA! And I love books. Come check out the East Los Book Festival at the East LA Civic Center—especially if you never go east of the 405.

Genocide apologists and ethnic cleansing apologists share a similar condition--they blame the victim. If you hadn't started the war, we wouldn't have to kill you (forgetting that they had started a perpetual war a long time earlier). 1/2

DUI, get deported. Raid the capital, get rewarded.

Reparations for (mostly) white people.

A concise summary of a terrible and neglected genocide and famine in Sudan, caught in a war between cruel forces—and a tragedy that the US can address with little controversy by applying pressure on those responsible, including the UAE

NEW figures show that 61,226 people are currently in ICE detention — the highest number ever in US history. According to ICE data, 70% of these people have no criminal conviction.

China gets Tank Man and we get Sandwich Guy. It's alright, I'm assuming we'll have our Tank Person at some point, too.

My high school classmate, Richard Tsong-Taatarii / @rtsongphoto of the Star Tribune, took this photo on the day of the Minneapolis church shooting.

I am thrilled to participate in this incredible event with an incredible lineup of Palestinian writers and supporters of Palestine, with all ticket proceeds to benefit Palestinian orphans, via INARA. If you’re in New York City, buy your tickets now. I’m pretty sure the event will sell out.

This is what I've been saying about university presidents in the crosshairs--you're going to be eliminated anyway, so stand up and get fired for what you believe in, rather than being humiliated and losing the respect of your faculty and students.

If AI is accurate, Obama has never put a Palestinian author on his recommended reading list. Weird! And by weird, I mean the absence of Palestinian authors indicates the inability of neoliberal multiculturalism to grapple with the exceptions of settler colonialism and genocide

I hope one day we will remember Hind Rajab the way we remember Anne Frank -- one child symbolizing the fates of so many under genocide

Unexpected and cool--an art exhibit in NYC named after my book, To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other (from @harvardpress). www.artasiapacific.com/shows/to-sav...

I’m delighted to be in conversation with one of the most exciting scholars in Asian American studies, Takeo Rivera, in Boston. We will be discussing my book To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other, but I’m sure we’ll be talking about a lot of other things as well.

The IDF has a "war dashboard" that tracks killed Hamas suspects. A body count. The US body count in the war in Viet Nam led to dead civilians counted as dead enemies, and this appears to be the same in Gaza. The US lost anyway despite overwhelming firepower. Israel is headed in the same direction.

So conservatives will require conservative thought in universities but not leftists in financial institutions and government. The “free market” was never free.

So there was a time and place where crackers were kept in giant barrels?

If the USA can’t compete with China because its leadership is too stupid and delirious about American greatness, then the USA is likely to resort to war with China, directly or via “proxy,” a terrible term to mask the human consequences on whichever unfortunate country will be the site of battle.