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Shahamat Uddin

@ushahamat

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🇧🇩 | brooklyn
✍🏽: @jkpbooks @voguemagazine @vogueindia @teenvogue @thecut @them @popsugar @nationmag @taxmagazine & beyond!
👨🏽‍💻: [email protected]

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BOOK DEAL ALERT!!!!! I’m so excited to announce that I’ve signed with @jkpbooks and @hachettebooks to write, edit and produce Thoomar (working title meaning ‘yours’ in Bangla) – a nonfiction narrative style anthology of queer and trans South Asian stories. What I’ve been calling “Moonlight” meets “Slumdog Millionaire” in publishing meetings, Thoomar follows the stories of queer and trans South Asians as we blossom from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. While I will be writing the majority of the anthology, I’m SO excited to commission other queer and trans South Asian writers to also contribute short stories to Thoomar (details on how to potentially contribute on the last slide).

When I was first approached for this project about eight months ago, I could hardly believe it. Authorship was this faulty dream I’d riff off at dinner parties and arbitrarily manifest in my morning meditations. I’d been pining after it for so long I never expected a day where it might actually materialize. But here we are :) Meanwhile, queer Desi love felt like an even greater pipe dream — so much further away than authorship ever did. At a young age, I accepted that there was no future that joined my Muslim, Bangladeshi and queer identities, let alone a community of others that also lived in the intersection of this sloppy venn diagram of self. But then again, here we are, millions of us, beaming expressions of queer Desi livelihood :)

The people in my life have pushed and nudged and rattled me into this moment and there’s no single individual I know who isn’t worthy of the greatest thanks. Shoutout to everyone who’s been along for this ride since the Tulane Hullabaloo days. A bigger shoutout to those who were there for me during the high school Coyotes essay days. And an even BIGGER shoutout to those who’ve been here since my days as a riveting investigative reporter for the Hembree Springs Elementary Newspaper (swipe to see my daring expose on the best Webkinz available). Little Shahamat doing the damn thing 🥹, here’s to you baby boy by @ushahamat

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3 years ago

one last time in my old apartment w/ @ramonchristian.photo 🍃☀️🛌 :) by @ushahamat

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2 months ago

greatest city in the world 🧡💙 by @ushahamat

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4 months ago

hang on, I think I’m gonna sneeze 🤧 by @ushahamat

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10 months ago

olivia, alice, toni, close, close to my heart, like nyc’s autumn wind, on my nose, in my hair, around me wherever i go 🌬️💇🏽

pics captured by @aliceromanov’s film! 💙 taken in New York, New York by @ushahamat

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a year ago

pretty pictures by sweetie pie @natelusk ✨ :) taken in Brooklyn, New York by @ushahamat

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a year ago

Fiction debut, “How to Get Over Someone Who You Fall in Love with While You’re on Molly” (Street) is live online now!! Read it for FREE at link in my bio!!!

Fiction writing has always been the dream, so feeling big feels about this one🤍 once you read it, plzzzzz tell me what you think (even if u hated it, i want to know!)

And sooo the punchline goes: two gay boys walk into a straight party, their chaotic friend Molly asks, heyyyy what if u had the most romantic night of your life together and then mutually ghost each other 🤔 did the tree fall in the forest if no one heard it!! did the gay boys have a love story worth telling if they never spoke to each other again!! u tell me ;)

(And lots of love and gratitude to @noahxangelo / @iamolivierweber / + @taxmagazine fam for making this happen 🥹🫶🏽) by @ushahamat

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a year ago

You can take the boy out of the South, but you can’t stop him from posing shirtless in a cowboy hat!! 🤪🤠

pics by my very talented friend @patricklupinski :) taken in Brooklyn, New York by @ushahamat

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a year ago

How do you protect your ethnic features while undergoing facial feminization surgery ?? This was the question top of mind for @armanakhanistan when she underwent FFS last fall.

Doctor after doctor after doctor, everywhere Armana looked: she kept seeing it, feminized faces made “feminized” under the guise of Western beauty standards. It was Kim Kardashians copied and pasted, cinched noses, angled eye sockets, defining ethnic features lost to what medicine deemed “the way to create the feminine face.” So Armana asked, what does femininity look like outside of whiteness? How do I affirm my trans identity and my Pakistani identity in the same breath? In the same procedure?

Deeply honored to have profiled Armana’s FFS experience for @thecut & @nymag ! I feel so grateful to have been trusted with this story. It’s a fucking horrible world for trans people right now, especially from the advent of the healthcare industry and the facist politics depriving trans people of their care. While this story certainly interrogates how medicine and the beauty world has in someways conflated whiteness and femininity, this story also highlights the transformative impact of gender-affirming healthcare and the world that we all get to greater experience when trans people have it. Give it a read. I’m really proud with what we’re sharing here. I love you forever Armana 💗💗💗

(And for anyone confused while reading, the “as told to” format here means that ghost wrote this story from Armana’s first person perspective after detailed interviews with her and collaborative editing) by @ushahamat

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2 years ago

In andy’s clothes! And also wet!! (by the mind-blowingly talented @andy.myers) taken in Los Angeles, California by @ushahamat

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2 years ago

In a first for @interviewmag, I interviewed @payalkapadiafilm, director of my favorite movie this year: @allweimagineaslightfilm ! It’s been a huge year for Payal and this movie, making history as the first Indian film to compete at Cannes in over thirty years, cinching wins across 15+ awards groups since then, and Payal becoming the first ever South Asian woman (and only ever second South Asian) to be nominated for the Golden Globe for best director. Despite this, the official Oscar committee of India declined to submit her film for best international feature, arguing it wasn’t “Indian enough.”

Honored to have sat down to chat with Payal about what issss “Indian enough,” and how the Oscars really pale in comparison to all of the personal impact Payal has been able to imbue with the power of this film. If I can’t get you to read this interview, I hope I can get you to at least watch this masterpiece of a film ✨✨✨ LFG AWIAL!!!!!!! by @ushahamat

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2 years ago

Sorry you didn’t win, sexy🧡 by @ushahamat

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2 years ago