Mir Masud-Elias
Mehrin (“Mir”) Masud-Elias was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, came of age in the United States and found her voice in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she lives with her husband and their two dogs. In September 2014, Mir launched the website Alu Bukhara Junction, a project to map our common culinary traditions with a focus on cuisines shared with the Islamic world (past and present). Under the pen name Mir Elias, she also writes poems influenced by the Sufi poetic tradition, as well as myths, folk and fairy tales. When not writing, Mir likes photographing the transient quotidian in minimalist form.
Awarded Grants
2015
Art and Change Grant (ACG)
Related grantees
Overview
Mir’s Alu Bukhara Junction is a food memoir and blog that explores displacement, loss, difference, ethical food practices, and shared cuisines of the Islamic world. Mir wants to investigate her own fractured memories as an immigrant from Bangladesh and the historical background of different recipes. The blog allows Mir to tell her story as a secular Muslim and South Asian woman who is sometimes at odds with her chosen home in the United States because of continued racism and Islamophobia. She hopes Alu Bukhara Junction will demystify the “otherness” of her identities through the story of food and contribute to the fight against the increasing Islamaphobia both nationally and across the world.