Ashfaque Swapan

Americans vote on November 6 in a momentous mid-term elections. Polls suggest that the total Republican grip on federal power is about to be shattered as Democrats regain the House.

July is less than a month away, and festival fever is beginning to take hold among the estimated 10,000-strong Bangladeshi expatriate community in greater Atlanta. All hands are on deck for the 32nd FOBANA convention, the upcoming Bangladeshi jamboree to be hosted at the World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta. All told, at least 5,000 attendees are expected, by conservative estimates.

It was a lovely spring morning when my friend Arif and I drove down to Montgomery, Alabama. A new memorial, National Memorial for Peace and Justice, opened here on April 24—dedicated to African Americans who had been the victims of extrajudicial killings in the post-Civil War United States.

AMAR Mitra's literary achievements are formidable. His works of fiction have won India's coveted Sahitya Akademi Award (for the novel Dhrubaputra) as well as West Bengal's Bankim Puraskar (for the novel Ashwacharit).

Here in Atlanta, in the land of fried chicken and grits, Pahela Baishakh is celebrated with great fanfare. As the chill of winter gives way

Fifty years ago, America's iconic civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr, was slain in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4. In the United States, King's following words are famous to the point of being clichéd, but they bear repeating nonetheless: “I have a dream that little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Dr Afzalunnessa, retired professor of anaesthesiology, was conferred an honorary doctorate by the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University at its third convocation on February 19 in recognition for her four decades of service to anaesthesiology in Bangladesh.

Is Bangladeshi cinema turning a corner? There are some signs of hope, but don't uncork the champagne yet.

Two events that bookended the year 2017 epitomise the dire political predicament the United States faces.

The incoming train-wreck that is the Republican tax plan has a bizarre solution for a very real problem, and the oddest thing is, they might get away with it.

When Bangladeshis move abroad, they take with them a little piece of Bangladesh in their hearts.

It's too early to tell whether history will be kind to the Donald Trump administration, but no one can doubt its rich, if unintended, contribution to comedy.

US documentary filmmaker Ken Burns' 10-part, 18-hour documentary on the Vietnam War (made in association with Lynn Novick) is making waves here, as well as it should. Give Burns credit.

The Republican Party is in complete control today—it has a majority in both the US Senate and House and has a Republican president, yet it fell flat on its face in its effort to repeal Obama's ambitious attempt to make healthcare accessible to most US citizens.

You see, Mildred Jeter was black, while her husband, Richard Loving (yes, that is his real name) was white. In the 1950s, Virginia was one of 24 states whose anti-miscegenation laws made interracial marriage a felony. The Lovings were charged with “cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth.”

The Spelling Bee is a cherished American institution. For those unfamiliar enough to wonder what kind of bee would that be, it's a nationwide spelling contest, where tens of millions of kids from all over the US compete. The cut-off age for contestants is the 8th grade.

I first heard about Bhuban Majhi from Shafiq bhai, the colourful, ornery owner of Tajmahal Restaurant near Atlanta. I have a soft spot

The election of Donald Trump as US president worries Bangladeshi Americans. Trump rode to victory on a wave of a nativist animus that has given a new lease of life to racists and Islamophobes.

When Donald Trump won, American pundits were baffled and political analysts were stumped. How could this mendacious, tacky, narcissist win?

I grew up with Chhayanaut. No, I never took any music lessons there. I am simply one of those countless Bengalis who partook of its rich cultural offerings over the years.