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Tornado

When award-winning author Mary Anne Mohanraj learned she had breast cancer, she immediately began recording the details in her blog. Tornado is her honest, day-by-day account of diagnosis, chemo, surgery, radiation, and reconstruction, over a three-year period.

One out of eight women gets breast cancer. You know someone who has it, or work with someone, or may have been diagnosed yourself. This is a book for all of us, but especially for anyone facing a breast cancer diagnosis for yourself, or for someone you love.

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Welcome to the Internet's third oldest blog. Check out my latest posts.

How do we have productive political conversations with people who disagree with us?

March 12, 2025

Yesterday, various people responded to a post I made, where I mentioned that I’ve persuaded conservatives to change their positions; they asked how I did it. It’s complicated, but I’ll try to answer. If you have no interest in this topic, please just go on to the next post. I don’t think anyone has any obligation to try to reach across the aisle — especially people who are under direct and serious threat. This post

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These people were lied to

March 11, 2025

I’m getting a little tired of the FAFO and leopards eating faces comments — these people were lied to, consistently and comprehensively. They are mostly not paying close attention to political discourse, often because they’re scrabbling to keep themselves and their families afloat. I remember one summer when I had a shitty job with a two hour public transit commute each way — it was a bad economy, and the only job I could find,

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The story of

Mary Anne Mohanraj

Mary Anne Mohanraj is author of A Feast of Serendib, Bodies in Motion, The Stars Change, and twelve other titles. Other recent publications include stories for George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards series, Perennial: A Garden Romance (Tincture), stories at Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, and Lightspeed, and an essay in Roxane Gay’s Unruly Bodies.

 

Mohanraj founded Hugo-nominated and World Fantasy Award-winning speculative literature magazine Strange Horizons, and serves as Executive Director of both DesiLit (desilit.org) and the Speculative Literature Foundation (speclit.org).  She is Clinical Associate Professor of fiction and literature at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  www.maryannemohanraj.com

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Vegan Serendib 99%
Jump Space 95%
Cancer Log 50%
“The streets were more empty than usual—everyone who had someone was probably at home, cuddling them up, waiting for the bombs to fall or the shooting to start or the diseases to spread or just for the chips in their heads to catch viruses, melt, and drip out of their brains.”
Mary Anne MohanrajThe Stars Change
“Devan wasn’t sure why he was doing this—just because she looked lost, and he wanted to see what her face would look like if it were smiling, as it was meant to. He ducked into the back room, where the last of the Christmas décor lingered, and clipped off a sprig of holly. A few twists of floral tape, a pin, and now he had a little holly pin. He brought it back into the main room, and handed it to the woman, who looked bemused. / “Holly—it’s still green in the darkest part of the year; it’s a traditional symbol of hope, protection, and victory.” / She smiled then, and carefully pinned it to her scarf. “That’s exactly what I need—thank you.”
Mary Anne MohanrajPerennial
“Amara ran. She had started out walking, her steps slow but steady. Walking away from the exploded ship that had been her marriage. It hadn’t been spaceworthy in a long time, leaking air, on the verge of decompression. But she had held on, slapping patches up as fast as she could, holding the ship together with wire and prayers and dogged determination -- no one could ever accuse her of lacking willpower. She had committed to this marriage, and she had been determined to see it through. Until Rajiv had come home stinking of another woman, and blown a hole right through the heart of it.”
Mary Anne MohanrajThe Stars Change
“The rain has been coming down hard for weeks, working its way through her not quite sealed roof, sending quiet trickles down the walls of hardened clay. There are days in the monsoon season when lentils and rice are no longer enough, when the insistence of memory overwhelms her. Those days, she stands on a teetering stool to reach the highest shelf; she pulls out her hoard of spices, from dust-brown fenugreek to crimson saffron threads. The rain stopped for a few hours this morning, but now it starts coming down again. She walks through it to the village center, her white sari plastered to her slight frame. There she trades smoked fish for rich coconut milk, ghee, fresh vegetables. The other women look at each other, and then tell their daughters: ‘Mangai Aunty is cooking. Go. Watch.’”
Mary Anne MohanrajBodies in Motion
“Aarti danced, joyfully and spectacularly, bounding higher than she ever could have under the rules of her homeworld’s gravity. She danced under the Earthlight, the Moon’s landscaped bathed in a dim bluish-white twilight. Brighter than the light of a full moon, but still night-like. Aarti didn’t understand how she could be here, on what was clearly the Moon, in the shadow of her beloved Mons Argaeus, how she could breathe – though did she actually breathe? Aarti felt no breath leaving her body, or entering it again. Yet that didn’t seem to matter. Her body was her own again, restored to what it had been before the virus hit. Although not exactly the same – better.”
Mary Anne MohanrajJoker Moon