T Kira Māhealani Madden
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tkiramadden.bsky.social
T Kira Māhealani Madden
@tkiramadden.bsky.social
3.4K followers 1K following 190 posts
author: Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls & forthcoming Whidbey • hapa kanaka ‘ōiwi dyke • soup enthusiast & magician • land back • aloha 'āina • she/her
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tkiramadden.bsky.social
should I come back to this app
August 24, 2025 at 11:37 PM
tkiramadden.bsky.social
imagine being stuck in space w katy perry
April 16, 2025 at 12:08 AM
Reposted by T Kira Māhealani Madden
kristeniskandrian.bsky.social
every book is like, what if the CLIMATE could HAVE SEX
March 17, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Reposted by T Kira Māhealani Madden
audrelawdamercy.bsky.social
reposting with alt text

and full text of Mahmoud Khalil's letter is available here, from @ccrjustice.org

ccrjustice.org/sites/defaul...
Image with yellow-underlined text reading Letter from Mahmoud Khalil in ICE Detention Swipe left Letter from a Palestinian Political Prisoner in Louisiana Dictated over the phone from ICE Detention March 18, 2025 My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law. Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing. Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities. On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours — I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request. My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention — imprisonment without trial or charge — to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace. I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.
March 19, 2025 at 12:27 AM
Reposted by T Kira Māhealani Madden
kristenarnett.bsky.social
book drops 3/18 and i have a fucking fantastic tour planned - will announce soon - but there is still time to get a preorder that’s signed and personalized by me from the good folks at the lynx

thelynxbooks.com/item/ZoOPMvN...
Stop Me If You've Heard This One
A Novel
thelynxbooks.com
February 17, 2025 at 5:09 PM
tkiramadden.bsky.social
Do I have friends (friends of friends?) in Indianapolis? I’ll be reading at Butler tomorrow, free and open to the public 💗 www.butler.edu/arts-science...
Visiting Writers Series | Butler University
www.butler.edu
February 12, 2025 at 3:10 PM
tkiramadden.bsky.social
everything else aside, the *looks* of Milkshake 👩🏻‍🍳🤌🏽
February 8, 2025 at 3:07 PM
tkiramadden.bsky.social
My wife doesn’t know what happens in Part II of Wicked. Just sang a little “For Good” as a teaser and she stared, mouth open, then burst out crying.
January 27, 2025 at 12:57 AM
Reposted by T Kira Māhealani Madden
rokwon.bsky.social
some forthcoming 2025 books by women of color I’m excited about!!!

in this piece out today in @electriclit.bsky.social 🖤

electricliterature.com/48-books-by-...
48 Books By Women of Color to Read in 2025 - Electric Literature
Books by Zora Neale Hurston, Laila Lalami, Andrea Long Chu, Angela Flournoy, and EL's own Denne Michele Norris are among the most anticipated
electricliterature.com
January 9, 2025 at 10:28 PM
tkiramadden.bsky.social
hau’oli makahiki hou 💗 grateful to be home
January 1, 2025 at 6:42 PM
Reposted by T Kira Māhealani Madden
tim0theos.bsky.social
This is correct. This is a land acknowledgment that I don’t hate. It acknowledges the facts and gives a chance to learn more and is doing something, anything, about it.
bekka leigh design operates on the unceded traditional territories of the Dunne-za, Saulteaux, Tse’khene, and nehiyaw nations, in Treaty 8 territory, and offers reparation rates on services to Indigenous clients. A link at the end says: Read why.
December 27, 2024 at 12:53 AM
tkiramadden.bsky.social
in the spirit of xmas I have been reborn after the worst food poisoning in history
December 26, 2024 at 1:58 PM
tkiramadden.bsky.social
Day 14. Some will only talk about Brokeback Mountain (a miracle of a story) but every story in here is gothic, surreal, otherworldly, sometimes campy. I’ve read this book a million times. Listening to it on audio while driving through Wyoming while in love, top experience
December 21, 2024 at 3:26 PM
tkiramadden.bsky.social
Day 13. Not a day goes by where I don’t think about Heather Lewis. I wish she were still alive and still writing books. Her characters suffer so tremendously but they’re still alive, full of agency, sensuality, wanting. Fewer ppl have had greater impact on me, though I never met HL
December 20, 2024 at 2:12 PM
tkiramadden.bsky.social
finally watched The Substance. It is Death Becomes Her meets Severance, no?
December 19, 2024 at 10:25 PM
tkiramadden.bsky.social
this page of canned phrasing from @mdbell79.bsky.social’s Refuse to be Done is always so appreciated and always feels like an attack. Choose your fighter
December 19, 2024 at 7:01 PM
tkiramadden.bsky.social
Day 12. Can’t and won’t choose—both biblical to me
December 19, 2024 at 5:17 PM
tkiramadden.bsky.social
made “melting potatoes” tonight for the first time and holy shit, it’s creme brûlée but potato
December 19, 2024 at 1:23 AM
tkiramadden.bsky.social
update: she liked it. headlining note: “I strongly suggest you introduce even one ‘good’ guy.”
tkiramadden.bsky.social T Kira Māhealani Madden @tkiramadden.bsky.social · Dec 15
My wife is a genius, the most hawk eyed, incisive, brilliant editor I know. However she is reading my novel right now, editorially, and I’m wondering if we’ll make it to Christmas.
December 18, 2024 at 10:17 PM
tkiramadden.bsky.social
I feel it’s my duty to remind people once a year that Keanu Reeves is Hawaiian, an indigenous king, one of us, we claim.
December 18, 2024 at 4:51 PM
tkiramadden.bsky.social
Day 11. Perfect tragic episodic structure
December 18, 2024 at 2:51 PM
Reposted by T Kira Māhealani Madden
jayasaxena.com
I did as much as I could to write about Palestine this year, including this piece on how Palestinian restaurants were embracing Palestinian--rather than Middle Eastern or some other phrase--as an identity www.eater.com/24062558/pal...
Palestinian Restaurateurs Are Putting Their Identity at the Forefront
As the war in Gaza has continued, some Palestinian business owners feel compelled to "describe ourselves as we are."
www.eater.com
December 17, 2024 at 3:50 PM
tkiramadden.bsky.social
December's always a heavy month for me; anniversaries live heavy in the body. Here's maybe the hardest thing I ever wrote, still sharp but also a balm to revisit many years later: www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/263...
The Greeter
I imagine them sending me to live with a family that is not my own. I have protected my parents for as long as I’ve been alive. If someone comes after them, I have teeth.
www.thesunmagazine.org
December 17, 2024 at 7:58 PM
tkiramadden.bsky.social
This story is horrible and heartbreaking but oh my joy at imagining Haenel shouting “SHUT UP” in a courtroom the way I have always wanted to do in a courtroom.

www.bbc.com/news/article...
French actor Adèle Haenel confronts director Ruggia in sexual assault trial
The actor shouted "shut up!" at Christophe Ruggia before storming out court on the second day of the trial.
www.bbc.com
December 17, 2024 at 7:18 PM
tkiramadden.bsky.social
I’ve just been informed that “only old people talk about box springs,” as I was going off about needing a new box spring again.
December 17, 2024 at 6:58 PM