From stories of their childhood in the South, Midwest, and New York to transcendent experiences with lovers, psychedelics, and fragrances to trips home to their motherland, Tanaïs builds a universe of memories and scent: a sensorium. In Sensorium is a memoir from a writer and perfumer that also offers a critical, alternate history of South Asia from an American Bangladeshi Muslim femme perspective. Follow them on Instagram at Sensorium by Tanaïs interlaces eons of South Asian perfume history, erotic and religious texts, survivor testimonies, and material culture with memoir. An independent perfumer, their fragrance, beauty, and design studio TANAÏS is based in New York City. They are the recipient of residencies at MacDowell, Tin House, and Djerassi. Tanaïs is the author of In Sensorium, and the critically acclaimed novel Bright Lines, which was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, and the Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize. #DESICRAFTCHAT WITH TANAÏS - INTRODUCTION
In this conversation, we talked about creating new pathways to tell our individual stories and collective histories, honoring our literary lineage, dealing with being both invisible and hyper-visible-and much more. In today’s #DesiCraftChat, we have Tanaïs discussing their new memoir, In Sensorium. Hello and welcome to Episode 69 of Desi Books-news and views about desi literature from the world over. Well-researched explorations of eroticism in ancient religions, the violence of British colonialism and South Asian patriarchal cultures, and capitalism-induced environmental damage are synthesized artfully with intensely personal revelations about love, sex, liberation, selfhood and healing.” Harper published the book on February 22, 2022.(available at Anchor.fm, Spotify, Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Breaker, Pocket Casts, RadioPublic, Overcast ) It interlaces South Asian history with personal history, diasporic longing with homeland love, and ancestral trauma with present-day crises. With bold and lyrical language, this singular sensorium is structured like a perfume with base, heart and head notes.
American Bangladeshi Muslim writer, perfumer and entrepreneur Tanaïs’ IN SENSORIUM shows how these sense memories can evoke our most powerful emotional responses across time and space. Book critic and Desi Books podcast host Jenny Bhatt writes: “All our perceptions, interpretations and emotions are filtered through our five senses and stored as sense memories. IN SENSORIUM by Tanaïs is one of NPR’s Best Books of 2022.
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