In Sensorium: Notes for My People

"All our perceptions, interpretations and emotions are filtered through our five senses and stored as sense memories. 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. With bold and lyrical language, this singular sensorium is structured like a perfume with base, heart and head notes. It interlaces South Asian history with personal history, diasporic longing with homeland love, and ancestral trauma with present-day crises. 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."