CURB is an artist’s book written by Divya Victor and designed and printed by Aaron Cohick, and published by The Press at Colorado College.
The work focuses on historical scenes that have set the stage for critical and communal discourse on hate crimes committed against South Asian migrants within a larger context of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States, which have seen a documented rise since the attacks on the World Trade Center, spiking after the 2016 Presidential elections.
The book centers on three historical scenes that represent nationally significant hate-crimes: the assault on and death of Navroze Mody, after leaving a café (New Jersey, 1987); the murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi (Arizona, 2001), while planting flowers outside his own gas station; the murder of Srinivas Kuchibhotla while he was having an after-work drink at a bar (Kansas, 2017).
The poems pursue documentary traditions, favoring an expansive approach to intertextuality, source-to-page relationships, the range of roles available for the voice, and intermedial contact (between text and image).
CURB emerged out of a poem from my previous book Kith—a poem called “No English. Indian. Walking” The poem takes as its epigraph from a letter to the editor. This letter was written by The Dotbusters, a hate group that terrorized Indian immigrants and Indian Americans in New Jersey in 1987:
. 
The title of the poem is a quotation from Sureshbhai Patel, a 57 year old man from Gujarat, India.
In February 2015, Patel was visiting his son’s family in Alabama, after recently becoming a grandfather. When he was taking a morning walk around his block, a neighbor had called the police, citing a “skinny black guy” prowling around the neighborhood. A cop car tracked him down, mere yards from his son’s home. When asked what he was doing on the sidewalk he said: “No English. Indian. Walking.” He was assaulted & thrown to the ground by Madison Police Officer Eric Parker. The assault left Patel paralyzed. The lawsuit against Parker alleged a number of claims: false arrest, improper search & seizure, excessive force. A year later, Parker was acquitted of civil rights violation charges & was reinstated into the Madison Police Force.
In the September of 2001, Balbir Singh Sodhi was shot and killed by a white, anti-Arab and anti-immigration supremacist on the sidewalks outside his own gas station.
In the February of 2017, Srinivas Kuchibhotla was shot and killed by a white, anti-immigration supremacist at a bar while he was grabbing an after-drink with his friend Alok Madasani.
There are many such cases.
READ EXCERPTS FROM CURB:
READ THE PRINTER’S STATEMENT BY AARON COHICK HERE
DIVYA VICTOR 