“I am interested in non-fiction that pushes form, language and ways of moving in fiction that pulses with resistance,” they declare. Tanaïs’s writing style is in itself a form of dissent-they consciously embrace purple prose in a culture that loves a bare, spare sentence. Join writer and perfumer Tanas for a multisensory exploration of their latest book, In Sensorium: Notes For My People. The book covers expansive territory, drawing connections between the nation of Islam, Black resistance and Muslims in America, invisibilised Native American histories, non-monogamy across caste lines, and dark-skinned, subaltern goddesses such as Shyamala Devi, whose offerings include menstrual rags. “The narrative of sustainability invisibilises the labour of femmes of colour in Bangladesh who make fast fashion,” they note, referencing the Rana Plaza fire in Dhaka in 2013. Even now, they are a firm devotee of the coexistence of the high-low in fashion and luxury. In Sensorium is archive and art, illuminating the great crises of our time with the language of Liberation. Tanaïs writes of a childhood in the American South: learning how to dress from Black and Latina femmes who subverted ideas of sexuality and propriety, and taking notes from a tenacious mother who embodied an aesthetic of defiance that mixed precious gold jewellery with drugstore lipstick. Structured like a perfume-moving from base to heart to head notes-IN SENSORIUM interlaces eons of South Asian perfume history, erotic and religious texts, survivor testimonies, and material culture with memoir.

To read In Sensorium is to be keenly alive to the need for beauty and joy as essential-as armour, particularly for those who are simultaneously invisibilised and hypervisible. Perfume is political, particularly for dark-skinned Dalit and Muslim femmes, who have been depicted by great Indian epics as “smelly, filthy and destructive”.

In sensorium notes for my people