Welcome to The Brown Brontë blog!

As a South Asian Yorkshirewoman with an addiction to literature, the name for this blog reflects both myself and the content I’ll be sharing on here. I read when I know I should be doing other things, and I talk incessantly about what I’m reading to anyone who will humour me, when I know they should be doing other things. But since I don’t have the will or inclination to change my ways, I’ve decided to channel my thoughts on here; as some wise person once said, “If you can’t beat it, own it.”

I would love this little corner of the Internet that I’ve claimed, to be somewhere that fellow readers, both like-minded and unlike-minded, can come together for ideas on what to read, how to expand their reading, and have a natter about everything bookish, in the comments section and on our Facebook group.

And if anything I write here helps any of you lovely people to find inspiration in your reading lives, I’ll be - to coin a Yorkshire phrase - “well chuffed!”

In the upcoming posts, I’ll be sharing reviews and recommendations, thoughts on my current reading material, and the titles I’d like to read next. I can’t wait to get started and put my book-related musings on paper, and I hope you’ll take the time to join in the discussion by sharing your thoughts and reading lists too!

See you soon,

Shabnam (The Brown Brontë)

Comments

Mahmood Mattan, Fortune Man: review

I remember one time when my daughter, aged 10, came home from school, shocked that some countries still have the death penalty. ‘You mean they actually execute people?’ She asked. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But it’s the 21 st century!’ she said. ‘It’s cruel!’ ‘I know,’ I said. ‘We might think it shouldn’t happen, but it does.’ I was reminded of that conversation recently while reading Nadifa Mohamed’s The Fortune Men , alongside listening to Danielle Fahiya’s excellent BBC podcast Mattan: Injustice of a Hanged Man . Both the novel and the podcast tell of the wrongful conviction and hanging of Mahmood Mattan, a Somali Muslim seaman living in Cardiff’s Tiger Bay, in 1952. Mattan was accused of having brutally murdered a local shopkeeper, Lily Volpert (her name is changed in the book to Violet Volacki). Mattan maintained his innocence right to the end, but his appeals were unsuccessful, and he was hanged in Cardiff prison on 3 rd September 1952. His body was interred in the prison grou

Why Helen Graham is the Best Brontë Heroine

This month was Anne Bront ë ’s 200 th birthday, so I couldn’t let it go without writing a post in honour of it. Anne Bronte, Project Gutenberg I don't think I'm alone in thinking that Anne was the boldest of her sisters. Her novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall certainly is the bravest in rebelling against social expectations of women, and Helen Graham is by far my favourite heroine. Here’s why: 1. She’s an adult, independent woman who has lived a full(er) life in society. Rather than living in the margins of society, in a state of arrested development, like Jane, Lucy, Agnes or even Cathy who never wanted to leave the moors, Helen’s previous life means she seems more like a well-rounded person. This might have made her story all the more shocking to Victorian audiences, as Helen’s social standing combined with her radical ideas would have been more likely to influence other people than those of a governess. She can’t be dismissed as just a naïve or unrelia

Sultana’s Dream: A Bengali Feminist Sci-Fi Utopia

Sultana’s Dream is a science fiction short story by the Bengali writer and activist Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain , which was first published in the Indian Ladies’ Magazine, Madras, in 1905. It imagines the journey of a woman – Sultana - to a fantastical place called Ladyland, “free from sin and harm, where Virtue reigns supreme”. Here, the powers and spheres of men and women are reversed so that women are active in public life, and men are restricted to domestic duties. The result is a utopia where there is no crime, violence or corruption. Their main diet is fruit; they use technology to carry out manual labour and grow crops, and flying cars to travel. Work is carried out more efficiently as women do not waste time smoking and talking, and they come up with innovative, non-violent ways of defending themselves against enemies. At a time when India was under British colonial rule and women’s emancipation had not yet become a reality even in Britain, Hossain satirised the patri

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