Skip to main content

Cut from the Same Cloth? Muslim Women on Life in Britain

So many times while reading this book I found myself nodding and saying ‘YES!’ I hadn’t realised how very rarely I come across a book, writers, voices, that speak to the entirety of my existence as a British Muslim woman; finding that book, those voices, was like letting out a breath I’d been holding, or feeling the relief of relaxing aching facial muscles that had been stretched in a smile all day. There was no need to pretend, no need to explain, no need to justify. What made this anthology of essays so different from the usual ones, was that they are not teaching or preaching, nor do they try to cater to an external gaze. These are British Muslim women writing their experiences and thoughts for women like themselves; women like ME.

The essays in this book have been collected by Sabeena Akhtar, and include pieces by figures such as Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Shaista Aziz, Yvonne Ridley and others. All of them are different in tone, style, and subject – some are academic or discursive, others are more creative and expressive. While each of them offers an abundance of insights, with incisive or exquisitely evocative writing, I was particularly blown away by the narrative style and nostalgia of Mariam Ansar’s ‘Youth in the Time of Madrassahs,’ the emotion in Suma Din’s ‘A Cartography of Motherhood,’ and the rage and weariness of Sophie Williams’ ‘On Therapy.’

But if I had to pick out a common thread or theme running through them all I think it would be this: the importance of no longer seeing ourselves as others see us. These pieces are all about the struggle to let go of the perpetual burden of ‘breaking stereotypes’, or ‘representing the faith,’ or fulfilling roles in relation to others – daughter, mother, wife, employee, boss. They are about the struggle to just be women on our own terms, while dealing with racism, prejudice, mental illness, disability, intergenerational conflict, motherhood, grief and everything else life throws at us. I think this quote from Marguerite Bennett’s ‘InSEXTs’, at the beginning of Sofia Rehman’s essay ‘The Gift of Second Sight’, sums it up perfectly:

‘If you are never to see yourself depicted…Not in story, nor song, nor poem, nor painting, nor prose…no shred of a tale by some distant kindred soul who saw and knew and felt then as you do now, and else another who bore witness…Never see yourself except as crude caricature, mythical beast, or Magdalene penitent…You believe no other like you ever existed. Unquiet women, defiant women – we live invisible lives…We will take up and take back the tools to tell our stories as our own.’

And that is what each of the writers of the essays in this collection has done – told our stories as our own.

A celebration of the resilience, talent and heart of British Muslim women, and one of my top reads of 2021.

Brown Bronte rating: 5 Stars


Thanks to @RandomTTours and Unbound publishing.

Follow me on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Join the conversation at The Brown Brontë's Book Club .


Labels:

Comments

  1. Anne7 June 2021 at 09:54

    Huge thanks for the blog tour support x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Brown Brontë7 June 2021 at 10:18

      You're very welcome, as always! Thanks so much for organising it 🤓

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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
Post a Comment
Read more

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
Post a Comment
Read more

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
Post a Comment
Read more