This was Tariq Mehmood’s first novel, published by Penguin Books in 1983, charting the experience of the second generation migrants to the UK. Set in the declining textile industry of the North of England, it is a raw story of pain and anger at the relentlessness of British racism, from the street to the state – a story of an unquenchable desire for justice, and reclaiming human dignity. A dignity that is wrapped around new questions of Identity, a crossroad between religion, language, history and resistance. It is a little big story, that talks to the extremities of social, political and literary issues today? Can stories of a generation be appropriated? How important is religion in identity? If all you have is a story to tell, who should you tell it? Are the issues of today, just the issues of today or can we learn something from the past? In these stories, friendship is not defined by religion or colour, but by humanity. And racism is much more than skin deep. It is an exhilarating read that bears witness to the urgent 80’s battles against state and popular racism. As important now as then. In this new edition, Mehmood provides a Foreword that describes how the novel came to be written and the lives of real people on whom the characters were created. In the Afterword, Mehmood revisits some of the characters who are now 40-years older, and reflects on how the book would have been written today where the conditions of mass mobilizations no longer exist in neoliberal Britain.

Hand On The Sun: A passionate and powerful novel of race and class in England

Literature & Fiction

Mehmood, Tariq

Genre Fiction

Daraja Press

Song of Gulzarina

A suicide bombing is being planned in Manchester, UK. Behind it lie Saleem Khan's vivid memories - some full of regret and yearning, others humorous and yet others overshadowed by the surreal brutality of the war. In the 60s, he leaves his lover, his job as a teacher and his home in the rural Pakistan and travels to Bradford, a town seething with racism where Asians are 'Pakis' and their labour is cheap. He finds a job working in a mill on an all-Asian night-shift, becomes an active trade unionist and when the mills close down, he drives a taxi. He gives up his religion and eventually falls in love with an English woman. But in the 1980s Pakistan draws him back. Now regarded as a smart 'abroadi', he gets involved as the English-speaking partner in his cousin's transport business. When a truck driver he knows, does not return to base, he sets out to find him and unwittingly gets drawn across the border and into the killing fields of Afghanistan. Here, among Russian soldiers, Saudi Arabian Sheikhs, American Pirs, prostitutes and the holy warriors of the Mujahadeen, who take their orders and weapons from the United States, he meets Gulzarina, the woman whose life and experiences in a war without end allow him to finally make sense of his own.

Finding a Voice: Asian Women in Britain (New and Expanded Edition)

Politics & Social Sciences

Wilson, Amrit

Social Sciences

Great revolutions make history. Conservative resistance and counter-revolutions only delay their progress. The French revolution invented modern politics and democracy, the Russian revolution paved the way for the socialist transition, while the Chinese revolution connected the emancipation of those peoples oppressed by imperialism with the path to socialism. These revolutions are great precisely because they are bearers of undertakings that are far ahead of the immediate demands of their time. beacons that illuminate the still unfinished struggles of the peoples for the realization of these goals. It is impossible to understand the contemporary world by ignoring these great revolutions. To commemorate these revolutions, says Samir Amin, one needs both to assess their ambitions (the utopia of today will be the reality of tomorrow), and to understand the reasons for their temporary setbacks. Conservative and reactionary minds refuse to do so--they wish us to believe that great revolutions have been nothing more than unfortunate accidents, that the peoples who have made them were carried away by their deceitful enthusiasm, diversions from the normal current of history. This collection of essays helps to situate the lessons of the October 1917 Russian Revolution from a perspective of 100 years.

October 1917 Revolution: A Century Later

History

Amin, Samir

Asia

The Travails of a Tanzanian Teacher is a riveting account of the bumpy first decade of the work life of Karim F Hirji, a retired Professor of Medical Statistics. Filled with a distinctive variety of eye-opening episodes, it covers lecturing at the University of Dar es Salaam, the life of a political exile in a remote rural area and the challenges of setting up from scratch a one-of-a-kind educational institute in Africa. With a style that seamlessly combines the personal with the general, Hirji provides an illuminating description of different aspects of the Tanzanian political, educational, economic and rural landscape during the 1970s. Starting with a commentary on teacher training, he concludes with a critical comparison of modern university education in the nation with that of the earlier era.

Travails of a Tanzanian Teacher

Biographies & Memoirs

Hirji, Karim F.

Community & Culture

THESE LETTERS AND poems are invaluable fragments of a living conversation that portrays the indomitable power in humans to stay alive in the face of certain death. Reading through the treasure trove of the letters and poems compiled here as The Last Writings of Ken Saro-Wiwa evoked such intense memories of his resolute struggles against an oil behemoth and a deaf autocratic government. His crusade frames one of the most tumultuous periods of Nigeria's history; his tragic story evokes anger and demands action to resolve the crises that first led the Ogoni people to demand that Shell clean up Ogoni or clear out of the territory. It was his leadership, in great part, that forced Shell out of Ogoni in January 1993. The letters are a testament of hope. Being one side of robust conversations between two persons that many would find unlikely as close friends, we learn the lessons that indeed 'friends love at all times and brothers (and sisters) are born for adversity', as a proverb in the Bible states. This is where we must applaud Sister Majella McCarron for preserving and making public these letters that Ken Saro-Wiwa wrote to her between 20 October 1993 and 14 September 1995. The collection includes essays by the three editors, select bibliography and recommended resources.

Silence Would Be Treason: The Last Writings of Ken Saro-Wiwa

Saro-Wiwa, Ken

Essays & Correspondence

Wreaths for a Wayfarer: An Anthology in Honour of Pius Adesanmi is an assemblage of original some 200 poems written by 127 established and emerging African writers. While some of the poets celebrate Pius Adesanmi, who died in the doomed Ethiopian Airline flight on March 10, 2019, others philosophically reflect on existence, mortality, immortality and/or offer hope for the living. In this memorably textured collection, the poets--who knew (or did not know the poet)--exorcise the pains of loss through provocative poems that pour out their beating hearts with passion. "This historic collection of poems by esteemed and budding writers from across the African continent and beyond seeks to confront the ephemerality of life with the permanence of art; it is a testament to the power of poetry to turn grief into art. As WH Auden would have said, these poems start the healing fountains in the deserts of the mourning heart." --Harry Garuba, Professor and poet, University of Cape Town, South Africa. "Richly evocative and engaging, this powerful collection of poems from the heart is a magnificent tribute that emblazons the essence of Pius Adesanmi--joy, love, laughter, wit, brilliance, erudition, nomadism, commitment--whose life was a long poem of peerless beauty; a melodious song of the breeze and birds of the savannah; an elegant dance to the rhythms of Africa; a resplendent sun that refuses to set.." --Obioma Nnaemeka, Chancellor's Professor, Indiana University, Indianapolis, USA, and President, Association of African Women Scholars (AAWS). "Wreaths for a Wayfarer is written in divinely eloquent verses--to drums, gongs, flutes and songs--by citizens of the world of words, in whose hearts the Wayfarer lives. It is an assemblage of kindred tongues creating and recreating a new future from an unrelieved past and denounced present--around the archetypal wayfarer. This collection . . . is a rare accomplishment. I doubt if this can be surpassed. I may have, but I cannot recall it, of a single volume thrust upon my hapless laps . . .with such a climate of paradoxes--a synthetic Mass of threnody, elegy, requiems and hope, rebirth and redemption around a single living-dead--Pius Adebola Adesanmi. Igi dagbara j'eno otin (A lone log that brews a pot of corn wine to intoxicating ferment...)" --Olu Obafemi, Professor of English and Dramatic Literature, Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters (FNAL), and recipient of the Nigeria National Order of Merit (NNOM).

Wreaths for a Wayfarer: An Anthology in Honour of Pius Adesanmi

Poetry

Love after Babel is a brilliant new poetry collection by Dalit poet Chandramohan S, a highly charged political treatise. Chandramohan's position as a Dalit writer illuminates his treatment of caste-based oppression, while also creating a sense of radical solidarity between various marginalized identities in contemporary Indian society through his focus on other forms of oppression, namely on experiences of Islamophobia, gender based violence and racism. It is an active political tool to counter multiple forms of oppression in India and across the world.

Love After Babel & other poems

Sathyanathan, Chandramohan

Yengde, Suraj

Wilson-Battacharya, Ananya

The overall objective of the book is to foreground feminist perspectives within the African decolonization debate, exposing the intersectional dynamic between forces such as racialism, capitalism and patriarchy. Power and resistance are the main themes of the volume. The prefix "de-" in the term "decolonization" connotes an active action of undoing or reversal. For Africa, the concept is heavily burdened with deep and complex histories, many of whose consequences are irreversible. The book speaks to the dismantling of the several layers of entrenched colonial structures, ideologies, narratives, identities and practices that pervade every aspect of our lives. And yet, Africa must think beyond de-construction; after all, the term itself forces us back, time and again, into the arms of the colonial. Ultimately, the African agenda for decolonization must involve re-constructions, re-clamations and re-assertions.Chapter One establishes the backdrop against which the rest of the book is built, followed by Chapter Two which elaborates on the decolonization processes. Chapter Three introduces African feminisms within the context of coloniality, exploring the landscape of women and gender studies on the continent before zeroing-in on the concept of intersectionality and its link to decolonization. The chapter closes with a discussion of a particular form of intersectionality which exposes the nature of human oppression within patriarchy and its connection to the exploitation of the natural environment. Here, Africa's traditional relationship with nature is linked to the concept of Afro-ecofeminism. In Chapter Four I challenge the coloniality of the normative concepts of sex, gender and sexuality, empitomized in the case of South African Olympic Athlete, Caster Semenya. Through a juxtaposition of Semenya's story with that of another Olympian, Michael Phelps, the chapter analyzes the colonial power dynamics at play in reinforcing dualistic gender norms and heteronormativity. Chapter Five of the book tackles the issue of legal pluralism, as understood and applied on the continent. Issues relating to customary law, popular justice and religious relativism are critically analyzed within the context of coloniality. Unpacking the concept of human rights is the main goal of the sixth chapter, particularly its relevance to gender justice, critiquing the very concept of "gender equality," rings hollow to the lived experiences of most African women. The African concept of Ubuntu is flagged as one possible alternative for women's social justice. In Chapter Seven, the work turns to the subject matter of decolonizing the African Academy. What role do these institutions-whose roots and discourse are deeply embedded in colonial history-play in lifting the continent out of underdevelopment? After a brief discussion of internalized colonization, the chapter suggests five different ways that the African Academy can liberate itself from the yoke of colonialism. The penultimate chapter discusses the institution of the family in Africa using Uganda as a case study. It examines the role of the family in perpetuating hetero-patriarchal capitalism and discusses the efficacy of public interest litigation as a strategy for gender justice. The final chapter investigates the Pan-Africanist movement from a feminist point of view, with the goal of surfacing the work and ideas of women which have been invisibilized within this historical movement. An epilogue at the end of the book charts out Africa's challenges in the age of big data and the new digital colonialism.

Decolonization and Afro-Feminism

Tamale, Sylvia

Women's Studies

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Books by Daraja Press