Daraja Press – förlag

Finding a Voice - Asian Women in Britain published in 1978 and winner of the Martin Luther King award, was, and remains, an influential feminist book. Based on interviews, discussions and intimate one-to- one conversations with South Asian women, conducted often in Urdu, Hindi or Bengali (if they were most at ease in these languages) and sensitively translated, the book explores   what it was like to be a migrant, a worker, and a woman straddled between two cultures in late 1970s Britain. Through women's experiences, feelings and analysis of their own lives it examines family relationships, growing militancy at work, experiences of racist and misogynistic immigration policies, school life and also friendship and love.

Some of the iconic anti-racist and working-class struggles and other key events of the 1970s which have a powerful resonance today are described here from the point of view of the Asian women who participated in them. Among them is the strike at the Grunwick photo processing plant, which was led by the indomitable Jayaben Desai and drew support from thousands of trade unionists and feminists from all over Britain and is today once again an inspiration for many low-paid workers in Britain's gig economy. The book also examines, again through South Asian women's voices, the horrors of the first immigration detention centres and  so-called 'virginity testing'; issues of mental health and isolation.

This edition of the book includes a remarkable new chapter titled 'Reflecting on Finding a Voice in 2018' in which young South Asian women in Britain describe what the book means to them today and in what ways their lives are different, and similar, to those of the women in the book. In this context they write, among other things, about organising against violence against women, Islamophobia, racism of the white middle-classes, struggles against heteronormativity, the battles for justice at Yarlswood detention centre, commemorating the Grunwick strike and the ups and downs of mother-daughter relationships in South Asian families.

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).

Dispossessed is a poetic representation of life in three stages through the eyes of a poet. It shows, from the thematic interests of the poet; what he considers the crucial stages in life – Innocence, Transgression and Atonement. Innocence offers a racy view of the picture gallery of the poet’s life as a child. The sensibilities of the poet shine through the foliage of his mind as he pines for self-definition; seeking open ears for his verses. But it is also a period of apprenticeship as the poet hones his skills for the artistic long journey that is inevitable. Clothed in the innocence of childhood, he learns to talk in metaphors and search for himself in the community of imaginative people. This search lights up the path into the poet’s aesthetic mindscape and the silent questions that keep him awake. Innocence is therefore a thirst for sunlight; a quest for utterance. The unwary reader is beckoned into the quest through poems that evoke memories of their own childhood and conscript them into the ensuing communal experience. However, the human condition abhors inertia. But for any form of natural or artistic growth to occur, the poet must lose his innocence. So, Innocence and its poems of idyllic childhood soon give way to the unexpected --- Transgression. Transgression is the coming of age segment of the collection. The poet discovers love. And slowly, he finds himself taking a dip in a pool of emotion that appears to serve as the ultimate sparkplug for his songs. In essence, Transgression eases the reader into a rare observatory; from where the poet could be seen falling in and out of love and celebrating one of the most profound experiences known to man. It must be noted that in some instances, the love poems of Transgression are also not what they seem on the surface. In some instances, the poet addresses his troubled relationship with his country through poetry; mirroring his personal frustrations and disappointment in verses that come off as a voice of disenchantment. Caught in the firm grip of emotions, the poet changes like the English weather. But after waves of emotional whirlwinds in Transgression, the poet faces the next logical step --- Atonement. Atonement presents a poet who has undergone the rites of passage and weaned himself of self-doubts. He has washed his hands clean and must settle down to a fireside dinner with the elders. Atonement could also be seen as the poet’s personal admission that serious poetry ought to speak to the dominant issues of the day; the anxieties and insomnia of the age. He muses about these issues; posing rhetorical questions in about them in some instances. In the end, dispossessed is one man’s journey that finally assumes all the attributes of a communal voyage. Treading in the imagined interstices between the personal and the communal, dispossessed leads us to a clearing in the woods where our awareness of our world heightens with the turning of every page.