Jasdanwalla-Williams Many Roads

Women's personal stories of courage and displacement in Wales
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-916821-11-8
Verlag: Honno Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

Stories of immigrant, migrant and refugee women from Africa and Asia. Edited by Faaeza Jasdanwalla-Williams, Co-compiled by Chinyere Chukwudi Okeh & Mohini Gupta and Foreword by Charlotte Williams This anthology highlights the marginalised voices of refugee women as well as celebrate the lives of immigrant and migrant women in Wales. The experiences and stories of these women show the several hurdles that many have had to overcome, and are still overcoming in some cases, including racism, in order to forge a new life in a new home. The publication of this anthology will partly contribute to the events that mark that UN International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-24), while also recognising the struggles and experiences of women from various countries in Asia.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jasdanwalla-Williams, Faaeza

Leseproben

Introduction

Faaeza Jasdanwalla-Williams

Suddenly all went black. One minute, I was a regular eleven-year-old girl walking back home from school with my classmate, and the next minute, I was on the ground, numb with pain and unable to see anything around me. Apparently, a milk lorry driven by a learner driver had illegally entered our narrow school lane and reversed straight into me. I vaguely recall voices which seemed like they were somewhere in the distance and being rushed to hospital. Whatever the particulars, unbeknownst to me at that specific point in time, my life had altered dramatically in a flash.

I was born and raised in Mumbai (then Bombay), India along with my older brother, by parents who placed the greatest emphasis on educating their two children. However, as a result of my accident, I suffered a brain haemorrhage and lost much of my vision. Now I had to learn to navigate life as a visually impaired child, and my parents had to figure out the best way to ensure that my education would not suffer, even if it meant them having to help me read, write and tackle all my classwork and textbooks throughout school. In fact, my close circle of friends, both on the home front and in school, as well as my teachers, did everything they could to accommodate my needs at a time when there was no access to any visual aids. It was only due to the tremendous determination of my parents and especially my mother, that I not only sailed through school with good grades, but also university with a History degree. My brother too had been my pillar of support, researching all the new advances in technology which would alleviate some of the obstacles I faced on account of my poor vision. The support I received went beyond my immediate family and some of my extended family members became invaluable mentors.

I had undoubtedly imbibed my mother’s determination by then and decided to continue my studies in the UK, without my mother’s assistance this time, but with the invaluable assistance of my first portable visual aid – a reading machine. The rest, as they say, is literally history, for I studied for a Master’s degree in British Medieval History and in due course, a PhD in Early Modern Ottoman History at Aberystwyth University.

I came to Aberystwyth for the first time in 1993 to visit my brother who had been studying there and instantly fell in love with the town. More than the beauty that had enamoured me, it was the idea that this was a town where I could possibly live an independent life without having to rely on others for assistance. In Mumbai, I could not even walk on the pavements due to their unevenness or cross the road on my own, whereas I saw that navigating my way around a small, structured town would be transformative for me.

As it turned out, I also ended up teaching in the Department of History and Welsh History at Aberystwyth University for ten years after completing my PhD and properly began my life here as a full-fledged immigrant, working and supporting myself, contributing like most others, to the system and leading an independent life. However, never for a minute do I forget that if it were not for my parents, I would not even have been able to get through school, leave alone achieve the highest academic qualifications. In fact, my friends and family in Mumbai (not only my brother and sister-in-law, but also my two nieces), and in Wales, have been supporting me and standing by me all along.

Aberystwyth is truly my home now. I met and married the love of my life and have forged a life here, which includes not only friends among the academic fraternity, but also many local, native Welsh people, who welcomed me from the start. Since I harbour a keen interest in learning languages, I made it a point to learn Welsh to a relatively high level and am able to communicate in Welsh to an adequate degree of proficiency. This of course, has further helped me to integrate with the native Welsh-speaking population of Aberystwyth and also provided me with a deeper appreciation of Welsh culture.

Although I have now resigned from my teaching position, as it turned out, just before the world changed on account of the pandemic, I am closely involved with facilitating groups and activities as a volunteer with The Royal National Institute of Blind People as well as with Gwasg Honno.

I am also research active and my secondary academic research revolves around the African Diaspora in India on account of my mother’s ancestors arriving in India from the region around what was then Abyssinia, around the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Consequently, I have participated closely with events that celebrate the African diaspora globally, especially those in connection with the UN’s International Decade for People of African Descent (2015–2024). I had already been extremely disturbed by the general attitude and rhetoric in the UK towards refugees and immigrants in general since the influx of refugees on account of the war in Syria. In 2016, that rhetoric took on a darker tone and it almost became acceptable for people to air their discriminatory views in public. All of this, together with the fact that I was eager to contribute more tangibly to mark the International Decade for People of African Descent, spurred me on towards putting forward a proposal to Gwasg Honno to bring the marginalised voices of immigrant, migrant and refugee women from the periphery to the centre. The absolute need to represent as broad a spectrum of immigrant, migrant and refugee women as possible meant that we, at Honno, decided to not only invite contributions from immigrant, migrant and refugee women from Africa, but also those from Asia, who have now found a home in Wales.

While there has been an increasing interest in reading about and listening to the stories of immigrants, the books that have been published so far largely include people who are already in some way in the public eye, be it TV personalities, sportspersons or writers. In 2019, Malala Yousafzai’s book, We Are Displaced, comes the closest to what we are hoping to achieve with this book. She related the stories of refugee girls from Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Myanmar and Colombia amongst others, who had fled their own countries on account of political unrest and war, and found themselves displaced in other countries. Her collection highlights the resilience, strength and courage of these girls, as well as the longing they harbour for their homelands at times.

In the UK, books such as The Good Immigrant, edited by Nikesh Shukla, published in 2017, discusses race and racism in the UK, bringing into the frame the impact that Brexit has had on the perception of immigrants, migrants, asylum seekers and refugees with the backdrop of a misguided nostalgia for the British Empire, whitewashing all the negative, damaging and disastrous aspects of colonialism. It includes the opinions and experiences of prominent immigrants, first and second generation, of having to navigate life in the UK with the barrier of race before them, rather than being acknowledged and appreciated purely for their achievements and success, irrespective of the colour of their skin.

In 2021, Seventy Years of Struggle and Achievement edited by Meena Upadhyaya, Kirsten Lavine and Chris Weedon, brought us the stories of the forty finalists shortlisted for the Ethnic Minority Welsh Women Achievement Awards. This volume emphasises the inspiring stories of women who have shone in their respective fields of achievement, despite the struggles they had to undergo while negotiating a whole new life in Wales. Additionally, 2024 also saw the publication of a collection of stories by immigrant women titled Gathering, edited by Durre Shahwar and Nasia Sarwar-Skuse. This collection includes prominent and successful immigrant women in Wales in different walks of life, such as authors, musicians, founders of organisations, etc.

Our diaspora anthology therefore, is not going to be the first book to bring to the fore the stories of immigrant women. But where it differs greatly is the fact that there are hardly any well-known names in the list of female contributors beyond their immediate local communities. Despite this, these women’s achievements and lives are equally important and therefore, worth highlighting. I, along with my co-compilers, Chinyere Chukwudi-Okeh and Mohini Gupta, have reached out to women who have hitherto been invisible in the public eye. The main aim of this book has been to highlight marginalised voices as well as voices of immigrant women who have simply been going about their daily lives in a new country, trying to fit in, sometimes struggling with the language of their new home, grappling with a completely different set of cultural norms, traditions and rules. In terms of highlighting marginalised voices, we encountered a number of women who had to flee from their respective countries for various reasons and who have finally managed to find, or are in the process of finding refuge in Wales via the route of seeking asylum. Thereafter, they have been resettled in different parts of Wales through government and local authority schemes and welcomed by local residents, who have raised funds to aid in their resettlement in local communities. This is not a book of women in the limelight, but rather those who are successfully navigating the complexities and nuances of daily life in an alien environment. These are women who are attempting to put the past behind them, despite...