Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Postcolonial Banter
    Postcolonial Banter
    Postcolonial Banter
    Ebook164 pages1 hour

    Postcolonial Banter

    By Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Postcolonial Banteris Suhaiymah Manzoo-Khan's debut collection. It features some of her most well-known and widely performed poems as well as some never-seen-before material. Her words are a disruption of comfort, a call to action, a redistribution of knowledge and an outpouring of dissent. Whilst enraged and devastated by the world she finds herself in, in many ways it is also the mundane; hence, whilst political and complex in nature, her poetry is just the 'banter' of everyday life for her and others like her. Ranging from critiquing the function of the nation-state and rejecting secularist visions of identity, to reflecting on the difficulty of writing and penning responses to conversations she wishes she'd had; Suhaiymah's debut collection is ready and raring to enter the world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVerve Poetry Press
    Release dateSep 19, 2019
    ISBN9781912565788
    Postcolonial Banter
    Author

    Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan

    Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan is Muslim, an educator, writer and spoken-word poet. She is fast becoming a leading voice interrogating narratives around race/ism, feminism, gender, Islamophobia, state violence and decoloniality in Britain. She is the founder and author of the critical and educative blog, www.thebrownhijabi.com, and co-author of A FLY Girl’s Guide to University: Being a Woman of Colour at Cambridge and Other Institutions of Power and Elitism (Verve, 2019). With a background studying History and Postcolonial Studies, as well as a wider education from her mother and grandmother’s wisdoms, the epistemology of Islam, and work of women of colour and anti-systemic thinkers from across the world, Suhaiymah’s poetry is unapologetically political and deliberately unsettling. She isn't interested in your guesses or analyses. Suhaiymah's poetry has over two million online views and since going viral as runner-up of the 2017 Roundhouse National Slam with her poem, This Is Not a Humanising Poem, she has performed on BBC Radio stations, at music festivals, in the US against Californian slam poets, across British Universities, on Sky TV, ITV, the Islam channel, Las Vegas, TEDxes, London poetry nights, mosques, protests outside the Home Office, in New York, Berlin, at Da Poetry Lounge in Los Angeles.

    Related to Postcolonial Banter

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Great Art Doesn’t Just Happen: The Millions Interviews Bill Goldstein

      Sep 28, 2017

      And then every so often you just stop yourself in awe and realize, these are Virginia Woolf’s letters! This is her paper, her ink, she wrote this — it’s not a facsimile. The post Great Art Doesn’t Just Happen: The Millions Interviews Bill Golds

      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Wild Ride

      Feb 23, 2024

      A Wild Ride
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How to Live

      Feb 12, 2020

      IT IS hard to believe now, but until relatively recently there were usually just two places you could see a writer you admired: on the back flap of a book or at a public event. In the 1960s and 1970s, a very small number of writers, James Baldwin and

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      New Literary Magazine Makes Contemporary Japanese Fiction Accessible To English Readers

      Oct 10, 2020

      The literary journal's debut issue translates a plethora of Japanese literature both old and new, and facilitates discussion about the translation itself.

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Arinze Ifeakandu

      Jun 15, 2022

      Arinze Ifeakandu
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Queer Identity Cards

      Dec 7, 2021

      Queer Identity Cards
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Welcome To Britain. Now What?

      Apr 1, 2022

      Welcome To Britain. Now What?
      17 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems

      Mar 15, 2022

      I remember when the lights cut out in Prek Engthe women kept cooking Three whole tomatoes fried in the dark But it was not so dark from where I lay in the hammock The trees helped me to discern shadow from night Knowing how to move without lightthe w

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Your Bookshelf May Be Part Of The Problem

      Jun 6, 2020

      Anti-racist reading lists are making the rounds right now — and they can be useful if people do the work of reading. But critic Juan Vidal suggests you look closer to home, to your own bookshelf.

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Blooming How She Must

      Apr 12, 2023

      Blooming How She Must
      15 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      TALKING POINTS The Write Stuff

      Aug 6, 2020

      TALKING POINTS The Write Stuff
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Going Home With Ocean Vuong

      Jun 4, 2019

      Going Home With Ocean Vuong
      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: Hisham Matar

      Dec 18, 2018

      The fact that this isn’t recognized for what it is, a magisterial work and a 20th-century masterpiece, makes me even more anxious about our times. The post A Year in Reading: Hisham Matar appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: Casey Gerald

      Dec 14, 2018

      There’s a line in my book that reads, “I have been so many things along my curious journey: a poor boy, a nigger, a Yale man, a Harvard man, a faggot, a Christian, a crack baby (alleged), the Spawn of Satan, the Second Coming, Casey.” My reading tend

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      My First Year as a Mother, I Only Read Women Authors. Here’s What I Learned.

      Aug 7, 2020

      I wanted to find inspiration and understanding in the voices of other women. It was reductive, I knew, to imagine other women were the solution, but at the same time I craved reductive thinking. I just wanted things to be simple, and to work. The pos

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      In This Time of War

      Apr 10, 2024

      HAVING worked on peace and justice initiatives for Palestine and Israel for twenty-five years, and published poetry on the subject, I’ve been devastated in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s assault on Gaza. The former killed

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Younger Than War

      Nov 9, 2023

      Younger Than War
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Poetry of Female Fighters

      Jul 28, 2020

      The Poetry of Female Fighters
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Magic In The Mundane

      Nov 4, 2020

      Magic In The Mundane
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Postcolonial Banter

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Postcolonial Banter - Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan

      cover.jpg

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan is Muslim (someone who surrenders to the will of Allah), an educator, writer and spoken-word poet. She interrogates narratives around race/ism, Islamophobia, gender, feminism, state violence and decoloniality in Britain. She is the founder and author of the critical and educative blog, www.thebrownhijabi.com, and co-author of A FLY Girl’s Guide to University: Being a Woman of Colour at Cambridge and Other Institutions of Power and Elitism (Verve, 2019). With a background studying History at Cambridge and Postcolonial Studies at SOAS, as well as a wider education from her mother and grandmother’s wisdoms, the epistemology of Islam, and work of women of colour and anti-systemic thinkers from across the world, Suhaiymah’s poetry is unapologetically political and deliberately unsettling. She isn’t interested in your guesses or analyses.

      Suhaiymah’s poetry has over two million online views and since going viral as runner-up of the 2017 Roundhouse National Slam with her poem, This Is Not a Humanising Poem, she has performed on BBC Radio stations, at music festivals, in the US against Californian slam poets, across British Universities, on Sky TV, ITV, the Islam channel, Las Vegas, TEDxes, London poetry nights, mosques, protests outside the Home Office and in New York, Berlin, and Da Poetry Lounge in Los Angeles.

      Postcolonial Banter is Suhaiymah’s debut collection. It features some of her most well-known and widely performed poems as well as some never-seen-before material. Her words are a disruption of comfort, a call to action, a redistribution of knowledge and an outpouring of dissent. Whilst enraged and devastated by the world she finds herself in, in many ways it is also the mundane; hence, whilst political and complex in nature, her poetry is just the ‘banter’ of everyday life for her and others like her. Ranging from critiquing the function of the nation-state and rejecting secularist visions of identity, to refecting on the difficulty of writing and penning responses to conversations she wishes she’d had; Suhaiymah’s debut collection is ready and raring to enter the world.

      img1.pngimg2.jpg

      PUBLISHED BY VERVE POETRY PRESS

      https://vervepoetrypress.com

      mail@vervepoetrypress.com

      All rights reserved

      © 2019 Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan

      The right of Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

      No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

      FIRST PUBLISHED SEP 2019

      Printed and bound in the UK

      by TJInternational, Padstow

      ISBN: 978-1-912565-24-5

      ePub ISBN: 978-1-912565-78-8

      NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

      img3.png

      Having spent the last eight years writing poems that were only ever read and spoken aloud by me, writing a collection that anybody can read as and where they want has been daunting. With spoken-word poetry there is always the chance to explain yourself, to clarify, to extend and contextualise to the audience – with page poetry that feels less true and therefore, scarier. However, to bridge the gap for myself I have included what I am calling ‘context boxes’ throughout this collection. These are boxes of information that explain some context about the poem or background information I think is important. I want the people I love and the people who these poems are for to enjoy these poems, they’re not just for self-proclaimed readers, poets and artists, so I hope the boxes make this collection more accessible; I’m not interested in writing poetry for people to puzzle over or feel intimidated by – I’d rather you puzzle over your reactions and responses. The boxes also sometimes include recommended readings, or places to find further information – please do use them as I’d like to think of this collection as an educative toolkit of sorts.

      Thank you.

      CONTENTS

      1

      This poem is not for you

      Where is my history?

      Paki

      Nana

      Nani

      British-born

      A prayer for you who jeer at the death of a baby whose teenage mother you feel did not show enough remorse

      2

      A story for ourselves this time

      Voices roll over the charpai

      img4.png

      The breaking branch

      Death was smaller than I anticipated

      3

      Islamophobia 101

      We did not bring this darkness upon ourselves

      Recipe for a War on Terror

      The best of the Muslims

      4

      Existing in big ways

      Just a July

      A poem that winds through Lewisham streets

      For 2006

      Theatres

      Decentring diversity

      5

      Q: ‘What does it mean to be a Muslim woman?’

      ‘School inspectors in England have been told to start asking young girls in primary school why they are wearing a hijab in order to ascertain if they are being sexualised’

      Pick One

      If a girl cries in a corridor and no one is there to see it was she even in pain?

      Funeral of the authentic Muslim woman

      Reclaim the night

      Didn’t you know?

      20 point manifesto for women living in genocidal times

      Maybe I don’t

      6

      Straddling the / line

      A virtue of disobedience

      Bacon Banknotes Benjamins

      P P P Prevent

      British Values

      This is not a humanising poem

      Acknowledgements

      Postcolonial Banter

      1

      THIS POEM IS NOT FOR YOU

      this poem is not for you

      you can’t wear it on your forehead

      it won’t look good in your profile picture

      and I know you wish it was more colourful already

      but I’m sorry

      this poem is not for you

      not like the last one

      which wasn’t for you either

      but you told me was no good

      told me to stop speaking it

      told me you’d hurt me if I didn’t

      then took it behind my back, didn’t you?

      told your friends how you wrote it

      well this poem is not for you,

      I remembered not to write it down this time

      though you’re no novice to stealing thoughts themselves, remember?

      that time you flashing-light siren whip-downed my door

      cut out my tongue

      and told me yours was better?

      yeah

      I never found where the old one went

      so now my grandma can’t always understand

      and my God I wish I could write poems for her instead of you

      my God

      in a different language

      mere Allah

      do you remember the boys from school?

      how you’d tell me their art was mud dark pretension way

      below a C?

      and the girls in the changing rooms?

      you’d say poems are for the empty legs and tanned-not-brown

      shoulder blades

      well, this poem is not for you

      and it isn’t for your sister either actually

      cos we’re not

      despite you telling me how similar we are

      every time I see her

      she looks straight through me

      and my grandmother told me as well you know

      how they used to laugh

      your sisters with the now pierced noses

      told her only animals do that

      and she’ll never forget that time you left us by the water’s edge

      her hands were full of it

      and you said drink

      work hard

      goodbye

      so we tried to

      but my God the salt

      and we only had our hands didn’t we?

      only had our hands

      tell me, could you hear our shouts by then?

      my mother was screaming go back where you came from!

      but there was no re-wombing of the sea

      so we’re here now

      where I’m telling you

      this poem is not for you

      but the number of times I’ve said it

      makes me doubt it

      and if it is for you

      then at least let me tell you

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1