‘Can You Really Be a Queer Muslim?’: Intersectionality and the Complexity of Identity
Class Struggle, Education and Social Mobility: A Silent Family Rupture
‘Do your homework and listen in school. Otherwise, you’ll clean up after others for a living,’ my mother would say. This was the leitmotif of my childhood, repeated so many times that I would recite it in a whisper when she started uttering the first words. Since she was twelve, my mother worked as a cleaner. When she later got pregnant, she brought her child up by herself – just like her own mother before her…
All About Love: Generational Trauma and its Relation to Mother-Daughter Love
My mother gave me the form of love she recognised. The one where you knew you were being taken care of, but your feelings and your ability to make choices for your future were discouraged. Yet, as I entered my twenties and observed my mother soften with age, she began reflecting on her own childhood; she made a shift in the way she perceived me, interacted with me, and began to understand a kind of love my grandmother failed to give her…
I Wish It Were A Sitcom: Growing Up in a Caribbean Household
For me there was something missing, which I only began to realise when people casually referred to me as an ice queen or said that my brothers and I were a little bit too harsh with each other. Looking back now, I can see that the missing piece was simply emotion. The lost times of not hearing ‘I love you’ or ‘Are you ok?’ or even ‘Let’s talk about it’ have left such a gaping hole in my adult life that I have no idea where to begin with patching it up…