The truth of the matter is this – we don’t need you to give us access to our own heritage (that is our right) and we certainly don’t need you to give us voices – we have our own!
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For a people whose culture was systematically discriminated, stolen, assimilated and erased, speaking matters. Speaking matters as it functions as a means of not forgetting what happened and is happening. It’s exciting to see these artists walking surely through the thick cloud of prejudices against Kurds and insisting on speaking their stories in Kurdish and hopefully this is just the beginning.
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I'm an 18-year-old Pakistani […] I grew up with random people making me feel like I am a burden to my dad. I grew up with my dearest ones telling me that I must not dream too big, as one day I'll have to give up on those dream for a man’s fragile ego. I was taunted by my relatives for not knowing how to cook. I was instructed to bow down to my husband’s will. I was taunted in the middle of traffic when people beside me whispered: "How shameless for a female to drive."
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I could relate to Devi a lot. Maybe it is because Devi wears striped shirts and mom jeans — things I wear every day, like a cartoon character -- maybe it’s her way of dealing with trauma, maybe it’s that the only emotion she expresses in public is anger and that she is constantly fixated on doing things that would look good on her university applications, or maybe it’s simply her relationship with her mother.
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Aesthetics like Kaling’s seem unaware that you can be attached to your culture, informed by it, but also break it down, question it, tear it apart to create holes in it so more voices can come through. It is uncomfortable work, but it is possible –— I know many Indians and South-Asians across the world that do it every day.
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Hollywood celebrates representation politics and white saviourism as it did in Green Book, The Help or Driving Miss Daisy. It tries to be something new when in fact, it stays very loyal to Hollywood’s legacy.
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Istanbul’s particular legacy of continual destruction – that of nature, history and the city itself – is certainly a source of great chagrin and resignation for its denizens. But not just that: a great deal of fight, discourse, resistance, civil solidarity and determination swirls around these issues, renewing one’s faith in humanity in new ways every day.
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It’s a steep learning curve to manage your first-world preferences when you go back to a beloved society which still prefers to cook over a flaming hole in the ground. So if you, like me, moved to London and became a vegetarian because you wanted to ruin your grandparents’ lives, here’s how you can still enjoy yourself.
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A recent article on the Independent talks about the “changing face of tourism” in Turkey and how it supposedly “burnt a vital bridge between East and West.” In the article, Şebnem Arsu writes about the recent hike of Arab tourists; basically freaking out because some Arab shops have opened instead of Turkish ones and because European tourists have become less visible.
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“Cities are unpredictable’’ says writer Teju Cole in his book Open City; “Once you give up insisting on stereotypes, you can really start to see’’. Seeing beyond one’s sight is often difficult especially in project-streets like İstiklal which are designed to hide the unwanted with either a secular Western facade or AKP’s money-drawing-shopping-star-project-district. In both cases, the real makers of the city are sacrificed in the name of formal, structural change.
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If I had felt my own confusion about identity as a knot in my stomach, somebody else could have felt it as a compression in their chest, another as an ache on their shoulder.
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As in every settler colonial state, Israel is appropriating Palestinian art and culture and serving it back again to Palestinians, stripped of any signs of identity and belonging. This is where Manjm wants to provide its independent, unapologetic and authentic art and culture.
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