Media Diversified
Analysis. Stories. Aesthetics. By and from the diaspora.
by Karen Williams Uganda’s government recently announced that it has ended the manhunt for the leader of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony. At its height, the group wreaked havoc in northern Uganda, before dispersing across central Africa in recent years. It continues to attack civilians in the Central African Republic and the Democratic… Read More
by Shahd Alshammari I was slowly getting worse. The numbness escalated and was starting to resemble paralysis. My most terrifying moment was the minute I looked in the mirror, found that my curls were rebelling even more than the usual, and I was unable to tame them. Brushing my hair was no longer an option. My… Read More
by Yasmin Gunaratnam “Calculate is angry because all of his things were stolen in Puglia. He has nothing but his good English. He went to the police…He didn’t think. Next thing he was standing in a police station and someone wanted to fingerprint him. But you can’t get fingerprinted there. Unless you want to stay.… Read More
by Anamik Saha edited by Yasmin Gunaratnam Dev Patel might have won the award for Best Supporting Actor (that’s Dev Patel and not Riz Ahmed, Burberry), but when the nominees for the 2017 BAFTA Awards were announced, the lack of racial (and class) diversity amongst the nominees felt wearingly inevitable. What is more troubling is how… Read More
by Amal Abu-Bakare and edited by Xavia Warren This past October, while reading Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture, I came across the following poetic verse: “I am standing here in your poem-unsatisfied.” (1994:xxi) Originating from Eastern War Time, a poem by the radical feminist Adrienne Rich, this verse was highlighted by the famous literary critic and… Read More
by Sara Tafakori and Gilda Seddighi ‘From the American people to Iranian social media users: if your expert opinions and discussions about the American election have ended, please do shut up for a moment and let us Americans work out what the heck we do now’. This tweet by a presenter of a diasporic Iranian… Read More
by Rahila Gupta There has been widespread disappointment that the UN missed a trick in not electing a woman as its new secretary general. Given the scandals that have dogged it, general scepticism about its relevance today, and its inefficacy in the face of the many crises facing the world, perhaps it would have been… Read More
by Karen Williams The question from the Pakistani government minister was not unfamiliar to me: “And what are you, are you a Zulu?” It was my early days in Islamabad and the official’s gentle ribbing was a common question. Yet this time, I was speechless. Floundering, I grasped at half-sentences, well aware that people around… Read More
by Karen Williams The 17th century history of Indonesia and its anti-colonial figures brought Islam into the cultural life of South Africa, particularly for poor non-Muslims who lived together with Muslim communities. Growing up, I had a belief that Islam was the religion of freedom, without knowing why this was such a core belief of… Read More
by Karen Williams In 1657, five years after the start of Dutch colonialism in South Africa, an indigenous1 man, Doman, was sent to the Dutch “prize colony” of Batavia, present-day Jakarta. The Dutch colonisers who had landed in South Africa wanted to acquaint him with Dutch culture as well as help him to improve his… Read More
