DIDIHOOD ~ Issue 7

Happy September!

We hope everyone had a happy and fun summer! We ended off the summer by successfully launching Didihood in Vancouver! Before we get into that, for this month's Meet The Didis we want you to meet a Didi in Vancouver who is doing amazing work in the community.
For September we have a Q&A with Amal Rana. Amal Rana is a mixed race, South Asian Muslim performance poet, storyteller and educator specializing in art projects weaving together community narratives across cultures, languages and generations.

Can you tell us about your career as a poet and educator? When did this begin? 

I've been writing my whole life. I truly believe anyone who writes is a writer. I first shared my poetry in college, in a special issue on queerness in the school newspaper. It was a piece about racism in the very white, queer community in Victoria where I was living at the time. The moment was really scary but also profoundly freeing. From there, I started submitting poetry to zines. Eventually I started performing and getting published in literary journals and anthologies. Poetry was a way to write into existence the stories I was hungry for as a young, Pakistani Muslim immigrant and settler coming into her queerness and other identities. At that point I still didn't call myself an artist. I started to seek out formal training outside MFA programs and was lucky to receive writing fellowships from places like the Banff Centre and VONA: Voices of Our Nation. Most importantly, I’ve had an incredible community of BIPOC poets and mentors who have supported my artistic growth. In 2013, I startedCambium Arts & Education. Cambium allows me to fuse together my artistic practice as a poet and performer with my work as a transformative facilitator and arts educator. 

You also refer to yourself as a "Queer Muslim Futurist", what does that mean?

That's an excellent question! The definition of Queer Muslim Futurisms is in a place of constant evolution for me. I've always been really interested in science fiction and speculative fiction. I feel I owe a huge debt to Indigenous futurists and Afrofuturists who have inspired so many of us to really vision in detail the futures we want and need for our communities. A couple of years ago, I co-developed and facilitated a seven-week creative writing workshop called Tomorrow Is Ours. This was in collaboration with another poet, Molly Billows. The workshop series was open to racialized people and invited participants to envision futures where there was no more oppression, no more colonialism, etc. This workshop really changed my life. In a lot of the work I do as a social justice educator, we focus on responding to and deconstructing systems of oppression such as racism, Islamophobia, homophobia, gender violence and more. Tomorrow Is Ours was an incredibly soul nourishing experience and a significant paradigm shift. Instead of focusing on responding to systems of oppression, we were able to proactively imagine the wonderful possibilities for futures where justice and liberation were already achieved. It's this space for infinite possibilities that defines what Queer Muslim Futurisms means to me. It can be anything and everything we want it to be. A future where we are a constellation of our most wondrous dreams. 

Can you tell us about the work you do in Vancouver? 

One of my passions has been organizing the annual Breaking the Fast Arts Showcase that features Muslim women as well as queer and trans Muslims. The showcase happens during Ramadan. A favourite aspect of the event is Muslim women and non-binary people calling the Azan and praying in the front while men pray behind us. For us as organizers, this is a reclaiming of traditions that we really value in Islam. I've also organized and collaborated on a number of other arts-based events, shows and workshops with a focus on BIPOC communities and shining the spotlight on stories that are so often relegated to the margins. Arts-based workshops have included themes such as writing from the spirit, creative writing for queer and trans youth, fusing together poetry and contemporary dance to explore experiences of migration and more. 

How we can support more queer/trans/non-binary South Asian creatives trying to get their work out there? 

It’s so important to be deeply inclusive from the outset. This means being really conscious and very clear in event descriptions, organizing, mission statements, etc. Who do we mean when we talk about concepts such as South Asian sisterhood. Are we talking about cis-terhood or are we truly talking sisterhood? Who do we have in mind? Who is part of our organizing collectives? What do our events venues look like in terms of accessibility in all senses of the word? When we are asked if the washrooms in the spaces we are using are gender neutral, do we ensure they are? Who is sitting on our editorial boards? Our board of directors? Appearing in our publicity materials and social media accounts? How do we have relationships of mutual collaboration and respect that move beyond tokenism? I love the concept of Didis who mentor other Didis. The Didis and aunties in my world embody a beautiful multiplicity across and beyond the gender spectrum. I think there are so many young, queer and trans South Asian youth who would love to have an amazing Didi as a mentor. I know I could definitely have used that when I was younger. There are also amazing South Asian queer and trans elders we can connect queer and trans South Asian youth with. We need these intentionally intergenerational spaces.

What we're reading: 

"I’m Afraid of Men" the bestselling new book from Vivek Shraya, explores how masculinity was imposed on her as a boy and continues to haunt her as a girl — and how we might reimagine gender for the twenty-first century.

Scaachi Koul's essay, I Shouldn’t Have To Lose Weight For My Wedding. So Why Do I Feel Like A Failure?​

EVENT RECAP

We had an amazing night launching Didihood in Vancouver! Thank you to all of our Didis and allies who came out to support us. Photos from the event can be found here. We also had the pleasure of being featured on CBC Radio's On The Coast before the launch. Co-founders Nikkjit Gill and Roohi Sahajpal talk about why we started Didihood and the importance of representation in the media. Interview starts at the 38 minute mark. 

-- Roohi Sahajpal 

Issue 7

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