South Asian Heritage Month

2023

This year, in line with our new approach to commemorative events, we looked at South Asian Heritage Month as the start of a year-long programme of activity. We will be focusing on two themes: Tales of Brown Boys in White Spaces and Making Sri Lankan Stories Visible, both of which tie in with this year’s South Asian Heritage Month theme of ‘Stories To Tell’, and we launched the programme with an event for young South Asian men in August.

As part of our focus on Sri Lankan stories we have added a range of new books to our shelves – you can read about them here: https://www.racearchive.org.uk/south-asian-heritage-month-sri-lankan-reading-list/

We will be sharing information throughout the year here and in our social media.

Previous years

In 2021 in celebration of South Asian Heritage Month, the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Centre & Education Trust invited author of Hashim And Family, Shahnaz Ahsan to talk about her writing journey with the young women of Ananna – a Bangladeshi Women’s Organisation based in Manchester.  We also invited inspirational brown women creatives for a round table discussion titled, The Roles We Play – A Discussion with South Asian Women In The Arts. Guest speakers included Sabba Khan, Arry Nessa, Nasima Begum and Fehmida Master who shared their valuable insights around identity, heritage and the navigation of white spaces.

In 2022, we invited Sabba Khan – winner of the Jhalak Prize 2022 for her graphic novel The Roles We Play and author of Hashim And Family, Shahnaz Ahsan back, to share tips for brown girls who want to write.

We were also excited to have poet, author and educator Suhaiymah Manzoor Khan join us for a creative workshop and a special reading from her new book Tangled In Terror – Uprooting Islamophobia followed by a Q&A with Dr Nisha Kapoor, Associate Professor in Sociology at Warwick University and author of Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21^st Century State Extremism.

We organised a special tour of our library specialising in the study of race, migration and diversity where visitors could watch an exclusive preview of our short films, Role Model Reflection: Brown Girls Guide To Writing during South Asian Heritage Month.