Bhakti Shringarpure

Leila Aboulela rose to prominence in the first decade of the 21st century for her novels, short stories and radio plays that are anchored in a sensitive and complex exploration of ordinary Muslim women attempting to gain autonomy in a Western world that casts them as misfits. This biography explores Aboulela’s childhood and youth in Khartoum, her difficult migration to Scotland, and her unusual journey to becoming a writer. Shringarpure underscores the connections between Aboulela's life and her writing, and focuses on experiences that have been impetus and inspiration—not only as topics for her fiction, but as forces that drew her to finding her voice as a writer. Aboulela is claimed by many literary universes; from Sudanese and Scottish literature to Muslim women’s literature, African literature, and Black British writing. This book weaves together interviews, literary criticism, and explores key life events to assemble a vivid portrait of a unique Muslim woman writer from Sudan.

Leila Aboulela rose to prominence in the first decade of the 21st century for her novels, short stories and radio plays that are anchored in a sensitive and complex exploration of ordinary Muslim women attempting to gain autonomy in a Western world that casts them as misfits. This biography explores Aboulela’s childhood and youth in Khartoum, her difficult migration to Scotland, and her unusual journey to becoming a writer. Shringarpure underscores the connections between Aboulela's life and her writing, and focuses on experiences that have been impetus and inspiration—not only as topics for her fiction, but as forces that drew her to finding her voice as a writer. Aboulela is claimed by many literary universes; from Sudanese and Scottish literature to Muslim women’s literature, African literature, and Black British writing. This book weaves together interviews, literary criticism, and explores key life events to assemble a vivid portrait of a unique Muslim woman writer from Sudan.

India's Imperial Formations explores the ways in which empire building occurs and consolidates through the Indian and diasporic cultural landscape where a collusion with whiteness, Hindu fundamentalism, casteism, and religious and racial bigotry are rampant, and create hegemonic imaginaries of an India that denies a democratic space of multiple Indias to coexist together. India is not only home to the world’s largest film industry but also has one of the oldest media ecosystems today with a prolific output in television, radio, print, and digital media. These systems shape hearts and minds in the large nation and also have significant impact in the region as well as in the world due to India’s vast diaspora population. This book argues that Indian culture industries are a crucial site to investigate constructions of Islamophobia, casteism, sinophobia, sexism, colorism and anti-Blackness. Within the work, the authorshighlight the urgent need to evaluate the complicity of Indian and diasporic cultural production in perpetuating a casual and sometimes even aggressive normalization of bigotry and discrimination towards minoritized communities. This polemical book is written by three scholars of culture, gender and postcolonial studies providing an accessible yet rigorous study of these issues.

This book bridges the gap between the simultaneously unfolding histories of postcoloniality and the forty-five-year ideological and geopolitical rivalry between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Not only did the superpowers rely upon the decolonizing world to further imperial agendas, but the postcolony itself was shaped, epistemologically and materially, by Cold War discourses, policies, narratives, and paradigms. Ruptures and appropriated trajectories in the postcolonial world can be attributed to the ways in which the Cold War became the afterlife of European colonialism. Through a speculative assemblage, this book connects the dots, deftly taking the reader from Frantz Fanon to Aaron Swartz, and from assassinations in the Third World to American multiculturalism. Whether the Cold War subverted the dream of decolonization or created a compromised cultural sphere, this book makes those rich palimpsests visible.

This book bridges the gap between the simultaneously unfolding histories of postcoloniality and the forty-five-year ideological and geopolitical rivalry between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Not only did the superpowers rely upon the decolonizing world to further imperial agendas, but the postcolony itself was shaped, epistemologically and materially, by Cold War discourses, policies, narratives, and paradigms. Ruptures and appropriated trajectories in the postcolonial world can be attributed to the ways in which the Cold War became the afterlife of European colonialism. Through a speculative assemblage, this book connects the dots, deftly taking the reader from Frantz Fanon to Aaron Swartz, and from assassinations in the Third World to American multiculturalism. Whether the Cold War subverted the dream of decolonization or created a compromised cultural sphere, this book makes those rich palimpsests visible.