Amrit Wilson - Finding a Voice: Asian Women in Britiain

The new and expanded edition of Amrit Wilsons pioneering Finding A Voice: Asian Women in Britain, written in resistant response to the pincer action of tightened patriarchies among South Asian migrants and the British states institutionalized racism and misogyny in the 1970s, acquires a new significance in this neoliberal era. A document of familial, labour and state practices, spanning the home, shop, factory and airport, anchored in interviews of women from the South Asian subcontinent and its African diaspora, this now stands as a prehistory of black feminist struggles, subject formation and protest, functions as an indispensable archive as well as a narrative of a past that is not past but reactivated and recast in the nexus of accelerated racialisation and neoliberal retractions, a past that is at once connected and severed by the twin operations of state policies and familial regimes, a past to be understood through continuity and rupture. Wilsons own activist voice, her trenchant analysis and the contemporary responses of young women knit new and old voices that speak of isolating transplantations and feminist transformations. Taken together, they de-monolithize the tendentious regional and cultural particularity of South Asia. The naming of a region in a context of the multiple hierarchies of race, religion, caste, class and gender becomes the starting point for wider affiliations, coalitions and solidarities. Kumkum Sangari, William F Vilas Research Professor of English and the Humanities, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

For decades, Amrit Wilson has challenged, supported, written, spoken and dreamed. This new edition of Finding a Voice comes at a time when policy makers are attempting to de-gender issues such as domestic violence, when we are witnessing and experiencing the growth of the surveillance state and when our narratives are being co-opted and used against us. Finding a Voice is not only welcome, it is necessary.Marai Larasi, Executive Director Imkaan and co-chair of the End Violence Against Women Coalition

Amrit Wilsons Finding a Voice offered a lifeline for many Asian women in Britain who were used to speaking but less used to being heard. The original edition offered a radical and compelling history of Asian womens resistance to gendered racism. This new edition, with voices of young Asian women being added, is just what we need in facing the challenges of the present. This book is a wonderful, important and necessary reminder of all the black feminist work behind us and all that is left to do.Sara Ahmed, feminist writer and independent scholar, and author of Living a Feminist Life

A ground-breaking book, as relevant today as it was in the seventiesand evidence, if ever such were needed, that the struggles of Asian, African and Caribbean women remain inextricably linked.Stella Dadzie, Founder member of OWAAD and co-author of Heart of the Race

Amrit Wilsons Finding A Voice found me at a crucial time in my life, newly graduated, trying to find my own path in an industry where women like me were nigh on invisible and I often felt, maybe Asian women are invisible to the rest of the Britain, as where are our stories being told? Amrit changed that; for the first time, here was a book that collated the presence and experiences of Asian Women in Britain with clarity, compassion and forensic care. It was affirmation that our lives mattered, that our experiences with all their cultural complexities, mattered, that we were now part of the story of Britain and not another forgotten footnote.Meera Syal, CBE, British comedian, writer, playwright, singer, journalist, producer and actress.

Immigration is a continuum, and every migrants experience of learning to make a new land their new home involves, alongside a thousand other adjustments, learning the stories of those who traced similar journeys, their life-lessons. In that sense, reading Amrit Wilsons Finding a Voice is like undertaking a deeply personal and highly political journey at the same time.

In describing the lives of Asian women in Britain in the seventies, Amrit Wilson leaves no stone unturned, no voice unheard. Do not make the mistake of approaching this work as a mere compilation of first person interviewsthe individual voices show they are potent enough to articulate collective suffering, pain, resistance and outrage. In retaining these individual voices of oppressed women as they are, and simultaneously retaining Wilsons position as a feministthe narrative manages to highlight and negotiate difference. Again and again, we observe a young, and somewhat impatient Wilson wonder why Asian immigrant women are not acting in an empowered wayand we watch as this impatience gives way to understanding and empathy. What we see at play here is not the cold, judgmental anthropologists gaze, but a feminist sisterhood being forged. Rezias fear of race attacks, Manjulas shame and struggle against her parentseach of the stories here opens a prism into understanding underlying structural oppressions.

This book also articulates the multiple oppressions and difficult scenarios that Asian women have to navigate, and provides insight into why their responses to such oppression is socially and culturally conditioned. As author, activist, political analyst, she proceeds to frame everything with brilliant theoretical insight: post-war emigration, caste and feudal practices, race relations, the dowry system, isolation as alienation, colonialism, institutionalised racismand the consequences of all of this on Asian womens lives.

First published in 1978,