Despite the pandemic making the last two years a difficult time for everyone, the bright parts of these times for me was discovering epic small businesses while scrolling through Instagram reels or Tik Tok. It turns out procrastinating from university assignments is a productive use of your time when you have to organise goodie bags filled with amazing creations from BIPOC women-led business for ASAC’s launch event. Here’s a list of 11 values-aligned businesses owned by Women of Colour that we loved having as our sponsors for our event.
our blog & events
Recently, one of our Co-founders, Daizy, went on an online book-buying spree because she’d been struggling to find books by and for the South Asian diaspora in her local bookshops. Knowing what it was like to grow up without stories that reflected her experiences and culture, Daizy wanted to find books that her young nieces and nephew would enjoy and reflected their lived experiences. To see what children’s picture books Daizy bought, check out the blog.
We know getting stuck into #auspol can be overwhelming and intimidating, but thankfully organisations like these 6 are here to uplift and empower young people interested in making a positive difference in the community by getting involved in public-decision making, policy-making, and politics.
This month our noses were buried in Untold: defining moments of the uprooted, an anthology of 31 stories and personal essays by South-Asian female-identifying authors reflecting on their experience growing up in America, Canada and the United Kingdom. This collection exceeded our expectations and we were fortunate enough to host a QnA with three of the authors, Neha Patel, Nisha Singh and Apoorva Verghese.
Melbourne’s most recent lockdown was tough. After another series of her in-person art workshops had to be cancelled, Priyanka Kaur founded Mahala to support herself and fellow creatives, while also giving back to the community. Mahala specialises in thoughtful gift boxes made by and for South Asian women. Launched 10 weeks ago, Mahala is already supporting 12 women-led businesses and carries 13 different products.
There is a need for greater diversity in our Parliament and note the urgent shortage of youth representation in these spaces, particularly young Women of Colour.
With federal elections gearing up for next year, it’s now more important than ever to look closely at who is representing us, whether their interests and values are actually aligned with what we care about, and who deserves our vote.
Australia’s writing arena, like most of its other public spaces, is predominantly occupied by white men. Through our personal research we found few published Australian South-Asian female authors. We hope this list broadens your literary horizons, especially those of us in the Australian-South Asian community looking for inspiration, because as the saying goes ‘you can’t be, what you can’t see’. We thought ‘homeward-bound’ captured the essence of this list as these books engage with a variety of transitionary life phases in the pursuit of finding acceptance, belonging and being at home in oneself, as well as, migration.
In July our book club members read Mira Sethi’s Are You Enjoying, a collection of seven short stories about life, love, intimacy and intrigue in contemporary, urban Pakistan. While our members observed that the stories didn’t offer as much insight into the lives of ordinary people, the book allowed for interesting conversations about power dynamics in the workplace. Read to find out what we thought of the book and the insightful conversation we had.
South Asian women are far and few in the Australian art scene. Their magnificent work does not get the recognition nor the prestige it deserves. We’re proud to share the journey of our former artists in residence Priyanka Kaur and Avneet Singh in producing a series of art depicting South Asian women, one of which ‘Dancing Rani’ was sold recently.
To commemorate the first anniversary of the Australian South Asian Centre (ASAC), our founders, Daizy Maan Kaur and Sehar Gupta share what they’ve learned on this journey so far and what’s planned for the future of ASAC.