May We Borrow Your Country: new anthology by The Whole Kahani

Photo by Jags Parbha

LitPig is delighted to welcome this lovely bunch of writers, The Whole Kahani, onto the blog today and to share news of their new anthology May We Borrow Your Country. You can read my review of this anthology at the end of this post, but first let's hear about this terrific initiative ...

The Whole Kahani (The Complete Story), is a collective of British fiction writers of South Asian origin. The group was formed in 2011 to provide a creative perspective that straddles cultures and boundaries. Its aim is to give a new voice to British Asian fiction and increase the visibility of South Asian writers in Britain. Their first anthology Love Across A Broken Map was published in 2016 by Dahlia Publishing.

May We Borrow Your Country is a contemporary collection of stories and poems published by Linen Press. It looks at dislocation and displacement with sympathy, tolerance and humour. It is peopled by courageous, poignant, eccentric individuals who cross borders, accommodate to new cultures and try to establish an identity in a new place. In the process, they encounter different versions of themselves, like reflections in a room of trick mirrors. The stories and poems are written by women. They are evocative and multi-layered in their portrayal of relationships, family, ambition, careers and friendship. They offer a fresh look at metamorphosis and many catch that fleeting moment of transition between the familiar and the new.

Q: Can you tell us about the writers involved in The Whole Kahani, it sounds a terrific group of talent. How did you all come together?
The Whole Kahani was founded in 2011, so it’s been going for nearly eight years. Our members come from a range of different backgrounds – we have poets, novelists, short story writers and screenwriters. These days we tend to get approached by writers looking for a group rather than the other way around. Our readings and anthology launches are great places to meet us, and several of our current members joined after coming to hear us at festivals.
Q. In creating the anthology how did the group approach selecting prose and poetry pieces for inclusion? How did you decide on order and structure? Was this something you did as a group or were these decisions the remit of the editor?
We worked very closely with our wonderful publisher, Lynn Michell of Linen Press, to choose the pieces and ordering. It was a special challenge because this anthology includes both prose and poetry so we had questions of form to consider as well as questions of resonance and content. We all contributed a number of pieces and workshopped these together, so I think this made it easier since several of the pieces naturally worked well in proximity. Lynn also helped us find the resonances between other pieces, and consider how these might best be placed in the anthology.
Q. There is a strong theme connecting the pieces throughout the anthology, of people seeking to find and understand themselves, particularly when they find are living far from where they were born or their families. Were the writers asked to create work to a theme? Or was this something that naturally arose in the group’s writing?
We knew from the beginning that we wanted to write pieces that would discuss themes of “otherness”, belonging and crossing boundaries. One of the most interesting questions that came up was our choice of title. We were all very much in agreement that “May We Borrow Your Country” should not have a question mark – it should be a statement, or a question which expects no answer. We like the way it encapsulates a lot of different meanings, from colonisation to immigration, from cultural appropriation to cultural integration. It’s also wonderful to hear readers’ own interpretations of the title, as it means different things to everybody.
Q. Do you have any events/readings planned to promote the anthology?
We launched May We Borrow Your Country on Saturday 26th at the Gower Street Waterstones, to a full house. It was great to see so many other writers in the audience, and we do have more events planned. We’ll be speaking at the Wolverhampton Literature Festival on February 3rd, and we’re currently in talks with some more venues. We’ll be keeping everyone up to date on our twitter and website.
Q. Can you share what The Whole Kahani has planned for future projects?
Putting out our two anthologies (the first was Love Across a Broken Map, from Dahlia Publishing) has been such a great experience. We have another project in the pipeline, and in the short-term we’re looking to broaden the forms we work with. Our members have experience in writing such a variety of different pieces, and we want to emphasise this strength in all our future publications.

Social media links:

The Whole Kahani website

Twitter: @TheWholeKahani

Where can I buy the book?

Linen Press 

My review:

May We Borrow Your Country is an anthology of prose and poetry involving women writers from The Whole Kahani writer’s collective. I thoroughly enjoyed this anthology, loving all the different perspectives within. I was delighted by the variety of character voices within the stories and poems, men and women trying to make sense of their lives and worlds particularly when finding themselves far from the homelands they grew up in. The stories were often poignant and bittersweet with both men and

women struggling to exert their personalities amid more dominant forces. But there is also plenty of humour here too and the uncanny. One of my favourites was ‘Natural Accents’ by Mona Dash, where: “After twenty years of living in a country where the sun rose and set at wildly different times depending on the season, and the clocks were changed to ensure a semblance of lights when people woke from deeply dark nights, Renuka decided she must acquire a pukka accent.” But be careful what you wish for … when Renuka invests in a voice box implant from the accent shop she declares her mother tongue as English forgetting the Indian language she grew up with. The story warns how in our rush to embrace normality and to ‘fit in’ we can sacrifice our cultural roots which make us what we are. Other favourites include ‘Fox Cub’ and ‘Sonny’ by CG Menon, ‘The Enlightenment of Rahim Baksh’ by Nadia Kabir Barb and the very funny ‘A Laughing Matter’ by Shibani Lal. Truthfully, I enjoyed every piece in this anthology, there really is something for all tastes and the writing is superb throughout.