Update from Kia
Hello,
Last year, I was FaceTiming a friend based in the US and told him, “Life feels sorted” – which indeed it did. Peter and I were settled back in London after three ill-advised years in the country. We had managed to buy a house just before we were priced out of the market; my book hit the Times Bestsellers List; I found a new passion in boxing; I was back among my closest friends; and my family were largely happy and healthy.
My friend in the US, however, had a warning for me. “Life is never sorted, right?”
I agreed wryly, but still felt pretty secure and settled. Fast forward to this year and my mortgage payments have gone up by £600 a month (seriously, how are people coping with this?), things at home have become unsettled, my family have been plagued by health issues and my friends have suffered redundancies.
It has made me appreciate the one thing I have a wealth of: resilience. If the dumpster fire that was my twenties taught me anything, it’s that life goes on. It changes, it feels sorted, and then it doesn’t, and then things change some more – but it goes on.
For now, I’m finding comfort where I can: in gallows humour by a hospital bed, in a delicious slice of lemon drizzle cake, in soft blankets and fleecy things and, of course, in fiction.
Until next time.
Kia x
Asian Booklist is – and always will be – free but if you find it useful, please upgrade your subscription to help with our running costs.
New books by British-Asian authors
9 May 2024
Ugly: Giving us back our beauty standards
Where did the word 'pretty' come from? Why do we shave our armpits? When did cosmetic surgery move from being functional to aesthetic? When did tanned skin become idealised? When did 'anti-ageing' slogans make us fear getting older? After years of feeling 'ugly' despite a successful career in the beauty industry, journalist Anita Bhagwandas grew tired of a world where it is desirable to be […]
9 May 2024
Hunted
It's a week before the presidential elections when a bomb goes off in an LA shopping mall. In London, armed police storm Heathrow Airport and arrest Sajid Khan. His daughter, Aliyah, entered the USA with the suicide bomber and now she's missing, potentially plotting another attack on American soil […]
9 May 2024
Desi Girl Speaking
Tweety is struggling. Battling depression and faced with parents and friends who don't fully understand what's happening, sixteen-year-old Tweety feels like no one is listening and there's nowhere to turn to. Until she stumbles across Desi Girl Speaking, a podcast by someone else who's struggling too. Through episodes and exchanged emails, Tweety and Desi Girl begin to confide in each other […]
9 May 2024
The Social Anxiety Workbook
Life has plenty of challenges, and it’s normal to feel anxious from time to time. But when social anxiety starts to affect your day-to-day life, it’s time to take action. The Social Anxiety Workbook contains practical advice and guided exercises to enable you to identify the source of your struggles and understand the effect social anxiety has on your mind and body. […]
9 May 2024
The Destiny of Minou Moonshine
The beautiful queendom of Moonlally has fallen under a tyrant’s rule. Their queen is dead, worship of their goddess, the Dark Lady, is forbidden, and the precious black diamond that protects the city has gone missing. When fierce orphan girl Minou Moonshine’s life is unexpectedly shattered, she joins the ragtag band of rebels, the Green Orchids, who are plotting to overthrow the General. […]
16 May 2024
Both Not Half
For over twenty-five years, actor Jassa Ahluwalia described himself as ‘half Indian, half English’. But he looks white. His fluent Punjabi always prompted bewilderment, medical staff questioned the legitimacy of his name, and the world of casting taught him he wasn’t ‘the right kind of mixed-race’. Feeling caught between two worlds, it wasn’t long before Jassa embarked on a call to action […]
23 May 2024
In the Shadow of the Wolf Queen
When her sister vanishes after a mysterious earthquake, Ysolda sets off on a rescue mission. But these are dangerous times, and soon she is forced to strike a deadly bargain with the wolf queen herself. Join Ysolda and her loyal sea hawk as they embark on an epic quest to save her sister and unlock the earth’s most powerful magic. From the author of The Girl of Ink and Stars and Julia and the Shark […]
23 May 2024
Remember, Mr Sharma
Delhi, 1997: It is India's fiftieth year of independence, the year of Hindu nationalists and atomic bombs. But twelve-year-old Adi has a bigger problem: his Ma has gone missing – again. Left with an ailing grandmother, a raging father and no answers, he finds an unlikely ally: a talking vulture who reveals itself to be a bureaucrat from the Department of Historical Adjustment. […]
Books out last month
1 April 2024
The Promise of Rain
With her thirtieth birthday on the horizon, Anna Kotze has accepted that there are some family secrets she’ll never know. While her mother’s Zimbabwean roots are woven into her life, all her father will say is that he was adopted. But when she finds an engraved necklace hidden among his things, a surprise piece of the puzzle finally falls into place: her father wasn’t just adopted. He was abandoned […]
4 April 2024
The Spy
Detective Kamil Rahman is working for the Met Police when he gets the call from MI5. They’ve received intelligence of a terrorist plot, and it’s Kamil they need. Posing as a disaffected cop and working in his friend Anjoli’s restaurant on Brick Lane, Kamil attempts to infiltrate the cell. What he uncovers leads him halfway across the world to Kashmir, and face to face with an old nemesis […]
4 April 2024
Bringing Back Kay-Kay
When Lena’s beloved older brother goes missing at the end of summer camp, the bottom drops out of Lena’s world. The police dismiss Kay-Kay’s disappearance as that of just another teenage runaway, but Lena knows they are wrong. Tired of not being listened to, powerless to reach her parents through their grief and unable to imagine a future without her brother in it, Lena sets off to find him […]
11 April 2024
The Letter with the Golden Stamp
From Onjali Q. Rauf, author of The Boy at the Back of the Class, comes another story of humour and heart. Touching on the challenges navigated by children caring for loved ones at home, this story brings into focus their hardships and worries, alongside the invisible sources of kindness which can change their lives […]
11 April 2024
Those People Next Door: Quick Reads 2024
Salma Khatun is hopeful about Blenheim, the safe suburban development to which she and her family have just moved. They are in desperate need of a fresh start, and Blenheim feels like the place to make that happen. Not long after they move in, however, Salma spots her neighbour ripping out the anti-racist banner in her front garden. At first, she chooses not to confront him. It’s a small thing, really […]
16 April 2024
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder
On the morning of 12 August 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man rushed down the aisle towards him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are. What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, Rushdie relives the traumatic event […]
18 April 2024
The Book of Chai: History, stories and more than 60 recipes
The Book of Chai presents 65 delicious recipes for chai, including those using chai spices and dishes to accompany chai. As well as explaining the health benefits and different techniques for making chai, this book contains chais for different seasons, times of day and moods. There are chais to wake you up, chais to soothe you after a stressful day and chais to help you sleep […]
25 April 2024
A Glasgow Girl: A memoir of growing up and finding your voice
A Glasgow Girl is the coming of age story of Aasmah Mir's childhood growing up in 1970s Glasgow. From a vivacious child to a teenage loner, Aasmah candidly shares the highs and lows of growing up between two cultures – trying to fit in at school and retreating to the safe haven of a home inhabited by her precious but distant little brother, and Helen, her family's Glaswegian guardian angel […]
25 April 2024
The Spoiled Heart
Set at the edge of the Peak District, the story of an impossible love, a family's loss, and the desire to make a better world, from the Booker-shortlisted author of The Year of the Runaways. Nayan Olak keeps seeing Helen Fletcher around town and on his daily run out to the Peaks. She’s come back to the old house at the end of the lane, with her teenaged son, though nobody seems to remember much about her […]
Editor’s choice
The book I’m most excited about…
I went to an East London school where the vast majority of students were British-Asian. This meant that I had very few hangups about my physical appearance. Most of my friends and peers looked like me and I had no idea that whiteness or blondeness were held in any special regard by broader society. Equally, I didn’t worry about hairiness or hyperpigmentation or the dozen other things that young Asian girls in largely white schools were contending with. In short: I was never made to feel ugly.
It’s only as an adult that I learnt about beauty standards and the stranglehold it has on not just Asian women but all of us.
In Ugly, journalist Anita Bhagwandas looks at beauty, where it came from and who gets to define it. She asks: When did cosmetic surgery move from being functional to aesthetic? When did ‘anti-ageing’ slogans make us fear getting older? And what does it mean to live in a world where it is desirable to be skinny but curvy, light-skinned but not too pale, and glamorous but natural?
When social media preaches ‘you do you’ and ‘love yourself first’, but unattainable beauty standards continue to reign, the reality remains true: on most days, it can be hard to feel beautiful. Or even just ‘not ugly’.
In this exposé, Anita campaigns against the ideals that are sold to us daily. Because, she says, it’s only when we really interrogate the origins of ‘ugly’, that we can truly begin to break free.
Order it now from Amazon, Waterstones or your local independent bookshop.
Visit asianbooklist.com for more upcoming books by British-Asian authors or view all the books out last year.