Sabina England, multimedia artist, poet, filmmaker (see her excellent short movie on the left hand side) and playwrighter is going to hate me for this, but under her punk stance and fierce eyes that say fuck-you-world she's in fact a deeply romantic artist and her work embodies all the hopes, sorrows, violence, prejudice, desires, lust and envies, macaber angles and sunny moments that we all have inside ourselves when we haven't been eaten out alive and spit out on the pavement by The System.
At the same time, she doesn't play the game right: as a Desi (in Wiki, Desi refers to the people, cultures, and products of the Indian subcontinent and, increasingly, to the people, cultures, and products of their diaspora), some might expect a docile woman, waiting to fill in the shoes that have been carved for her by traditions, centuries of ways of doing/being. No way, no way, she's a strong opiniated woman with ideas, dreams and behaviors that will set your world and hers in fire if you don't look twice and see all the superb humanity, the warm Understanding and the Love behind it all.
As a brown skinned woman living in the West, she has to suffer being an outcast even in the Indian continent, as a muslim in a world unfortunately divided by religions she has to undergo hatred from her side as well from the others: she's a dangerous whore and a temptress for some and a terrorist for others, as a punk, she is being put aside socially and even when she goes to bigger cities, urban punks will snob her out.
But that doesn't stop Sabina England to do what artists must do: create and create and create. Her more recent outlet is a magnificient book of 7 novels called Urdustan.
- Broken Pakistani Heart
- Leon, Her Hasidic Jewish Friend
- Vetala: An Indian Vampire in London
- The Beggars of Old Delhi
- The Lady of Lake Superior
- Love and Death in Al-Madinah
- Bushra, Philly Jane
All these short stories will make you travel deep down inside yourself and even tho they paint Sabina's world on the wall in front of you, they in fact reach your heart and make you see things aren't that different, we're all different people living in different societies, we're all in the danger to be smashed and crushed by prejudism and blind hate but in fact we all want the same things: being loved, being understood, being part of something, giving Love and Understanding because giving is one of the only thing that brings real happiness.
Urdustan is a modern and punkish "One Thousand And One Nights" and you'll be taken on amazing rides with Vetalas (indian vampires), Mermaids, Angels of Love and Angels of Death, hassidic jews on webcams, ASL (American Sign Language) arsonist actor, beggars-that-arent'-beggars in Old Dehli: a world of colors tagged on a wall the System wants us to see in black and white.
Urdustan can be ordered on http://www.lulu.com/shop/sabina-england/urdustan-a-collection-of-short-s... or on www.sabinaengland.com
The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Kollector.
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