Debut Collection
Anushka is currently working on her debut poetry collection tentatively titled ‘All that is owed.’ In this collection , she explores the quiet, subtle beauty of despair. Her work examines the contingent nature of her identity as a Pakhtun Muslim Canadian woman while contemplating her own experiences within larger global power systems. Her collection centres on themes of gender, inequity, and Muslim selfhood.
Our Ancestors, Our Selves
The project is inspired by her own experience with her female ancestors. On a recent trip to Pakistan, she saw her family’s official record of her family tree. In the spaces for the names of female relatives, there were only placeholder lines, the women’s names were never documented. Her grandfather could still recall some of my female ancestors’ names, but many had faded from his memory. This realization that so many names and stories had already been forgotten because they weren’t considered worth documenting struck me. She started contemplating how does her family’s experience mirror the erasure of other women globally? And how can her work fight against this erasure? The goal of this project is to document the stories of Muslim women and ensure that these stories are not forgotten. She hopes that this work can push back against dominant narratives and stereotypes about Muslim women. The project is partially funded by a recommenders grant from the Ontario Arts Council. If you are interested in being interviewed for this project please send an email to [email protected]