Book Review: "Voices from Punjab" by Anita Goyal and Aastha Singhania

As a woman born in Britain to Punjabi Indian parents, I have constantly reminded of being an outsider to the inspiring quotation and actions of my white female counterparts. When I found this book though, I was suddenly opened up to this world in which there were other women like me, other women who had experienced similar rules and regulations to the Punjabi girl lifestyle and yet, had come out on top. Even if they were in their forties and fifties when they did - it did happen eventually. As a Punjabi woman, there were certain rules for me that did not exist for my white friends and so, this book helped me to discover how we can use our own moral rules and lifestyles to achieve something special - even though we must work twice as hard to be noticed for the same amount.

In this book, there are fifteen life stories by fifteen different Punjabi women who were raised in Britain in different time periods. Some were moving to England during the partition and some had moved here in the 70s and 80s, others were here since they were toddlers and some came after they had gotten married. All of them had some things in common though: they all witnessed and were the victims of harsh racism, they all had to work twice as hard as anyone, they all had to have a hand in running the house as well as their studies, they were all denied something that they desperately wanted whether that was a single life or higher education studies. It was a brilliant book to read about their struggles and their accomplishments knowing that they are practically my own people. It was really nice to see that there are women like me, who have suffered racial abuse like me, who have achieved something somewhere. I wish to do the same.

When I began to read these, I did not expect to see so many women with OBE after their name, PhDs and Dr. before their name - but I was so impressed by that and to see that many of these women I have never even heard of was something that I had both enjoyed and feared. I feared it because I realised that nowhere in school did we ever learn about powerful women of colour. We learned about Florence Nightingale, Ms. Pankhurst and Marie Curie but all of these women though they did great things were white. When I would be studying I would often feel that these women, yes they did great things, but that did not mean that I could connect with them in any way.

When I started reading this book, I found that I just couldn't stop. Punjabi women growing up in Britain telling stories of how their parents had little knowledge of the English language and how they had to work in factories all day just to make enough money to eat. I was lucky because by the time I was born, my mother could already speak proficient English and my parents were already earning a good amount of money. It was beautiful reading about these women who had struggled for almost everything from the language all the way down to the chance for a career in something - and eventually they came out on top. It was not the sad narrative of the westernised 'exotic' woman who is the result of being basically slave labour that needs to be saved and freed by the people of the western world. It is a survival story of these women doing it on their own.

In conclusion, I would recommend this book to any Punjabi woman who has never really been taught about our women's achievements in school, and by that I mean every single Punjabi woman because nobody ever tells us that yes - there were women of ours who accomplished things too. I would love to see what you all think of this book because there is so much to take in, plus photographs and stories from every walk of Punjabi female life in the UK. I adore this book and I am probably going to read it again and again just to remind myself that I can do something to - even if people do not want me to.