Stories for South Asian Super Girls

Clearly influenced by Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls in its design and format, this book is groundbreaking in its own way. It contains fifty one-page biographies of women from South Asia or of South Asian heritage, each depicted in a full page illustration by one of ten artists, also of South Asian heritage. The artists are each given equal space to describe and illustrate themselves and outline their inspirations and motivations. In fact, motivation is a keynote to this book. The title indicates that it is intended to encourage young South Asian women and girls to follow their dreams, having found out about inspirational women from history and many women who are making significant contributions to the world today. However, everyone can learn from this book.

The emphasis is on women who are alive today, as you can see from the timeline. There are some names that will be widely familiar from the literary and media worlds – Meera Syal, Imtiaz Dharker, Arundhati Roy, Nadiya Hussain and many more whose achievements will become more widely known due to this book, for example environmentalist Tia Kansara and documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy.