And the World Changed Read Free Page B

careers are now open to them. At the same time Pakistanis from the most impoverished regions have had close contacts with relatives in the diaspora. The dynamics of thisinterchange have profoundly influenced Pakistan and Pakistani migrants in the West, rich or poor—a theme that emerges quite clearly in Pakistani English literature.
    Meanwhile in the West, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the anti-Vietnam protests, the civil rights movements in the United States, the student revolution in Europe, and the feminist revolution impacted English literature, as did the presence of increasingly assertive migrant communities. Soon it was apparent that some of the most important new English writing was coming from Britain’s erstwhile colonies where women’s writing forged new narratives that challenged both imperial and patriarchal myths.
    The beginning of this century has seen women firmly assert themselves in Pakistan as leading English-language editors, journalists, and publishers. In turn, publishers have begun to actively seek out new writers of Pakistani English fiction and poetry, many of them women, almost all of whom are represented in this anthology.
    AND THE WORLD CHANGED: THE AUTHORS
    This anthology developed as a consequence of two previous ones that I put together. The first, A Dragonfly in the Sun: An Anthology of Pakistani Writing in English (Oxford University Press, 1997), a collection of poetry, fiction, and drama, was a retrospective commissioned to celebrate Pakistan’s fiftieth anniversary. This volume was the first to bring together English-language writers living in Pakistan and in the diaspora. It also raised issues of identity: Did diaspora writers of Pakistani origin “qualify” as Pakistani? My answer was, unequivocally, yes. To explore this further, I put together a second collection of fiction and nonfiction, Leaving Home: Toward a New Millenium: A Collection of English Prose by Pakistani Writers (Oxford University Press, 2001), which looked at issues of home, homeland, and belonging through Pakistan’s diverse experiences of migration.
    An anthology on English-language writing by Pakistani women seemed the next logical step, but only emerged after mychance meeting with the Indian publisher Ritu Menon at a 2004 Sustainable Development Conference in Islamabad. She suggested the book. A year later, at the next Islamabad conference, I handed her the completed typescript on disk. I was delighted at the warmth with which the people in India received the collection, and to find that, subsequently, in Pakistan, Oxford University Press reprinted the same version twice. At the request of The Feminist Press I have altered the original compilation to replace most of the novel extracts with short stories from the same authors. In this version, I have also included the work of the young Pakistani American writer, Bushra Rehman. New headnotes for the American edition introduce the authors and the texts, and in some instances, I have quoted the insightful comments that the authors provided me in my correspondence with them.
    All the women included in this volume have been educated in English, which remains the language of instruction in universities and the best secondary schools in Pakistan. Many of the writers went to the mission schools and colleges that were established in colonial times, although other prestigious private schools teaching in English have also emerged. These institutions are the training grounds for resident Pakistani English writers. Some of these writers belong to families where English is spoken at home as a dominant language. While there is comparatively little working-class literature in English from Pakistan, or indeed any South Asian country, migration to the English-speaking diaspora has introduced that dimension. In these countries Pakistani/South Asian migrants do not belong to the mainstream, regardless of income, education, or class. Their voice and that