A love letter to living
Determined to tell the stories of women of colour, Shubnum Khan’s book is a tribute to finding yourself in ordinary moments.
“Ithink it’s important for everyone to tell their stories, particularly women, and particularly women of colour. I don’t think there’s enough of our stories out there,” says Shubnum Khan, who recently released her new book, How I Accidentally Became a Global Stock Photo and Other Strange and Wonderful Stories, in which she tells her own story.
Khan’s writing is introspective, honest and funny without force. Although she first told parts of her stories on Twitter, her book fleshes them out to expanded tales that keep you on the edge of your seat.
This is intentional, Khan says, explaining that “with social media, the jokes have to come very quickly” and “without any nuance or context”, adding, “I wanted the room to talk about culture, religion and relationships.”
Her book is a collection of short, autobiographical stories from her life and journeys across the world. She takes the reader with her on her travels, from her childhood in Durban to her time as a teacher in the Himalayas, weaving together memories that are raw and intimate and speak to the spirit of adventure and our yearning for connection.
Khan’s writing is like an extended conversation with her reader – about culture, religion, relationships and womanhood, among many other topics. She makes space for reflection in between descriptions of sweeping scenery and bustling streets.
“I really want to explore what it means to be a woman, a woman of colour and a Muslim woman in different spaces,” Khan says.
Exploration of the concepts of identity and belonging is carried through every story, every travel experience.
What is it like to fly to America alone as a Muslim after 9/11, the author ponders.
“It is hard to pray”, Khan writes. “A plane is more complicated. I’m normally seated next to my family so my slight prostrations in my seat don’t even get a second glance, but when you’re alone, the person next to you might think you’re having a seizure, or worse, realise you’re a Muslim praying on the plane and have a heart attack.”
Khan responds to much with humour (such as in a chapter jestingly titled I Almost Went to Guantánamo Bay’), but the underlying anxiety is tangible – it is complicated indeed; at times painful, or disorienting.
What do you do as a woman alone in Delhi, the rape capital of the world, barely a year after the 2012 bus gang rape?
Writes Khan: “I went on a tour of Gutab Minar, wandered the lanes of Khan Market, did a book reading in Noida … ate biryani at Nizamuddin, shopped in Connaught Place and I always returned early to my room at night.” Then, she adds, she propped a chair under the doorknob to bar access to intruders, warned by many that the city was not safe – a reminder that, among all there is to see, touch and taste, your femaleness follows you.
Khan identifies the particular experience that comes with being a woman travelling alone. It’s messy, scary and “a whole different experience,” she says.
“If you’re a woman, you’re completely aware of your environment, and I really resent that. I felt that male gaze wherever I’ve been, and it really affects how you move and navigate through a space,” she explains.
Khan explores what it means to be your own company on a journey, with no one to share experiences with. But this is not a lonely book; rather it is one that explores connection and intimacy.
Typical of a travel memoir, Khan shares the beauty and awe of being in new spaces, describing scenes visually and emotionally.
Instead of looking out, Khan encourages the reader to look up, and it is in those moments, with eyes turned upwards towards dark clouds packed with snow falling on New York, or into the expanse of sky spreading across the Himalayas, that one is transported: “A girl was now sitting at a fire, somewhere in the Himalayas, beneath a sky so full of stars she could reach out and touch them if she wanted. She could pick them out of the sky. Fill her hands. Carry the light in her pockets. Hold it close.”
And just so, Khan is reaching into memories, filling her pages with these bright, living and breathing moments, telling stories of places with heartbeats “so loud you forgot about your own.”