Flaming Spirit – Book

Series namePublications
Description

Flaming Spirit’ was published in 1994 by Virago in occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Asian Women Writers Collective (AWWC). This is the Collective’s second anthology and was edited by Rukhsana Ahmad and Rahila Gupta. It features short stories by twenty authors of which we have digitised the following: Joyoti Grech’s nightmarish story, “In Your Own Words”; “Sisters”, a portrayal of family hardship by Sibani Raychaudhari; “Rebecca and the Neighbours”, a story of an Asian family’s struggles with racism by Tanika Gupta; “The Beggar King”, an account of a woman coming to terms with lost dreams and expectations by Smita Bhide; and “Mano Shanti”, a story about child abuse, abortion and politics by Preethi Manuel. The anthology includes works from members of the Collective as well as Asian women from other cities in Britain, who could not necessarily become members because of geographic constraints. This varied representation is reflected in the diverse stylistic tones of the anthology. As explained in the Introduction to ‘Flaming Spirit’, the Collective had made efforts to be more inclusive by starting a form of postal membership which enabled women to send in their work and receive feedback by post.

Read extracts from publication – part 1

Read extracts from publication – part 2

Date of Creation / Publication1994
CreatorAsian Women Writers Collective
Associated Person/ OrganisationRandhawa, Ravinder; Gupta, Rahila
Location
Collection and Reference NumberAsian Women Writers Collective (AWWC) (GB 2661 AWWC)
Catalogue NumberAWWC/PUB/FS
CopyrightAsian Women Writers Collective/ individual writer / publisher
Access to originalsThe originals are located in the SALIDAA archive.
Series notesThe Asian Women Writers Collective published two major anthologies of short stories and poetry, 'Right of Way' in 1989 and 'Flaming Spirit' in 1994. Both anthologies required a lengthy and intensive selection process as the AWWC received a large volume of submissions. They also published an in-house collection of new works, 'Read On', in February 1990, and a collection of poetry, 'Read On 2' in 1994. Their fifth publication, 'When I Say No' contains writings from workshops conducted in five cities throughout England.
Collection notesThe materials from the Asian Women Writers Collective archives consist of two categories: items which belong to publications such as short stories, poems and writings from workshops and administrative and outreach material such as membership information, correspondence and information about events hosted by the organisation.