Meera Syal

Nine-year-old Meena can’t wait to grow up and break free from her parents. But, as the daughter of the only Punjabi family in the mining village of Tollington, her struggle for independence is different from most.

Anita and Me

Shyama is in love like she has never been before. Pale and English, Toby, a farmer's son, treats her with the love and respect her former Asian husband never did. Shyama loves so keenly that she badly wants them to have a baby. But at 48 years old, she cannot conceive. She elects to use a surrogate. When Shyama meets the young girl from rural India who will be the surrogate mother, they form a deep friendship. Mala is wise and kind, and ambitious to escape her background. It is only as the child is born that devastating decisions will be made. Decisions that will leave one of them broken....

The House of Hidden Mothers

Steve Lyons

Oli Smith

Stephen Cole

Matt Smith

Arthur Darvill

11th Doctor Audio Originals

Doctor Who : Eleventh Doctor Tales

Newly married Chila, a Punjabi girl, is still close to her childhood confidantes--Sunita, a former activist and law student turned depressed housewife and mother, and Tania, who rejected marriage in favor of a high-powered career in television--until Tania makes a documentray about the other two and contemporary Indian life in London. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee

"A novel about a forty-eight-year-old woman, Shyama, whose decision to use a surrogate mother from India in order to have a child with her younger boyfriend causes her life to intersect with Mala's, a young girl trapped in an oppressive marriage in a rural village in India who dreams of escape"--

The house of hidden mothers

Winsome Pinnock

Trish Cooke

Maya Chowdhry

Rukhsana Ahmad

Zindika

Comedy, poetry, history and magic combined with themes of a social and spiritual nature make this volume an exciting collection. Plays for stage, radio and television together with essays on theatre, writing workshops, oral traditions and Yvonne Brewster O.B.E. in dialogue.

Six Plays by Black and Asian Women Writers

Daisy Buchanan

Irvine Welsh

John Niven

A.L. Kennedy

Mike Gayle

Christopher Brookmyre

Nina Stibbe

Murray Lachlan Young

Pauline Melville

Barney Farmer

Zoe Venditozzi

In the early hours of 14 June 2017, a fire engulfed the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in west London, killing at least 72 people and injuring many more. An entire community was destroyed. For many people affected by this tragedy, the psychological scars may never heal. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a condition that affects many people who have endured traumatic events, leaving them unable to move on from life-changing tragedies. In the immediate aftermath of the fire, the focus was rightly placed on providing food, shelter and health care for those left homeless – but it is important that we don’t lose sight of the psychological impact this fire will have had on its survivors. 24 Stories is an anthology of short stories, written on themes of community and hope, by a mix of the UK’s best established writers and previously unpublished authors, whose pieces were chosen by Kathy Burke from over 250 entries. Contributors include: Irvine Welsh, A. L. Kennedy, Meera Syal, John Niven, Pauline Melville, Daisy Buchanan, Christopher Brookmyre, Zoe Venditozzi, Nina Stibbe, Mike Gayle, Murray Lachlan Young, Barney Farmer.

of Hope for Survivors of the Grenfell Tower Fire

24 Stories

Craig Higginson

Steven Sater

Anders Lustgarten

Nancy Harris

Samir Yazbek

Rory Mullarkey

Hilary Bell

Michael Lesslie

Paven Virk

This brilliant new collection of ten plays for young people will prove indispensable to schools, colleges and youth theatre groups. Specially commissioned by the National Theatre for the Connections Festival 2012 involving 200 schools and youth theatre groups across the UK and Ireland, each play is accompanied by production notes and exercises. For the 2012 Festival, the anthology has an international feel and offers a window on the world. It includes from Australia a play based on a nineteenth century court case in which a teenage girl was falsely convicted; from Brazil a drama about young lovers doomed to tragedy; set in Russia, a play exploring differing attitudes to National Service and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991; a drama about students' rights to an education and the Cultural Revolution of 1966 in China; and a comedy involving a group of Irish country girls travelling to London to audition for the X-Factor.

Victim Sidekick Boyfriend Me; Journey to X; Little Foot; Prince of Denmark; Socialism is Great; The Grandfathers; Alice by Heart; Generation Next; So You Think You’re a Superhero?; The Ritual

National Theatre Connections 2012: Plays for Young People

The story of Meena, growing up in the only Punjabi family in the Black Country mining village of Tollington, from award-winning screenwriter Meera Syal. This hilarious novel is a set text for GCSE WJEC and Edexcel. It's 1972. Meena is nine years old and lives in the village of Tollington, 'the jewel of the Black Country'. She is the daughter of Indian parents who have come to England to give her a better life. As one of the few Punjabi inhabitants of her village, her daily struggle for independence is different from most. She wants fishfingers and chips, not chapati and dhal; she wants an English Christmas, not the usual interminable Punjabi festivities - but more than anything, she wants to roam the backyards of working-class Tollington with feisty Anita Rutter and her gang. Blonde, cool, aloof, outrageous and sassy, Anita is everything Meena thinks she wants to be. Meena wheedles her way into Anita's life, but the arrival of a baby brother, teenage hormones, impending entrance exams for the posh grammar school and a motorcycling rebel without a future, threaten to turn Anita's salad days sour. Anita and Me paints a comic, poignant, compassionate and colourful portrait of village life in the era of flares, power cuts, glam rock, decimalisation and Ted Heath. It is a unique vision of a British childhood in the Seventies, a childhood caught between two cultures, each on the brink of change. trance exams for the posh grammar school and a motorcycling rebel without a future, threaten to turn Anita's salad days sour. Anita and Me paints a comic, poignant, compassionate and colourful portrait of village life in the era of flares, power cuts, glam rock, decimalisation and Ted Heath. It is a unique vision of a British childhood in the Seventies, a childhood caught between two cultures, each on the brink of change.

Collins Readers Â Anita and Me

Meera Syal

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