{"id":29552,"date":"2024-03-22T09:00:44","date_gmt":"2024-03-22T09:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=29552"},"modified":"2024-03-20T09:37:44","modified_gmt":"2024-03-20T09:37:44","slug":"mongrel-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2024\/03\/22\/mongrel-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Mongrel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nBy Sayra Begum<\/strong> (Knockabout)
\nISBN: 978-0-86166-269-2 (TPB)<\/p>\n

Comics offer an immediate and potent method of communication that is both universally accessible and subtly intimate. You want countless characters and exotic locales? Just draw them. Need to navigate the most torturous tracks of the psyche and expose the most taciturn soul? Just fill captions and balloons with the words and tone that cut to the heart of the matter\u2026<\/p>\n

Somebody who got that from get-go was Sayra Begum, who first presented her life story in pictorial form in 2017. Happily, she shared it with the perceptive folks at Knockabout Comics who recognised a great work when they saw it. In her own incisive words and deft pencil work, Begum – identifying here as \u201cShuna<\/em>\u201d – shares what growing up meant for the child of a strict, devout and loving Bangladeshi Muslim mum only living in England until the family has enough money to retire to a mansion in her beloved homeland. It\u2019s not an easy existence since her dad is a white man (a convert to Islam) who still remembers the freedoms of his old life. Moreover, the community treats them with polite disregard\u2026<\/p>\n

As seen in \u2018Meet the Mongrel\u2019<\/em>, \u2018Memories of Waterland\u2019<\/em>, and \u2018The Forgotten Self\u2019<\/em>, Shuna and her siblings are pulled in so many directions growing up. She wants to be an artist, but her Amma is more concerned that she be \u2018A Good Muslim\u2019<\/em>, believing \u2018Life is a Test\u2019<\/em> and her old ways such as \u2018An Arranged Marriage\u2019<\/em> are the only proper life to live\u2026<\/p>\n

For her parents, England ends at the front door and the household is pure Bangla within the walls. The lure of the outer world has already proved too much for one brother as seen in \u2018My Poor Family\u2019<\/em>, \u2018Suffocated\u2019<\/em> and \u2018The Disownment\u2019<\/em> and soon Shuna too is living a secret life with an English lover mother could never approve of\u2026<\/p>\n

Continual contrasts with her perfect cousin in Bangladesh constantly wrack her conscience but Shuna has long capitulated to the wiles of Shaitan in her head. Life has a habit of upsetting all plans and exposing secrets and \u2018Our Parallel Family\u2019<\/em>, \u2018The Meeting\u2019<\/em>, \u2018Judgement Day\u2019<\/em> and \u2018The Mongrel Children\u2019<\/em> all reveal how even the harshest opinions may shift, leading to a truly romantic happy ending in \u2018Goodbye Anger\u2019 <\/em>prior to a ruminatory \u2018Epilogue\u2019<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n

Begum weds brisk, informative line drawing with the dazzling traditional patterns of Islamic art and excesses of surrealism to weave a compelling and visually enticing tale of real people coping with ancient intolerances and the rapidly evolving family stresses of a fluid and fluctuating multicultural society. It\u2019s all the more affecting to realise she\u2019s bravely sharing the minutiae and intimacies of her own life to highlight a situation as old as humanity itself.<\/p>\n

A magical story and a stunning debut, Mongrel<\/strong> is book you must read and one that has never been more timely or pertinent.
\nMongrel \u00a9 by 2020 Sayra Begum All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sayra Begum (Knockabout) ISBN: 978-0-86166-269-2 (TPB) Comics offer an immediate and potent method of communication that is both universally accessible and subtly intimate. You want countless characters and exotic locales? Just draw them. Need to navigate the most torturous tracks of the psyche and expose the most taciturn soul? Just fill captions and balloons … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Mongrel”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,299,104,148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-british","category-feminism-sexual-politics","category-graphic-autobiography","category-romance"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-7GE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29552"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29554,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29552\/revisions\/29554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}