Eltham Women's Institute

Following a link recently, I landed on the smart website of the Catford Women's Institute. It meets monthly at the St Laurence Centre in Bromley Road, Catford. It seems very active with talks, events and trips - including one in April on 'Glass Fusion Art'. So a far cry from jam and cakes (though nothing wrong with that of course...).

There's no denying that WIs had a bit of a fusty image but the organisation has undergone a bit of a rejuvenation in recent years. Of course there was that calendar in 1999, later a film, and the slow hand clapping of Tony Blair. The WI is getting involved in many campaigns too e.g against library closures and legal aid reforms. Branches are popping up everywhere and they are being claimed by modern, young women in an urban setting too - for example, there's even a branch at nearby 'radical' Goldsmiths, University of London (Goldsmith’s WI on Facebook).

With over 6,500 branches nationwide, it made me wonder whether Eltham had a Women's Institute?

According to the WI site there's an 'Eltham Palace' branch listed which meets at
St Mary's Community Hall in Eltham and also a 'Royal Eltham' branch meeting at the United Reformed Church Hall, Court Road, Eltham. Though I haven't been able to find websites for either.

There was an interesting article in SENine magazine in 2010 about a rejuvenation of the Women's Institute in Eltham (though the venue info given there conflicts with the current WI site info - I presume the latter would be the most up to date). Happy to list up-to-date contact details if anyone wants to get in touch.

Dr Nawal-el-Saadawi on Egypt

The Root has an interview with the irrepressible Dr Nawal El Saadawi, the Egyptian feminist, doctor and activist, amongst other things - "Now 79, she has lived in exile off and on for the past 15 years, teaching at Duke University and Spelman College. For the past year or so, she's been back at home in Egypt, writing and organizing young activists."

In the piece Dr Saadawi talks about the hopes for women coming out of the current revolution in Egypt, saying "...Of course if you know the history of revolutions, you find that after the revolution, often men take over and women's rights are ignored. In order to keep our rights after the revolution, women must be unified. We must have our women's union again. We cannot fight individually." She also talks about the USA ("I don't expect the power or support or interference of anyone, of any government. We here in Egypt are fed up with U.S. colonialism") and dismisses the power of the Muslim Brotherhood ("All of this talk about the Brotherhood is an attempt to use religion to divide the people. Do not worry; the Muslim Brotherhood will never rule Egypt.").

One of the compelling factors for me about Dr Saadawi is her secularist hopes for Egypt.

I was lucky enough to attend an 'in conversation' event with this woman a couple of years ago locally at Goldsmiths, University of London, as part of a three-day Race in a Modern World conference there. She was inspiring. You can read my post about that here 'Nawal El Saadawi in conversation'.

Related previous post: 'The women of Tharir Square'

"The women of Tharir Square"

After the events in Egypt this week, it was interesting to read this piece from The World about the role of women in protests in Egypt.
 
A 21-year old university student is quoted as saying: “Women were at the forefront of the 1919 revolution in Egypt right before Egypt got its independence, in the struggle against the British; women were prominent at the time of the French occupation as well ... So Egyptian women have been involved in protests for many, many years this isn’t something new.”

Of the situation now, women's involvement is said to be "bigger than any religious or political affiliation." “There are Christian girls here, there are girls with their hair uncovered ...We’re all volunteers. We’re all Egyptians, whether we’re Christians or Muslims, whether we’re religious or not, we’re all good people. We’re all sacrificing for our country.”

The piece continues:

"But the authoritarian governments that have governed Egypt for the last 60 years have curtailed the autonomy of women’s organizations. Just as they have tightly controlled all freedoms of assembly and expression.  Women, like most Egyptians, have been frightened away from politics."

Read the rest of this article at The World.

What should a diary be?

Nice little piece which might interest bloggers, since many of us are writing diaries of a sort, aren't we?

From the BBC: Point of View: The art of the diary

"... Perhaps Virginia Woolf, whose own diaries are exhilaratingly wonderful, sums up best what a diary should be.

"What sort of diary should mine be," she writes. "Something loose knit but not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace anything solemn, slight or beautiful that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk or capacious hold-all in which one flings a mess of odds and ends without looking them through. I should like to come back after a year or two and find that the collection had sorted itself and refined itself and coalesced..."

Sikh-Brit Archie Panjabi wins US TV award

For a while I've had this news saved up...

Last month the London-born actress of Sikh background, Archana Kaur - better known as Archie Panjabi, won the best supporting actress for her role in the The Good Wife, a US series which seems also to have been shown on Channel 4 recently.

I've always enjoyed watching her performances and she looks absolutely stunning at the awards ceremony (but let's not forget, she also has a management degree).

The Telegraph had this to say:

"On an otherwise disappointing night for British talent, Archie Panjabi won the best supporting actress award for her role as the straight-talking private detective Kalinda Sharma in the US drama The Good Wife.

The 38-year-old, who made her name in the British hit films East is East and Bend it Like Beckham, appeared elated as she accepted the prestigious US television award.

She said: "When I started in the business in England, just getting a job was a dream. And to receive an Emmy now is just beyond my wildest dreams.”

Panjabi, whose family emigrated to London from India before she was born, is among only a handful of Sikh performers ever to have won an Emmy.

But she has told how her strict family were less than supportive when she announced her aspiration to become an actress because the profession is considered “lowly” by many traditional Indian communities.“We did have a few arguments because I wanted to go to drama school,” she said previously. “When I was younger a friend of mine’s mother said that this business was only for prostitutes. I thought, Oh my God, do I label myself as that?” But she added that her parents had ultimately agreed to support her ambition on the condition that she went to university first.

Her 2:1 in management studies from Brunel may not have contributed much to her meteoritic success as an actress, but her parents’ scepticism about showbusiness appears to have helped keep her feet on the ground.

Panjabi, who is now married to the businessman Raj Nihalani, said in a recent interview that her favourite pastime is “simply relaxing with a candle and a book,” adding: “simple things are so important because I think in this industry…it’s like being part of a bubble......"

What a familiar scenario - British-Asian girl/boy wants to go into the arts/culture - parents aghast that they'll become a slut/gay/a wastrel and force them to do business/accountancy - kids sticks it out, get the degree then do their own thing anyway (and became Sanjay Baskar or Nitin Sawhney) or else, alternatively disappear into obscurity....weeps gently.

Watch Archie Panjabi's Emmy speech here.

French MPs approve bill to ban the burka

The Telegraph tells us:

"French MPs vote in favour of banning burka

French MPs have passed a law banning Islamic face veils from public areas amid warnings it poses constitutional problems and risks being overturned in the courts."

France24 expands on this:

"French lawmakers have approved a controversial draft law that would ban face-covering Islamic veils from being worn in public spaces. The bill will now go to the French Senate, which is expected to approve it in September."

Oh dear.

Liberty vs secularism  vs. multi-culturalism vs assilimaltion vs.feminism vs.cultural preservation/freedom.

It's all in there (and there's only one of these that I'm not usually too keen on...).  I know that French-Sikhs there are worried that they and their turbans are next in France.

Expect a blog-shower on the subject. I shall catch up later - back to cooking dinner for the family (who said feminism is dead...)

Can the progressive British Left learn to love football?

I'm sitting here having come across the opening night concert for the World Cup - one of the performances was John Legend dueting with Angelique Kidjo on a cover of 'Move on up', wow.  Other acts included Shakira, Alicia Keys and Black Eyed Peas.

While thinking about football, I remembered the piece this week by Gary Younge which touches on lots of interesting points about which team to suppport in the World Cup if you're young, British and black. For him "as a young black boy in 1970s Hertfordshire, English patriotism was inextricably bound up with far-right politics and racism, not least in the beautiful game." Lots of his points struck a chord with me - I remember my brother (we're brown, Brit-Asian btw) playing football in the 1970s, in Northolt (a north-west London suburb) only to find that the next day, some of his seemingly-friendly white 'team mates' would be be rolling with the NF skinheads trying to catch him and spit at him. Younge seems to have made peace with football and has found a way of suppporting England which makes sense to him. And actually my brother is a big England supporter now. Though if India (or Barbados for Younge) were in the competition (fat chance), what then? Let's not go there - I'm sure the coalition govt would come up with some test 'a la Tebbit' once they'd finished teaching spouses English.  Read Younge's article here.

As a counter to Younge's piece reconciling himself to supporting England, Laurie Penny has written today on why she despises the world cup - "Who cares about a bunch of misogynist jocks tossing a ball around? Football is commodified nationalism that excludes more than half the population."  She makes a lots of points with which that I totally agree.  Just because it's easy to target Penny as a 'humourless parody' (in the words of some knee-jerk commentators) does not mean that her points have no validity - the point about the South African women's football team player having been raped and murdered is a deadly serious one.

Six British-Asian women MPs now

Ok, I'm  having a little break from the local politics just to catch up on what happened in the General Election to the 22 British-Asian women candidates I wrote about earlier. From the British Parliament having no such MPs up until now, it seems we now have an unprecedented SIX female British Asian MPs, as listed below.

Interesting that Labour were willing to put up these PPCs in five winnable seats, the Tories only one and the Lib Dems none (though they had less to play with):

CONSERVATIVE:

Bristol East - Adeela Shafi - lost (Labour win)

Witham (Essex) - Priti Patel - ELECTED (on 52%)

Stoke on Trent Central - Norsheen Bhatti - lost (3rd place to Labour win by Tristram Hunt)

Leigh - Shazia Awaan - lost (2nd to Labour's Andy Burnham)

Makerfield - Itrat Ali - lost (Labour win)

Birmingham Ladywood - Nusrat Ghani - lost (3rd place to Labour's Shabana Mahmood)

Glasgow East -Hamira Khan - lost (4th place to Labour)

LABOUR:

Bethnal Green and Bow - Rushanara Al - ELECTED (on 43%) [pictured above, on left]

Ilford North - Sonia Klein - lost (Cons. win)

Bolton South East - Yasmin Qureshi - ELECTED (on 47%)

Bury North - Maryam Khan - lost (Cons. win)

Wigan - Lisa Nandy - ELECTED (on 49%)

East Worthing and Shoreham - Emily Benn - lost (3rd place to Cons)

Birmingham Ladywood - Shabana Mahmood - ELECTED (on 58%)

Walsall South - Valerie Vaz   - ELECTED (on 58%) 

Scarborough and Whitby - Annajoy David Da-Bora - lost (Cons. win)

Central Suffolk and North Ipswich - Bhavna Joshi  - lost (3rd place to Cons)

LIB DEM:

Hayes & Harlington - Satnam Khalsa - lost (3rd place to Lab)

Feltham & Heston - Munira Wilson - lost (3rd place to Lab)

Glasgow South - Shabnam Mustapha - lost (3rd place to Lab)

Wimbledon - Shas Sheehan - lost (2nd place to Cons)

Leeds North East - Aqila Choudhry - lost (3rd place to Lab)

By the way, the Valerie Vaz election in Walsall South also sets another record - it's the first time a brother-sister duo has been elected to the House of Commons - her brother is Keith Vaz MP.

I've spotted a probable omission though - why didn't the original BBC article include Salma Yaqoob, standing for the 'Respect-Unity Coalition' in Birmingham Hall Green? Perhaps she's not Brit-Asian? (although she is a psychotherapist...ahem) In any case, she came second, not too far behind Labour.

[Update: nice piece on One World South Asia on some of these British-Asian women MPs: 'Meet UK's new Asian women leaders']

Behud and Asian women strikers: Posts Revisited

Two interesting pieces in the press I spotted this week about the subject of past posts I've done:

>  Sunny Hundal in The Guardian on the Behud play by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti 

(re.  March 2010: 'Bhatti returns with Behud)

>  Sarfraz Manzoor on the Asian women trade unionists and the Grunwick strike

(re.  Sept 2009: 'Women's Library: Voices of South Asian workers')

An embarrassment of riches

You wait ages for a good British-Asian female writer/director to appear on the British cultural scene and then two come along at once.

Aswell as Bhatti's play Behud ('Beyond Belief') starting in London in April, Gurinder Chadha OBE's latest film, It’s a Wonderful Afterlife, also opens here in April. Of course the origin of the artmaker does not matter other than the fact that you're bound to get more diverse material - I mean which non-British Asian is going to be writing about abuse in Sikh gurdwaras or ghostly goings-on in a Hounslow-based family?
 
Chadha's latest film tells the story of a British-Asian mother (Shabana Azmi) whose obsession with marrying off her daughter (Goldy Notay) has hilarious results. As the potential suitors meet their sticky ends, policemen Mark Addy (The Full Monty) and Sendhil Ramamurthy (Heroes) are brought in to investigate. Other actors include Jimi Mistry, Sanjeev Bhaskar and Zoe Wanamaker.

So the film is a comedy with some ghostly and afterlife themes. I like the way that the film poster (above) apes the style of the huge Bollywood hoardings and yet the film title is clearly a play on Frank Capra's 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life - very fusion. Chadha, director of films such as ‘Bend It Like Beckham’, ‘Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging’ and ‘Bride and Prejudice’, has said that Wonderlife is a film "that in many ways takes me back to my warm intimate family values of Bend It Like Beckham. I shot in the same Indian-centric localities of London.” By that she's presumably referring to the areas around Hounslow, in the west London suburbs. Critics have said that the film delivers what is expected, with all the usual ingredients of a Chadha film - frankly, that sounds good to me.

If you'd like to attend, or watch online, a free event next week at which Gurinder Chadha will be speaking about her latest film, here are the details:

Date and Time:  Wednesday 24 March 201,  6pm-7.30pm
Location: Ian Gulland Lecture Theatre, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 7NW
Admission: Free, booking necessary (at z.arabadji[at]gold.ac.uk to book a place)
Event name: the annual Olive Till Memorial Debate, organised by the Department of Media and Communications.  The event will be live-streamed at the link here.

It's a Wonderful Afterlife opens in the UK on 21 April.

The London premiere takes place at the Odeon West End, Leicester Square, on April 12; a 'regional premiere' on April 14 in Birmingham at Vue Star City.

Bhatti returns with Behud

You might remember in 2004 a play by a young British-based Sikh playwright,Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, which was called off amidst protests by the Sikh community. Behzti (meaning 'dishonour/shame') included scenes of rape and violence in a 'gurdwara' (a Sikh place of worship) and was the subject of protests outside the Birmingham theatre were it had been playing.  The play became the work of art of the day to be used in the 'censorship versus free speech' debate much akin to the debate caused by Rushdie's Satanic Verses. And we look set to head that way again.

Bhatti has now penned her next  play, Behud ('beyond belief') which is a fictional examination of the whole Behzti affair. Good idea, in a inter-textual sort of way  - she is obviously a clever woman though she seems to have suffered a hard time since being targeted by zealots. I totally come down on the side of free speech (as long as it's not inciting violence against anyone of course, in which case you need to apply some boundaries) especially in a work of art depicting the little-talked about suffering of a group (ie. the subjects in the play who suffered the abuse) and deplored the mob displays by the hot-heads outside the theatre. You can read more about Bhatti and her new play in a Guardian piece which appeared last Monday, but for now she sounds defiant: 'I'm part of the community, and they're part of me. But I put myself in the firing line, and it looks as if that's where I'm staying."

Behud is at the Belgrade, Coventry (0247 655 3055), 27 March–10 April; then at the Soho Theatre, London (0207 478 0100), 13 April–8 May.

Also, on 17 & 26 April, 1 & 3 May at Soho Theatre there will be:
"A series of FREE talks and debates, exploring freedom of expression in British theatre today. A collaboration between Soho Theatre, leading magazine Index on Censorship, English PEN and Free Word, the UK’s first centre for literature, literacy and free expression. Speakers include: Lisa Goldman, Julia Farrington (Head of Arts & Events, Index on Censorship), Jonathan Heawood (Director, English PEN) and Shreela Ghosh (FreeWord)."

Land Gold Women: a film about 'honour' killing

News has been bubbling about a debut film by a young female director which is set in Birmingham, UK. Land Gold Women is about a so-called 'honour' killing in a British-Asian setting.

Writer and director Avantika Hari, still only in her twenties, wanted to make a film which explored exactly why a relative would murder one of their own female relatives. But this is not a film about an uneducated and unassimilated family - the father concerned is a university professor. The film has been doing the festival circuit - in December 2009 it won the Foreign Correspondent Association’s Purple Orchid Award for ‘Best Film’ and ‘Best Script/Screenplay’ at the Asian Festival of First Films in Singapore. (picture above courtesy Rewired PR)

Although produced by Bollywood's Vivek Agrawal, it's a small budget 'indie' film, in English and Urdu, shot in and around Birmingham. Writer/Director Avantika Hari worked closely with the Ashram Housing Association, an organisation which deals many cases of forced marriage every year. The cast are mostly British-Asian actors with Narinder Samra in the lead female role - you can hear her and others interviewed in this BBC clip. (Samra and the male lead in picture below).

The Land Gold and Women in the film's title refer to the elements in which 'honour' or 'izzat' are typically invested in such patriachal societies where these horrible events occur. It sounds to me like an especially timely film given the verdict last month on the horrifying case of the murder of Tulay Goren, a young Kurdish woman in the UK murdered by her own father for falling love with the wrong type of man as far as the family's men were concerned - the BBC reports on the case here.

Although such murders are thankfully rare, most women from such societies, including let's be honest many British-Asian women will know all about how their behaviour, dress and views are seen as reflecting on their family, to whatever degree. It's an element of Indian society that frankly used to cause me a lot of frustration - I felt it clipped the wings of so many young women while their brothers roamed free. So the film should be interesting...

Unfortunately I haven't heard about a UK distribution - the film had its (presumably one-off) UK premiere in February 2009 at Cineworld in Birmingham. More information here.

'Chick Lit'

I was astonished to find in my local library row upon row of shelving boldly titled 'Chick Lit'. Chick Lit? Yes, I know what it is, but I didn't realise that the term was now a formal category adopted by learned houses of book-lending. So astonished was I that I snapped this photo in the library, which is in the London Borough of Greenwich. 

I am more used to seeing the chick lit label on the backs of books or in Sunday supplement reviews, often in the same sentence as mentioning the Bridget Jones books rather than in library settings. I would be surprised to find a 'chick lit' section in our university library (I must ask our university Librarian her views on this...).

One source describes this 'genre' as "genre fiction within women's fiction which addresses issues of modern women often humorously and lightheartedly.The genre sells well, with chick lit titles topping bestseller lists and the creation of imprints devoted entirely to chick lit. It generally deals with issues of modern women humorously and lightheartedly. Although sometimes it includes romantic elements, women's fiction (including chick lit) is generally not considered a direct subcategory of the romance novel genre, because in Chick lit the heroine's relationship with her family or friends may be just as important as her romantic relationships."

Other sources too see 'chick lit' as linked to feminist themes and protangonists. So here the use of 'chick' is an appropriation of a previously dismissive/pejorative word used for women, much in the same way that the n-word (for 'black' people), or 'queer' (in 'gay' circles) are sometimes used.

It made me think about fashions in genre-naming. When will those other contenders - eg. 'mommy lit', 'curry lit', 'lad lit' etc. - see their name up in lights?  The reality is, of course, that local libraries, keen to hang on to Council budgets, are merely trying to cater for their audience (alongside now providing IT facilities) - I guess that 'chick lit' is a large category and does what it says on the tin, in a more exciting way than 'Fiction A-Z', as the other fiction shelves are named.  Though quite where they'd shelve Jane Austen, I don't know...

While I'm writing about library shelving categories (did I really just write that? That is worrying, I've got to get out more...), I had to chuckle when I saw an 'Eastern Journey' shelf (one-sixth of the space of 'chick lit', I might add, covering the whole planet east of Turkey!) complete with lotus flower decorations!  Come on Library, that is a bit 'eighties don't you think?

'What Fatima Did' at the Hampstead Theatre

Hampstead Theatre World Premiere

A Hampstead Theatre Production

What Fatima Did…

by Atiha Sen Gupta  
22 October - 7 November 2009


 This sounds a fascinating play which presses many topical buttons at the moment:

"Fatima Merchant is feisty and strong-willed.

At 17, she drinks, smokes and parties. On the eve of her 18th birthday, without word or warning or explanation, she adopts the hijab.

Suddenly, to her friends and family she is no longer the Fatima they thought they knew.

What Fatima Did... is a funny and provocative exploration of attitudes to identity, freedom and multiculturalism in contemporary London.

Hampstead Theatre has championed the work of Atiha Sen Gupta since she joined the theatre’s young company, Heat&Light, in 2003. She has written with Roy Williams and Tanika Gupta for Hampstead’s new writing festivals – Daring Parings 1 and 2. Now, her first solo full length play, commissioned when Atiha was 17, forms the centrepiece of Daring Pairings 3."

 The author herself hails from an interesting background - in an interview with the London Evening Standard we're told:

"As it turns out, she isn't Muslim and her parents are not religious. Her accountant father is half-Sri Lankan, half-white. Her Indian-born mother, Rahila Gupta, is a political journalist and activist for Southall Black Sisters (her co-authored book Circle of Light, about a real-life case of domestic violence, was made into the film Provoked, starring Aishwarya Rai)."

It's has some sizzling reviews - I wish I had heard about this earlier, still we have until Saturday...

British Asian men opting for 'home grown' marriages

Details of an interesting radio programme broadcast tomorrow (or 'listen again' within 7 days):

Home Grown

Wednesday 14 October

11.00-11.30am BBC RADIO 4

Yasmeen Khan investigates the growing trend among British Asian men to marry women from their native countries. Forget arranged or forced marriages, this is something completely different.

Despite being raised in the UK, many second-generation British Asian men are choosing to marry women from "back home" – from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh. These are young professionals, working alongside British Asian women in places such as investment banks, law companies and accounting practices.

This cultural phenomenon is unique to the second generation of British Asians. While it could be expected that those born in Britain would seek partners from a similar background or even marry out of the culture to a white partner, few would have predicted that a generation would end up struggling with a culture and identity that left them choosing a partner from their parents' country of origin.

Yasmeen, who has written on Asian dating from both a personal and a journalistic perspective, uncovers why many young British Asians want a "home-grown" girl, many of whom are just as educated and professional as their British Asian peers. She travels around the UK and asks young British Asian men and women what their expectations of a partner are, whether they find it hard to juggle their own desires with that of their parents and community, and – talking to the men who have brought a wife over from "back home" – whether the match has lived up to their expectations.

I hope she'll look at why it's more prevalent amongst men rather than British Asian women. I once knew a top city British Asian accountant who opted to marry a woman from India - she turned out to be less than docile and obedient, much to the chagrin of his family. So I offered her a job!

Monica Ali at the British Library

On Sunday 04 October:

Monica Ali

British Library

Monica Ali talks to Zaib Davids about her novels, including her latest book 'In the Kitchen'. They will discuss Ali's rich, complex characters and explore the themes of identity, loyalty and belonging that emerge from her work. Monica Ali is one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists and won Newcomer of the Year at the 2004 British Book Awards. Her first novel 'Brick Lane' was short listed for the Man Booker Prize, the George Orwell Prize for political writing and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Zaib Davids is a psychoanalyst and consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist at University College London Hospital. Presented in association with Connecting Conversations, this event is a part of the 2009 Black History Season.

Women's Library: Voices of South Asian workers

I was sent The Women's Library listing of upcoming events. The Library, now part of the London Met University, has a great programme but one event struck a chord - a display and discussion about the Asian women involved in the 1976 Grunwick and the 2005 Gate Gourmet strikes.

These events may hardly now register in the national memory but to the Asian community, to unionists and west Londoners they were big news. Each of the strikes, of course, had its own historical place and theme. Grunwick was an early example of action by minorities and making the trades unions pay attention whilst Gate Gourmet, an example of more modern themes of displacement by the next tier of immigrant labour, and a multi-national company playing legal footsie. But each resulted in a rarely seen phenomenon in the media - groups of Asian women standing up for their rights.

A personal connection is that my mother had worked for Gate Gourmet, though she had retired some 4 years before the strike. She was one of the many Asian women who had worked for British Airways for decades and was then transferred across when BA outsourced its catering to GG (and the catering's never been as good since!). It should be an interesting day on 28 November.

See here for booking details.

Nawal El Saadawi in conversation

Last Friday I had the pleasure of hearing Dr Nawal El Saadawi - Egyptian writer, doctor, activist and feminist are just some of the labels used to describe this remarkable woman. She was 'in conversation' at a event at Goldsmiths, University of London, as part of a three-day Race in a Modern World conference there.

It was at the age of seven, she told the packed audience, that she became aware of inequality in the home with her brother. Whilst she did more housework, more schoolwork and was "more intelligent" the brother got to roam free and be feted by the family and society (yeah, we know about that one...). The experience burned into her the desire to express injustice - she did this by writing. At first a letter to God - but she didn't know his address and he didn't answer. She then moved on to stories and eventually, award-winning novels, writing about the rights of women and of the poor, with criticisms of sham democracies ('mere voting is not democracy...') and oppressive religions. Her most well-known novel, Woman at Point Zero, was published in Beirut in 1973 and she has clocked up over 40 novels altogether.

She spoke about a relationship between "creativity and dissidence" - if you feel injustice and you feel you can't do anything, then "at least you can write". And this she did, at a great personal cost of censorship, imprisonment and exile. In 1981 Nawal El Saadawi publicly criticized President Anwar Sadat's policies and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned. She was also on a fundamentalist 'death list' following publication of her novel The Fall of the Imam in Cairo in 1988.

El Saadawi also had much to tell us about capitalism, patriarchy and imperialism - none of it flattering of course. Having been in London whilst the G20 theatre was going on two days before, she said she saw the posed photograph of Brown, Obama and Sarkozy and they looked to her like "the gang of the world", trying to solve a crisis which they created. She would tell them what to do, we were told, "but they wouldn't let me in".

She regaled us with a detailed tale of how the original manuscript was stolen, years ago on a train to Belgium, of her most recent novel, Zina, The Stolen Novel, (2008). Dr Nawal El Saadawi spoke with great humour, intelligence and, perhaps belying her 77 years, with a little occasional mischief. I'm glad I went to see her, it was an inspirational experience.

You can read more about her here, at her publisher's website here and, if you want to, a Guardian interview from yesterday, here .