Raaza Jamshed
Raaza Jamshed is a writer drawn to the poetics of gender, language, and identity. She is a doctoral candidate at the Writing and Society Research Center at Western Sydney University. Her short story won the second prize for the 2019 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. Her recent short stories have appeared in Meanjin and Australian Book Review.
All essays by Raaza Jamshed
Muhammad
Naming is a political act as it ascribes a category to a nine-year-old, gives him a role pre-defined for him and accepted by the majority of the population, and anything outside of it, any difference to the norm as seen by society, including my insistence that my son be called by his name, is seen as an anomaly. A child’s foreignness isn’t affirmed by the politics that ascribe him other names; the politics of naming a child by other than his real name creates his foreignness in the first place.