Storying Relationships: Young British Muslims Speak and Write about Sex and Love

Storying Relationships explores the sexual lives of young British Muslims in their own words and through their own stories. It finds engaging and surprising stories in a variety of settings: when young people are chatting with their friends; conversing more formally within families and communities; scribbling in their diaries; and writing blogs, poems and books to share or publish. These stories challenge stereotypes about Muslims, who are frequently portrayed as unhappy in love and sexually different. The young people who emerge in this book, contradicting racist and Islamophobic stereotypes, are assertive and creative, finding and making their own ways in matters of the body and the heart. Their stories – about single life, meeting and dating, pressure and expectations, sex, love, marriage and dreams – are at once specific to the young British Muslims who tell them, and resonant reflections of human experience.

Table of Contents:
List of Tables List of Figures and Captions Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1: Single Chapter 2: Meeting Interlude 1: Coming to Terms Chapter 3: Dating Chapter 4: Love Interlude 2: Speaking to Stereotypes Chapter 5: Pressure Chapter 6: Married Interlude 3: (Not So) Different Chapter 7: Sex Chapter 8: Dreaming Conclusion Guide to Literary Sources Bibliography

About the Author :
Richard Phillips is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield, UK. His books include Mapping Men and Empire: A Geography of Adventure (1996); Decentring Sexualities: Politics and Representations Beyond the Metropolis (2000); Sex, Politics and Empire: A Postcolonial Geography (2006); and Muslim Spaces of Hope (2009, Zed Books). Claire Chambers is a Senior Lecturer in Global Literature at the University of York. She is the author of Britain Through Muslim Eyes (2015), British Muslim Fictions: Interviews with Contemporary Writers (2011), and Rivers of Ink: Selected Essays (2017). She is a regular columnist for Dawn, the longest-running broadsheet newspaper in Pakistan. Nafhesa Ali is a Research Associate at the University of Sheffield, UK. Her doctorate focused upon the experiences of ageing among British Asians in northern England, a subject on which she has published articles in journals of Sociology. Indrani Karmakar is Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Literary Studies in English in Rhodes University, South Africa. She completed her PhD from the University of York, UK. In her fellowship, she is expanding and reworking her doctoral thesis on Indian women writers' depictions of motherhood into a monograph. Her research interests include postcolonial literature, South Asian literature, feminist theories, motherhood, women's writing, and diasporic literature. She is Social Media Editor for the Journal of Commonwealth Literature. Kristina Diprose is a Senior Research Fellow within the Born in Bradford team at the Bradford Institute for Health Research. She completed her PhD in human geography at the University of Leeds in 2015, then worked on several research projects at the University of Sheffield: Intergenerational Justice, Consumption and Sustainability in Comparative Perspective, Localising the Sustainable Development Goals, and Storying Relationships. She has also worked in research and evaluation for The Young Foundation and national Citizens Advice. Her research interests include childhood, youth, and intergenerational research, co-production, and sustainability through an environmental justice lens.

Review :
“This is a groundbreaking book and its subject matter long overdue for discussion. It brings the story of the Muslims of Britain up-to-date. Only when we know what goes on behind closed doors and in the hearts of the young can we hope to understand the community. The authors have gathered the material with wisdom, sincerity, and scholarship. It is a must-read for Muslims and non-Muslims alike.” 'Storying Relationships is an excellent response to the pigeonholing of diasporic Muslims as flat, restricted characters—the exploitative or oppressive man and the subjugated woman with no choice and agency. The authors of this groundbreaking study not only counter that assumption by showing a range of Muslim lifestyles, sexualities and subjectivities—straight, gay, bisexual, bi-curious—giving them a platform, but also capture the humor in their stories of self-discovery, from matchmaking disasters to halal dating anxieties. The diverse perspectives offer heart-warming experiences as young adult Muslims break their silence about taboos, and brazenly embrace new possibilities while holding on to cherished traditions.' This illuminating volume sparkles with the fictional words and real voices of young British Muslims talking and writing about love, religion, relationships and the realities of married life and in doing so, ‘speak to stereotypes’ about tradition and taboo topics with a degree of frankness that may surprise many people.