‘We are here because you were there’

Ambalavaner Sivanandan

This pointed aphorism accompanied my reading of two releases that shoulder the ongoing work of activism against colonialism and empire. Randa Abdel-Fattah’s Discipline and Raaza Jamshed’s début novel, What Kept You?, are both set here, in Australia, but their characters are willed continually to look there, their displaced gaze stacked with invisible lives unseen by friends, colleagues, and intimates. One is urgent, desperate, and resolute; the other wracked by guilt that immobilises.