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South Asian Sisters Speak

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South Asian Sisters Speak

SASS creates safe spaces for South Asian women in the UK to share their experiences.

We run conversation-style events around the themes of mental health, identity and history, and run the Brown Girl's Book Club bi-monthly.

07/08/2026

📚 wrapped up July by delving into Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Interpreter of Maladies. The nine short stories explore the experiences of Bengali immigrants in America and how they are caught, to varying degrees, between their roots and the “new world”. Our vibrant discussion covered themes of migration, displacement, and loneliness. We also reflected on Lahiri’s talent for capturing the silences inside marriages, and how food becomes the language couples reach for when words fail.

Stay tuned for our upcoming book announcement 🫶🏾

26/07/2026

SASS is back with another book swap 📚🧺☀️

Join us in St. James’s Park on Saturday 15 August to connect with our community of South Asian women - and don’t forget to bring a book to swap! We’ll be providing snacks, drinks, and good vibes 💕 If you are a fan of our book club, this is not one to miss!

Make sure you grab your tix from the link in bio 🎟️

We will share our exact location in St James’ Park on the day 📍

See you soon 💞

19/07/2026

Moments of stillness, connection, and reflection from yesterday’s Reclaiming Wellness event 🧘🏽‍♀️♥️

Thank you so much everyone who joined us yesterday! It was a perfect start to our weekends to spend the morning looking at wellness on a deeper level — divorcing it from ideas of wellness as an individual practice or capitalist imperatives to self-optimize — and returning care as a point of connection with the people around us and a retreat from the pace of daily life.

Huge thanks to Nidhi Thakkar Valecha | Yoga Teacher and for joining us + GirlDreamer for helping us organise this event! 🫶🏽

11/07/2026

VOICES FROM KASHMIR 📝

Jammu & Kashmir is one of the most contested and militarised regions on earth, where the legacy of partition casts a long shadow.

Despite being a constant flashpoint for geopolitical conflict within South Asia, the region remains largely excluded from conversations in the diaspora. Do we ever try to understand Kashmir on its own terms? Or the everyday lives of the people living under occupation?

This workshop, co-facilitated by Niharika Pandit, author of Occupying the Everyday: Militarisation and Gendered Politics of Living in Kashmir and a Kashmiri PhD researcher and photojournalist, will use craft, personal accounts, and photography to facilitate learning and reflection on the history and present realities of life in Kashmir.

If you want to deepen your understanding or start from scratch, join us on Wednesday, the 29th of July.

📆 Wednesday, 29th July
🕣 7pm - 9pm
📍Gallery Cafe, Bethnal Green
🎟️ £5 from the 🔗 in our bio

07/07/2026

✨RECLAIMING WELLNESS✨

Coming up soon our event - created in collaboration with - is coming up sooooo soon 🤸🏽‍♀️

Join us and for an afternoon of yoga, hair oiling, and a reclamation of South Asian self care practices 💌

Spaces for this event are super limited so get your tix asap! (🔗 in bio)

03/07/2026

Thrilled to announce our July pick, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri! This short story collection is one of our favourites - come along whether you’ve managed to read none, one, or all of the stories.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s prize-winning debut explores the lives of Indians in exile – of people navigating between the strict traditions they’ve inherited and the baffling New World they must encounter every day.

Whether set in Boston or Bengal, these sublimely understated stories, imbued with humour and subtle detail, speak with eloquence to anyone who has ever felt the yearnings of exile or the emotional confusion of an outsider.

📚 Pick up your copy at our page (link in bio) and have a read with us!

🎟️ Tix are available via our Eventbrite page. We’re looking forward to having you as always!

01/07/2026

With Pride month coming to an end, but still a whole slew of events for the q***r community coming up, we thought it was a good moment to shine a little light on the voices of the q***r women of South Asia 👩🏽‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏾

From memoir to fantasy to lit fic (and a bit of YA for fun) our recs have something for everyone:

💟 Facing the Mirror: Le***an Writing from India by Ashwini Sukthankar is a collection that stretches back from the 60s to the 90s, chronicling first hand the anger, humour, vulnerability, sensuality and courage of the le***an experience in that era.

💟 We Have Always Been Here by Samra Habib is a q***r Muslim memoir that starts with the author’s childhood as part of a threatened minority sect in Pakistan, prompting their arrival in Canada as a refugee. It stands as a testament to embracing yourself and allowing your loved ones to embrace you.

💟 Marriage of a Thousand Lies by SJ Sindu begins with Lucky and Krishna, a le***an and gay man from the Eelam Tamil diaspora in a marriage of convenience. A visit back to Sri Lanka creates an unexpected reconnection for Lucky, who is made to question the value of the life she has created for herself.

💟 Are You Enjoying by Mira Sethi also has a lavender marriage at its core. The set of short stories balances stomach churning tension with bursts of humour, as you watch the characters tumble through vignettes of contemporary Pakistan.

💟 Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating by Adiba Jaigirdar is FUN. A classic YA romcom stuffed with tropes, you can’t help but be endeared to the two girls as they navigate popularity, family, and their own budding feelings for each other. It can be your silly summer read or a gift to a young person in your life who might see themselves reflected back.

13/06/2026

RECLAIMING SOUTH ASIAN SELF-CARE PRACTICES

It’s almost cliché at this point to note that ‘wellness’ culture and the associated practices that end up adopted into the mainstream borrow heavily from South Asia. Seeing customs that were previously shunned as unclean or primitive being rebranded and divorced entirely from their origins can create a weird tension when we simply try to continue the traditions we were brought up with.

That’s why on the 18th of July we’re collabbing with GirlDreamer to bring you an afternoon centred around rest, community, and the reclamation of South Asian traditions of care.

We’ll begin with a yoga session (open to all abilities!) led by Nidhi Thakkar Valecha | Yoga Teacher and grounded in original yogic principles.

We’ll then move into a traditional hair oiling ritual led by , where you’ll have the opportunity to exchange this practice with a partner or enjoy it solo if you prefer.

To close, will serve a delicious Satvik vegetarian light lunch, giving us time to connect, reflect, and continue our conversations.

Tickets can be found at the 🔗 in our bio.

Hopefully you’ll leave with a renewed appreciation for our cultural practices 🫶🏽❤️‍🩹🤸🏽‍♀️

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Hair oil ingredients: 100% vegan, natural and organic - key ingredients:Organic Sweet Almond Oil, Castor Oil, Mustard Seed Oil, Olive Oil, Argan Oil, Amla Fruit Extract, Wheatgerm Oil, Vitamin ENatural fragrance blend containing Cardamom, Cedarwood, Pink Grapefruit, Bergamot, and Benzoin essential oils.

Allergen Information:Contains Almond (tree nut) and Wheat (wheatgerm oil). May also contain naturally occurring fragrance allergens from essential oils.

08/05/2026

We are so excited to announce our May pick and 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist title, Amma by Saraid de Silva!

1951, Singapore. Ten-year-old Josephina kills her abuser.

This event becomes the defining moment in the lives of Josephina, her daughter Sithara, and her granddaughter Annie.

The effects cascade through generations as Annie sets out across the world to discover what happened to fracture her family.

Set in Sri Lanka, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and London, Amma is a novel about how the past lives with us forever, and wherever we are.

Written in sensuous, vivid prose, Amma is a story of the rich history and unknown future of the Sri Lankan diaspora - and of one family desperately trying to find peace.

📚 Pick up your copy at our page (link in bio) and have a read with us!

🎟️ Tix are available via our Eventbrite page. We’re looking forward to having you as always!

15/04/2026

We’re back with another storytelling event! This time we’re spending the evening with Anisha Parmar, a jeweller and curator to talk about the theme of adornment 🌟👸🏽💖

Throughout the South Asian subcontinent, women use jewellery in a myriad of styles for self-expression and self-preservation. Both striking visually and potent with meaning, how do our practices of adornment tie us to the women in our lives and communities? What does the way we wear our jewellery signal to the world around us?

After we hear from Anisha, she will lead us through a meditation with our treasured pieces, and we’ll then be passing the mic to YOU to hear your reflections and stories. Bring your own personal 5-minute story. Tell us about your most treasured piece of jewellery or your earliest memory of women in your family adorning themselves.

Come with a story, get inspired to share at the event or come along and listen, all welcome!

🗓️ Thursday 7th May, 7pm-9pm
📍 St. Margaret’s House, Bethnal Green
🎟️ via the St. Margaret’s House website (🔗 in the usual place)

Address

7 Mercer Walk, Covent Garden
London
WC2H 9FA

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