Hi! I’m Ayman, a 22-year-old Creative Director, who runs her own creative magazine for dual-heritage South Asians called Samajh My Gal.

We only launched this March and we’re already onto our next issue. It’s important you know, though, that before the idea existed outside of my Notion board, it was just me doing and trying to find ways to get my own writing out there. I’ve been writing since I was thirteen and I’ve been writing poetry since I was nineteen, establishing myself as a creative writer before anything else. Naturally, I did an English Literature with Creative Writing degree but struggled to find places that really spotlit people like me, who, at the time, was a confused, young, dual-heritage Desi, trying to find somewhere I actually belonged. So, at the start of this year, when I was given the chance to launch Samajh properly, you best believe that I grabbed it.

Samajh was started for reasons way more personal than the need to fill the representation gap. It began as a passion project. I wanted to utilise and showcase the amazing contacts, networks and creatives I had accumulated on my own personal brand’s social media but in a way that was also creative. More than half of those people were, like me, dual-heritage South Asians that were quite clearly trying to explore and navigate their identity in their creative work. The more I noticed their in-between feelings, the more obvious my own opinions on the matter became – that as a British Pakistani myself, my entire life to date was a series of picking and choosing between my cultural and national label. That was my driving force for Samajh – to try and accommodate, spotlight and celebrate the South Asians of the diaspora no matter how they wanted to practise their identity.

At the start of this year, we were commissioned by a brilliant organisation based in Oldham called Peshkar, where we used the money to launch Samajh My Gal’s platform both online and in person. The Introductory Issue, Between Both, encouraged creatives to explore that in-between feeling a lot of us face, where you’re ‘too white’ for your family ‘back home’ and ‘too brown’ for your friends. It brought together a variety of different art forms from poetry to photography, graphic design to short stories! And it became quite clear, quite early on to me that this was a community that needed more. More representation, more celebration and more spotlighting.

Then came July, where we hosted our first ever South Asian open mic afternoon with Cultureword to celebrate South Asian heritage month. To my surprise, it was a sellout! We had poets, performers, rappers and singers come from various parts of the UK to participate, connect and share their creative work, which was further proof of the necessity of spaces like this. We named the open mic In Our Words and asked our performers to present work about their cultural roots and heritage. It was beautiful being in a space where so many different elements were relatable and on-topic for us. We had a poet come all the way from Edinburgh (Nabila Mahmood) and someone who offered us a contrasting perspective as a first-generation immigrant from Pakistan, Nimra Zafar. It was a great afternoon of collective celebration and understanding. Thank you again to everyone who came, supported and performed. You are part of this change too!

After we listened to our performers, we made a special announcement regarding the future of the magazine, that we were opening submissions again. And that leads us to now. Submissions to issue #1, Almost Ours, are open and won’t be closing un the 6th August! This theme explores that deep sense of Desi nostalgia a lot of us feel, where we desire to return to a time we never got to experience but know through memory and story. For me, that feeling is strong when I think about my grandparents’ house. It’s revisiting the old photo albums stored under the dust of our beds, asking our parents “that was really you?” on a mundane Sunday. It’s the ‘old is gold’ Bollywood movies we sit and watch in the winter. It’s anything and everything that reminds us of the beauty of our culture.

From now until the 6th August, we’re looking for a range of creative work including (and not limited to) poetry, fiction, photography, graphic design and creative non-fiction. For a chance to be published amongst other talented Desi creatives, submit to our magazine here for FREE!

Samajh My Gal exists for the South Asians of the diaspora, who are sick of explaining who they are. Thank you for reading this and to keep an eye out on what we’re doing next, please follow or email us…

On our email samajhmygal@gmail.com

On our Insta/ TikTok @samajhmygal

On our website samajhmygal.com

Thank YOU!