Wasafiri: The history of a little magazine and the material conditions affecting the publication and reception of BAME writing in Britain, 1980-2020

这个项目将探索Wasafiri的背景和历史，Wasafiri是一本“小杂志”，自20世纪80年代初以来，它就为英国黑人、亚洲和少数民族作家提供了一个重要的论坛和平台。利用独特的档案资源，现在收藏在大英图书馆当代馆藏中，尚未公开，这本杂志的特殊历史将作为一个范例，提供更广泛的见解，以了解从20世纪80年代撒切尔主义令人担忧的时代到现在，影响英国BAME写作的生产、出版和接受的物质条件。考虑到BL最近获得的档案，该杂志出版35周年的庆祝活动以及目前可用于跟踪写作历史的材料的稀缺性，该项目尤其及时，包括几个现在知名人物的早期历史，早在他们成为国家和全球知名人物之前就在该杂志上刊登过。该杂志在全球视野和多样化经典的包容性目标方面的先见之明，将在现在的后殖民研究和跨教育和出版部门的非殖民化课程的背景下具有启发性。

This project will explore the background and history of Wasafiri, a 'little magazine' known since the early 1980s for its pioneering role in providing a critical forum and platform for Britain's black, Asian and minority ethnic writers. Drawing on unique archival sources, now housed in the British Library Contemporary Collections and not as yet publicly available, the particular history of this magazine will act as a paradigm to offer broader insights into the material conditions affecting the production, publication and reception of BAME writing in Britain from the fraught era of Thatcherism in the 1980s to the present. The project is particularly timely given the BL's recent acquisition of the archive, the magazine's celebration of 35 years of publishing and the scarcity of material currently available in tracking the history of this writing, including the early history of several now well-known figures, featured in the magazine long before they were to rise to national and global prominence. The prescience of the magazine's mission in terms of its global vision and inclusive aim to diversify the canon will be illuminating in the context of postcolonial studies now and moves to decolonise the curriculum across the educational and publishing sectors.