Thank you to the publisher for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review!I don’t read many anthologies but, as a British Muslim woman, I was really excited to read this one. This is a diverse collection of short stories, essays, plays and poetry from Muslim women across the UK.Unlike most anthologies I’ve read, the pieces here aren’t connected by a single theme, but some of those that really stood out to me were written on the themes of identity, gender and cultural traditions. I...

Worth it for Mahfouz's writing alone.

A handful of good pieces, the best being the editor's Battleface. There's quite a lot of artsy-fartsy writing in the anthology, and oftentimes I found myself thinking, I have no idea what I've just read. Perhaps it'd help if you're more familiar with the culture?

I really wanted to love this book, but it just wasn't what I expected to find. If a reader wants to get a glimpse of "British Muslim Women's" lives, this is not the book for you. It's a collection of short stories, essays, poetry, and a play, with varying themes, all written by "British Muslim women". I expected more pieces to be about the women's personal experiences, identities and challenges. Yet most pieces were present in the collection just because the authors are "British Muslim women", n...

I remember when I first came across news of this collection on twitter. It had yet to be published but a picture of it had been released and the title alone was enough to blow me away, 'The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write' - edited by Sabrina Mahfouz. Just the title alone told me that this was granting British Muslim Women the agency, the voice that we need!•This collection features work by 22 British Muslim Women, ranging from successful, established writers such as Kamila S...

Some contributions that are brilliant, hit-you-like-nothing-you've-read-pieces.Others so-so.An unusual read

I have been wanting to read this one ever since Emma Watson added it to her book club, I was so excited that she picked something related to Muslims! I started reading it a couple of years ago and I didn't enjoy it at all, and I thought to myself maybe it's me, maybe I'm too busy, and that I need to read it when I am on vacation to enjoy its hidden gems. I tried again and just couldn't go past 30%, and as this year is coming to an end I decided to give it one last try and I REALLY WANTED TO LIK...

This impressive collection of work by contemporary British Muslim women is not only timely and important, but it crucially pops the bubble of the notion of the The British Muslim. The texts range a cross genre – fiction, journalism, poetry, commentary and more – and across modes – of critique, of anger, of despair, of the erotic, of the meditative, of location and dislocation – to challenge readers and dominant voices about Muslimah to think and reflect on complexity, difference, diversity and d...

A mixed bag and - sad to say - slightly disappointing for this reader. It promises so much more than it delivers. I’m all for giving new young writers a platform but in this case they somewhat dilute the quality of this collection. Some of the pieces could have been shorter, others I wanted to read more of. In a nutshell, great concept but would have benefited from a more critical and objective editor.

What does it mean to be British and Muslim? This is a question these writers tackle with stunning clarity. Modern day British society has a varied sense of cultural heritage; it is a society that is changing and moving forward as it adds more and more voices to the population, but it is also one that has an undercurrent of anxiety and fear towards those who are minorities. So this collection displays how all that fear is received; it comes in the form of stereotypical labels and racial prejudice...

Such an important collection that centers the voices of British Muslim women. While I expected a series of nonfiction essays, The Things I Would Tell You contains short fiction, poetry, essays, and more. These women write with an unapologetic fierceness that both speaks to their experiences of marginalization while rising above and beyond it. Some of my favorite pieces included Chimene Suleyman’s “Us,” a short story that centers the imminent danger of stereotypes, Triska Hamid’s “Islamic Tinder,...

This book = why representation matters. If you want a better and clearer picture of Muslim women AND men, read this book. If you’re really interested in understanding Muslim men and women, this book is for you. So many amazing stories, authors, poets, journalists and playwrights. My favourite story is Kamila Shamsie’s ‘The Girl Next Door’, I was in a complete daze after reading her short story. It caused me to sincerely reflect. It starts off as an innocent gossiping tone taking place at a makeu...

Reading The Things I Would Tell You was like coming home and knowing that you're safe. That you're understood. Finally. A collection of stories, plays, poetry and commentaries, British women of colour lay their voice on the frustrating and tiresome image of the 'Muslim woman'. From Islamic Tinder to a grandmother who was a former prostitute, I loved that the book included literary heavy weights like Leila Aboulela as well as first time published Nafeesa Hamid and a 14 year old student from a loc...

As the book is a cluster of different works, I'd rather not rate it (but if I had to I'd give it 2,5 stars as an average). The reason I picked this book is because I was interested in a viewpoint which is different from mine, mainly in terms of the religious aspect of life, and as a whole I was not disappointed. There were several works which I quite liked, in no particular order:'The Girl Next Door' by Kamila Shamise;'Blood and Broken Bodies' by Shaista Aziz - about so called 'honour killings',...

What I liked most about it (and like feels like such a bad word) were the poems. There were a lot of stories that I found interesting, if not all of them and it gave me another eye-opener on the road that I am now taking with the last books I read. The resembles with one of the chapters to the book of Why I am no longer talking to white people about race, did not surprise me and yet it did. The effect that Brexit had on the racists feeling of some people in England. It is a shame, more I can't s...

Quite recently , Emma Watson chose this book for her feminist book club : Our Shared Shelf . Everyone was picking it up , and so did I ( thanks to Saqi Books & Elisabeth) .The things I would tell you is an anthology edited by Sabrina Mahfouz , a British/Egyptian play/screen writer and a poet . In other words , it is a collection of works ( short stories , plays , essays , poems ) written by british muslim women and It mainly examines a lot of different perceptions of what s being a muslim woman

A collection of short stories, plays, poetry and essays this was an insightful yet heart-breaking read. It hits hard as there was so much in here that I could relate to. Added to my- must read, timely, we need to keep having conversations. My favourites-- Chimene Suleyman- Us - Aliyah Hasinah Holder- New Blood- Kamila Shamsie- The Girl Next Door- Imtiaz Dharker- The Right Word/ Aixa at the Alhambra/ Never trust the daffodils and I need, (which was my favourite(- Ahdaf Soueif- Mezzaterra- Seema B...

I probably never would have picked up this book if it were not for a book club I participated in - and that would have been a shame, because I really would have missed something! “The things I would tell you” is an anthology, featuring the writing of 22 different authors from a lot of different backgrounds, who all have in common (as the subtitle suggests) that they are British Muslim women. Most of the writing is fiction (a lot of short stories and poems), but there are also some non-fiction te...

I read this book because Emma Watson told me to (via Our Shared Shelf). My first impression was that I probably didn't understand as much of it, especially the poetry, in no small part because I don't have as much cultural knowledge. And that's okay. I liked being confronted by that. There's a good mix of fiction/non-fiction. Poetry vs prose. British locale vs foreign locale. The role of religion was varied throughout as well. By that I mean for the majority of the stories, faith/religion are cr...

Three and a half stars. The quality of writing is excellent and the talent of the authors beyond doubt, but the first-person singular is overdone. A few contributions are written in the third person and are the better for it, but the skewed use of "I" starts to feel tiresome after a while. Naturally, this is not the authors' fault; the editor presumably chose these works as representative of British Muslim women, and a clue to the reasoning behind those choices can be found in the title, the thi...