What Does Community Mean to You?

We sent a callout asking people what they thought when they saw the word ‘community’. We received responses of all kinds, highlighting tender feelings, appreciation, and questions. You can read the entries below.

  • My journey with trying to plant my roots in a particular community has never been straightforward, particularly in my teenage years. And now, at nearly 30 years old, I think I have concluded that I don't belong to just one group.

    I think about my Pakistani community, and I love how we seemingly don't leave anyone behind, but I feel like this is conditional. Our elders aren't sent off to a nursing home, we take care of them at home and a lot of them retain their independence even at 80. But we also abandon those who don't live up to the standards those same elders set, a "tough love" I can't understand.

    I think about my friends; people from all walks of life. But like most British Asians, I don't feel 100% accepted in the Western world I've been brought up in, but I know I'd also never be able to find a home in Pakistan. Do my white friends see me, colour and all? Or am I just one of their British pals, my struggles as a coloured woman never given a single thought?

    I think about myself as an ally to the LGBTQ+ community, and the guilt I feel about my tug of war between my wholehearted belief of love is love and the wholehearted belief of my faith.

    I've come to accept I can craft my own community, and sometimes there will be conflict. But my chosen community comes with empathy, a willingness to learn, understand, and coexist if not embrace. And I'm okay to dip my toes into each community I feel a part of me lives in, if they'll have me.

Nay is a writer from Yorkshire whose work is focused across mental health and identity, to popular media and trends. She loves comic books, horror and spending time with her cat.

  • Neighbours are bricks that make the street, concrete.

    Bonded by love and cement.

    If you've ever ran out of sugar for yer' tea

    Ask for a cup? I'll give yer a kg

    Community

    Your bath stopped working, water is running dry, nip down t' mine, have a soak and unwind

    Community

    I heard you shouting last night, was everything alright?

    Can you watch my kids whilst they play out till past 5?

    Community

    A circle of hands that clasp together like a daisy chain, despite the petals not sharing the same colour, the blood still runs the same brick red from the same wound.

    We eat in unison.

    We bleed in unison.

    And we heal in unison.

Aamina is a published poet who enjoys writing about dialect, culture and the inner self. Instagram: @aaminakhanwrites

  • my grandmother cannot pronounce

    community. instead, she says cumintea,

    and she says it with her whole chest,

    because she believes in it. no one

    corrects her, because we too, believe.

    jeerachai. she could also call it this.

    nani. i could also call her that.

    i don’t know how to say family

    in punjabi, yet she still helps

    me feel its universal meaning

    with every hair oiling, my shoulder

    blades pressed firmly against her

    arthritic knees. she works anglicization

    from my roots, detangles my language.

    she even pronounces love with a b, lub,

    and this too, i don’t need to correct.

Roshni (she/her/hers) is a Punjabi poet and interdisciplinary artist writing and playing on the unceded lands of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, colonially known as Vancouver, British Columbia. Through her work, she explores the relationships between cultural and ancestral knowledge, migration, language, and the body. Email / Instagram

  • I think the immediate ideas that come to mind when I read the word community are that it forms your people and your place. It is surrounding yourself with those that understand and wrapping yourself up in their like-mindedness. It is a comforting embrace. A safe space within which to find yourself.

    The importance of community has only been strengthened in this fast-paced world, where you can often feel like you are being left behind. Community becomes a hand to hold onto whilst you find your feet. All together it’s a balancing act, that if we all lean and help each other, then nobody will fall.

    But a journey towards finding a community, your community, isn’t the easiest. And that if you haven’t found your people yet, there is always time. They can often be found hiding in corners you would never even think to look. Throughout my life I have been nurtured by different communities. I know the community I currently strive for would be different from a community that would have comforted me in my early teens. My nine year old self found community in Oddisi, where now I find community with writers and in Queer Brown spaces.

    We are ever evolving, our identity, who we are, and this reflects in the communities that we seek.

Zulema is an aspiring writer, who’s work often centres the diaspora. She is a lover of all things film and literature. Instagram: @zulemarose

  • I walk in and the humidity greets me

    Before uncle’s salaam

    He switches comfortably to Urdu after

    I respond, wa’alikum salaam, uncle ji

    His shop is small

    With fresh pastries on display

    The radio is punctuated with white noise

    And this reminds me of the shops back home

    Where both the walls are painted with sweets without prices

    I ask how much?

    Cost

    import and low price beta

    I laugh and mention there’s a poundland down the road

    He says I know beta I know beta I know beta

    He doesn’t bargain

    And it doesn’t feel like pakistan

    Instead, he lets me and my cousin leave the shop with some free sweets

    I solemnly smile with a bag full of treats

  • They see us as

    Taxi drivers, cleaners, takeaway cooks,

    Corner shop owners, bus drivers, brick layers

    Warehouse workers

    I see us as honourable blue-collar hands

    Collecting calluses like badges

    As a testament to the service

    Warm brown hands provide

    We are hospitality embodied

    To the capacity of a cup that never spills

    Like a well that never stops

    Zam Zam.

    We continue to flow

    We pick the ripest fruit off trees

    To feed not just our kids but

    every stranger that becomes a guest

    We engage in more than just small talk

    and polite chit chat

    We even talk about topics other

    than the British weather

    We leave our shoes by the door

    put patheya in the pan

    get the biscuits tin and pray there’s no

    sewing equipment inside and let go

    a sigh of relief as we prepare

    some sulunay to put on the table

    before we leave, we force money into

    the hands of our closest mehmaan’s

    a secret handshake or as the kids call it the

    money salaam.

    Our goodbye’s last long enough

    To hold up traffic

    Agitate our kids but

    Soon enough they’ll do the same as

    Our blue collar badges

    Are worn on their hearts

    This is what the kids know

    This is how desi us.

    These are the honourable jobs

    That blue collar hands use to paint

    Part of the union jack

Zara is currently at University where she is studying English With Creative Writing. Her poetry often explores the South Asian diaspora and her identity as a Muslim British South Asian. Instagram: @spokenbysehar

  • I was once asked to describe what communities I would see myself a part of. The answers circulating the room were along the lines of “motherhood, my local football club, art communities” and I wondered whether my singular answer of being a part of the “British Asian community” was enough.

    I had my own family community that surrounded where I lived. That moved on to my group of friends and after school clubs. But now, I feel like I lack a genuine sense of community beyond my doorstep. Am I an artist? A writer? I like doing those things in my spare time, sure, but what made something a community?

    It was then that I noticed that community can be anything, and being South Asian in a northern working class area in a predominantly white country meant I had multiple pockets and circles I could dip in and out of. It doesn’t necessarily mean a specific group with specific people I might know by name. It can be anything; the group of people I seemingly always bump into at gigs, the online mutuals who always hype each other up even if we’ve never met, the knowing smile I give to the only other brown person in the room.

    You can find your own pockets of community anywhere – there will always be somewhere you belong.

  • I walk into a room and search for a familiar face. Maybe someone who looks like me. I’ll even settle for someone who even noticed I walked in. In crowds of people, I search even more. Something we have in common – a backpack decorated with patches, henna on their hands, or a cool shirt.

    We signify ourselves in the way we present, leaving little clues to who we are in the hopes of finding that connection. Yes, I’m brown and proud of it. But I also love sports, and plants, and hiking. I haven’t found my people yet, but I’m enjoying finding myself.

Henna is a bookworm who is finally dipping her toes into writing. She enjoys journaling, long walks and a good podcast.

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