Emma Woolf’s session on The Ministry of Thin drew a large audience on the second day of the Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) 2016. Those in attendance took delight in her views on the body image.
Talking about her 10 years of anorexia, Emma Woolf, the great-niece of Virginia Woolf told the audience, “Coming out of anorexia was hard and painful. It is more shameful than saying that you are alcoholic.”
The second and final day of LLF 2016 started off quietly with a smaller crowd in attendance. However, people started to come in during the second half of the day.
Sessions were full but one could still find a spot to sit.
Talking about her book “The Ministry of Thin: How the Pursuit of perfection got out of control”, she said, “It is a manifesto for women to stop feeling guilty that you are hungry or that you are taking up so much space.”
“Why is there personal body hatred? Why can’t we say we love the way we look?” she asked.
On a question by the moderator Ashok Ferrey, she confirmed that personal body hatred had nothing to do with men, “It’s a battle with ourselves. It’s about the things that we say to ourselves that manifest this hatred.”
Talking about the need for awareness about mental illness, she told Pakistan Today after the session, “Yeah we need a lot more awareness. We need to talk about it. I think the sessions are where we talk about it. It’s the first step towards achieving a more healthy balance in our lives.”
SO WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF:
“All stereotypes about Virginia are not accurate – very frigid, not warm or motherly, anti-semitic etc,” Emma Woolf said while talking about her great aunt Virginia Emma. She was joined by Adrian A. Husain and Zareena Saeed in a session titled So Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The session was moderated by Clair Armitstead.
“She longed for motherhood but was unable to fulfill her desire because of her illness,” she said drawing attention to the study of motherhood in her novels.
The session was all about Virginia, her writings, her mental illness and the menace of war depicted in her writings as she wrote at a time of war.
“We are all a little bit afraid of Virginia Woolf,” said the panelist Zareena Saeed inducing a laugh from the audience, “whether we all have been able to tackle it or not is another matter.”
LOVE ACROSS CULTURES:
The session Passion for Love Literature brought together three terrific women novelists who have written about love across cultures; Kamila Shamsie, Ahdaf Sophie and Marion Molteno.
Talking about her books Kamila Shamsi said, “One of the most controversial characters that I have ever written about is in my book Salt and Saffron; a woman in upper middle class family who runs away with the family cook. People got really outraged. Love and culture, people can take them particularly to heart.”
FOUNDERING FREEDOM:
“Syndrome of the national security state lost a lot of freedoms for the citizens,” IA Rehman said in the session titled Foundering Freedoms.
Moderated by Asma Jahangir, the session featured I.A. Rehman and A.G. Noorani.
The panel touched on the state of freedom even before the partition. Talking about civil libertarians and intolerance in India A.G. Noorani said that civil libertarians in India could be highly intolerant.
At the end of the panel conversation, Jahangir concluded the session by saying that we need to reinvigorate the spirit of civil liberties in things not discussed because of fear; FATA, Jinnah pre and post partition and so on. “This fear has made the society mute and when the society becomes mute there is very little hope for freedom.”
To her point A.G. Noorani added that we need to work on building bridges between true libertarians in South Asia on the basis of issues. They should speak up, he said.
A SUCCESS, DESPITE PUNJAB GOVT:
Talking about her experience in Pakistan, Emma Woolf told Pakistan Today, “It’s amazing! I have travelled all over the world but I have never been to Pakistan. Lahore is a really beautiful city. Unfortunately I am going back to London at 3AM. It has been wonderful. The people in Lahore have been amazing as well!”
Palestinian writer Susan Abulhawa said, “Oh I love it. This is my first time. I haven’t got to go around too much, I went to the fort. It is hugely inspiring to actually to be here. To explore the connection between Pakistani and the Palestinian people, meeting new friends and being in a cultural space and a place of books and people who love books: It’s always inspiring.”
Talking about last minute changes in the schedule she said, “I think the organisers have done an outstanding job of pulling things together especially because of the constraints they had and the last-minute changes they were forced to make. It’s really unbelievable that they were able to pull it off with these kinds of limitations.”
Initially a three-day event with more than 60 sessions, the event was cut short to two days due to security threats.
“It is completely shameful for the Punjab government that they cannot provide security to the citizens,” Mohammed Hanif, the author of A Case of Exploding Mangoes told Pakistan Today. “Lahore is considered one of the safest cities in Pakistan and the event was supposed to happen at Al Hamra, an open public space. Despite the fact that they said that they cannot give us security, I am glad that the festival still happened. A lot more people would have come if it was an open public space,” Hanif said.
