Hello!
Onjali here.
Welcome to my
Worlds...
ONJALI Q. RAÚF
AUTHOR & ACTIVIST
“Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change – it can not only move us, it makes us move.”
– Ossie Davis –
Schools, Events & Festivals...
An eternal Thank You to everyone who has welcomed me, my stories, and campaigns into their fold. It is an absolute honour to get to meet passionate readers and activists young and younger, near and far.
More snapshots of some of my most unforgettable touring moments can be found HERE.
Singapore Writers Festival
My Book Worlds...
Contributions ...
JOIN THE LETTER CAMPAIGN!
DID YOU KNOW?
Young Carers under the ages of 16 are NOT recognised or aided by the UK government. Despite saving the NHS billions of £s!
DID YOU KNOW?
Many Young Carers begin their caring duties from the age of 4!
The majority are GIRLS.
And like Audrey in The Letter with the Golden Stamp, are rarely acknowledged, assisted or rewarded for their works.
IT'S TIME THIS CHANGED!
Sign the petition demanding #EveryYoungCarer be recognised HERE!
My Activist Worlds ...
The injustices of the world can feel overwhelming. Incessant wars; illegal invasions and settlements, and increasing fascisms, racisms and sexism can understandably leave most of us in a state of consistent anxiety.
But for every awful incident (and person) reported on our news streams, there are hundreds of amazing, heroic people we rarely hear about. It is my greatest honour to get to work with and support just a few of them through my own not-for-profits and many others...
“As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.”
– Maya Angelou –
My Wall of S/Heroes ...
Night Bus Hero raises over £18,000 for homeless charity!
After reading The Night Bus Hero with his two daughters, Alex Wright decided to embark on an epic marathon comprised of TEN marathons to raise money for local homeless charity, Coffee 4 Craig.
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Running from Macclesfield to London - a distance of over 282 miles in just one week, before ALSO running the London Marathon, Alex is now a real-life hero to the homeless communities of Manchester and beyond.
Footsteps on the Wind:
An Animation ...
Created during lockdown by an international team of producers, directors and animators led by Maya Sanbar.
Forged for a song entitled In'sha'allah by Sting, written to honour child refugees.
And co-storyboarded with fellow award-winning writer Sita Brahmachari, Footsteps On the Wind has since become a globally acclaimed, UNHCR-backed animation, lauded by film festivals worldwide.
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Winning six international awards, and even becoming a qualifier for the Oscars in 2022, the short film's legacy of raising awareness about the plight of children forced to flee their homes and be separated from loved ones, continues...
Latest Reads...
Children's / Teen Reads
As Palestinian authors, stories, histories, and even traditional cuisines continue to be colonised and destroyed amidst an ongoing genocide, stories centring on those very emblems of Palestine, new and old, become ever more important to hold on to.
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Faced with the crisis of no peanut butter in the home (we've all been there!), one little boy and his mum embark on a musical journey to create the Palestinian staple that is zeit and zaatar.
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Just a delicious picture book addition to the shelf for little ones who love learning about food (which should be all of them!) and the deep significance of historical, cultural cuisines.
As Trump's book bans sweep across key U.S states, students and teachers continue to fight back for the right to access the written word in their own incredible ways. This brilliant graphic novel celebrates and amplifies that fight.​
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Based on a true story, told from multiple angles and using extensive real-life testimonies of high schoolers across Chicago, this incredible work details the rising up of students to overturn a sudden system-wide banning of Marjane Satrapi's infamous graphic novel, Persepolis.
Cue school-wide walkouts, library sit-ins and a reminder of just how fragile every reader's right to access books and authors of their own choosing remains in the face of dictatorships and cancel culture.
Another breath-snatching story from Jasbinder Bilan, who continues to bring the dignity and beauty of eco-activism to the fore. As a lover of any story involving a majestic whale or two, this one had me hooked, lined up and sunk in the best of ways.
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Being a Barrington Stokes dyslexia-friendly title, this feast of a short novella has everything anyone who loves the ocean could want. Set along the sweeping Scottish coastline, and featuring a trapped whale encountered by two best friends - one coping with a sick baby sister, the other a walking celebration of Hindu heritage, this tale is filled with of gasp-inducing moments and forewarnings.
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A sheer joy to read, and an as-ever timely reminder of the responsibilities we humans bear for the worlds around us.​​
Adults
There's no greater reading treat than a slow-burn unravelling with sentences that make you stop every now and then because their depth requires a mulling over. The Persephone range of published novels by oft-forgotten female authors forges some of my most favourite gentle morning reads, and this particular Whipple masterpiece is no different.
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Deep diving into the quiet lives of happy husband and wife duo Ellen and Avery, and the catastrophic impacts of a cold-hearted, vengeful and once-spurned French (of course!) ladies' companion by the name of Louise Lanier, this tale of unravelling is akin to a quintessential British thriller.
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Moving, heart-breaking, and completely engrossing, I hate that I'm going to finish this one way too soon...
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I was only 11 when Amy Tan's masterpiece crashed through glass ceilings and landed in bookshops around the globe. It's taken a few decades, but this brutally insightful dissection of the endlessly fraught, wondrous and infuriating eternal bond between mothers and daughters has certainly crash-landed into my own realms and heart.
I am so glad this book accompanied me on my recent travels in Taiwan and Japan. Heeding the tales of four all-too real emblems of female survival sitting around a mah-jong table, and the at times cruelly dismissive voices of their daughters that follow, brought to life both Tan's inner universes and the lands, faces, sights and herstories around me.
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Just staggering, and unforgettable in every way.​​
Feminism never 'started' in the West. It was alive, well, and running many an empirical show in Mughal India - although you'd be hard-pressed to find a trace of it in current Western textbooks. Growing up I never knew of the royal Begum sisters, or the many maharanis and matriarchal systems that forged the foundation of the Mughal empire. Once and finally found out about, there is no going back. Ever.
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From riding into battle alongside their fellow men and building everlasting monuments, to trading with merchants and patronising the arts, the infamous Begums of Bhopal and lesser known pioneers like Maryam al-Zamani are just some of the many women highlighted and celebrated in this eye-opening overview of the Mughal empire.
Covering the reigns of the first six Mughal Emperors and tracing the lives of the prominent Mughal women of each period, this book will take me a welcome while to get to the end of. But no matter. I am just so grateful it exists at all.