The Jane Austen Society of Pakistan: On Synergy and Sisterhood

The Jane Austen Society of Pakistan (JASP) has been a journey of possibilities. It has led us from our cozy literary cocoon to a sociocultural movement that's inspired dialogue, celebrated our love for Jane's work, published our Austenistani homage to Jane, and propelled us to become part of her postmodern pop-culture legacy. And in doing so, it's helped us discover personal strengths, explore professional aptitudes, and revel in our global community.

JASP started as a small literary circle in 2015 accompanied by a Facebook page. Photos of our Regency-inspired tea parties went viral on social media, with some delighted comments in the vein of "we thought Pakistani women all wore burqas—we were wrong!" We've met up in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, and London, and we've been celebrated for our sisterhood, our cosplay, and our fiction writing on the BBC, British Council Arts, NPR, Sky Arts, The Times (London), and other channels, publications, websites, and podcasts. Austenistan is even featured as the pick of the month at various book clubs from Minnesota to Saudi Arabia.

I appeared on the Jane Austen Society of North America's (JASNA) first international society panel at the 2016 Annual General Meeting. In Chawton, Hampshire, our embroidered patch is part of the Jane Austen Community Quilt Project at Jane Austen's House Museum, and our book is on the shelves of the library at Chawton House. It's also being sold at the gift shop of the Jane Austen Centre in Bath.

In the past two years, we've spoken about JASP and Austenistan at panels and lit fests in Galle, Sharjah, and Washington, DC; via video in Brazil and Bangalore; and at podcasts in Dubai and Dublin, in addition to Pakistan.

In creating Austenistan, we've found ourselves rewriting an outdated narrative that claims to represent us. We're de-exoticizing representations of Pakistani and South Asian women while channeling candor, humor, and sensitivity in a manner that we hope Ms. Austen would approve of. We've set our stories, inspired by characters and settings from Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Lady Susan, in contemporary Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, and England. We've helped spearhead a new subgenre of fiction and opened up avenues of inspiration.

In the years to come, we hope to continue meeting up regionally and internationally, to keep our annual tea parties alive, and to engage in more pursuits, whether it's fiction writing, fundraising, entrepreneurship, or academic study, all the while supporting one another in our endeavors. Our core members regularly stay in touch via WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram. Our Facebook community of nearly four thousand comes from forty-five countries. Although our in-person and video-conferencing meet-ups are primarily composed of women, 20 percent of our online community identify as male.

This may be considered the era of Crazy Rich Asians, but the era of Crazy Rich Englishness began with an Asian influence on period drama when Ismail Merchant and James Ivory adapted English classics for the screen and Taiwanborn Ang Lee directed 1995's Sense and Sensibility. The Indo-Pak subcontinental world doesn't collide with Jane Austen; it overlaps with it. Looking back, I suppose that I've always been attracted to this narrative; as a college student, I interned with Merchant Ivory Productions in New York, and my screen studies thesis focused on a new kind of postmodern, transnational "Englishness" in Austen screen adaptations.

We're so pleased to be at the forefront of a quintessentially South Asian subgenre of Austenesque fiction that pays homage to her work and draws relevance from her world, her characters, and the social codes of Regency society while mirroring ours. We wrote our stories for ourselves, never dreaming that we would be published, let alone regional bestsellers sharing a publisher with J. K. Rowling.

Austenistan's first edition was published in December 2017. Its cover depicts a young woman, relatable and contemporary, sporting aviators that reflect the Victorian-era Lahore Museum and the celebrated Mughal monument, the Badshahi...