Our Story: An Anthology of life stories of the first-generation Bangladeshis in Australia. Published in June 2024 from Sydney, Australia.
Why a book about migrant stories?
Every migrant’s story is unique. While there may be common threads running through these stories, there are many shared experiences, many common trials and tribulations faced in settling in a new land. Migrants make a new home and create a new life while holding onto many parts of their heritage, creating a distinctive new identity.
For the coming generations, the stories of their parents and grandparents are crucial in understanding who they are and answering the many questions they may have about their own families. Recording these stories in words that future generations will relate to is imperative for them to know their ancestors and to appreciate both the hardships and the joys experienced by those that came before them and to value the courage that it took to leave one’s homeland and loved ones in search of a better future in a new and unknown world.
This anthology contains stories of sadness and triumph, stories of how the first Bangladeshis held on to their heritage and their languages, stories of the joy of new connections and finally feeling at home after the many trials of migration.
This book
The book Our Story took shape in the mind of one of the editors, Mostafa Abdullah. Based in Sydney, he is one of the first generation of Bangladeshis to arrive in Australia. The beginnings were personal – he himself wondered how best how to tell his grandchildren about where they came from. As he spent his retirement years writing and publishing articles about his experiences, he wondered if a more meaningful contribution could be made to the growing Bangladeshi-Australian community. This led to the idea of compiling the stories of others into a book that would be a record for the next generation of Bangladeshis.
It was off to a slow start! For Mostafa, it was a sole journey, and he devoted his attention and his time to the project. He reached out to people he knew personally and gradually, garnered greater interest in the project. In spite of the slow beginnings, word spread, and a snowball effect resulted in authors interested to contribute to the project. Over many months and after many requests for stories, the responses of the published authors resulted in this 310-page book. It contains introductory narratives from the editors and 34 stories.
These personal accounts detail the Bangladeshi immigrant experience in Australia, the interactions with a new culture in a new land, the efforts made to maintain language and traditions and community celebrations that showcase the diversity of Bangladeshi cultural and religious heritage. The stories highlight the incredible work done in the Bangladeshi community to promote and maintain Bangladeshi culture for the children of Bangladeshi heritage growing up in Australia.
These inspiring narratives show us how Bangladeshis in Australia have contributed to their children growing up to be confident in their inherited culture and to form their own identities as a new generation of proud Australians.
Publication
For Mostafa, the publication of this book was going to be a labour of love – his personal contribution to his community. He intended to fund the publication himself, until he began discussing the project with members of the Bangladeshi community. His involvement with community groups resulted in this idea getting traction within those community organisations.
One of these organisations, Keeping Contact (KIC), supported by STARTTS, and funded by WentWest, Western Sydney Primary Health Network (WSPHN) took a great deal of interest in the book. Given the book’s potential to contribute to the community and its significance to their aims of promoting multiculturalism, they facilitated the publication of the book.
The story must go on
Like the famous Bangladeshi embroidery known as Nokshi Kantha, these stories are each weaved into the fabric of our history in Australia. The book would not have been possible without the goodwill of the authors, their eagerness to share their time and thoughts, their patience while the book was edited and their unparalleled excitement when this book was launched. Their stories are a testament to the resilience of the Bangladeshi community and the contribution of the first-generation migrants to the success of those thriving today in Australia.
Like other communities in multicultural Australia, it is well recognised that Bangladeshis make significant contributions to the building and development of this nation. It is important that using these stories as the link between our past, present and future, we continue to contribute to our new home. Our future generations can use the lessons learned and take inspiration from the courage of their predecessors.
The telling of our stories should not stop here and must carry on. Anthologies like this are possible when people are willing to share their stories and there are numerous stories this volume of the anthology could not cover. It is our collective responsibility to continue collecting more stories and for those who are willing to share to come forward to share and write their stories.
This is the first volume – we look forward to many more!
A final word
Last but not least, to the readers of this collection: please do not judge any of these stories from a literary point of view; they are unlikely to pass that test. We are not the writers you may be accustomed to reading, but we did our best to start the ball rolling. Even in this, there is a story of bravery – of the willingness of our authors to put themselves forward and face what judgement may come.
This book is bound to have issues and errors due to the editorial team’s lack of prior publishing experience. The editorial team seeks your understanding and forgiveness and takes full responsibility for these.
Please see this book as our best, if not yours. If you can empathise with what we wanted to convey, we will consider our efforts worthwhile.
Mostafa Abdullah migrated to Australia in the 1970s. He is one of first-generation IT professionals of Bangladesh and retired as the Chief of Party (COP) of USAID Project for establishment of Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission. He remains active within the diaspora community in his retirement, collecting stories of the early settlers and their children growing up in the cross-roads of Bangladeshi and Australian culture.
Mohammed Abdur Razzaque
Mohammed Abdur Razzaque migrated to Australia in 1989. He studied Metallurgical Engineering at the East Pakistan University of Technology Dhaka. He later obtained an MBA from USA, an Advanced Diploma in Management from the Netherlands and PhD from the University of New South Wales Sydney, Australia. He started his career as an academic at IBA, the University of Dhaka, later moving to the University of Khartoum, Sudan, followed by National University of Singapore and finally, the University of New South Wales. After five decades of university teaching, Professor Razzaque retired from UNSW’s Marketing School in early 2021. He sits on the editorial boards of several prestigious international journals. Professor Razzaque authored/co-authored more than 100 research papers published in renowned international journals. He has also written several books – academic as well as non-academic – in English and Bengali.
