Inside the Wasafiri Archive: A Little-Known History
Angelique Golding – a PhD student on the Wasafiri archives, based at Queen Mary University of London – leads us on an enlightening journey through Wasafiri’s history, trajectory, editorial strategy, and vision over forty years.
For those lucky enough to have a copy of Wasafiri’s very first issue, published in 1984, you won’t need a keen eye to see its fledgling steps as the journal for ATCAL, The Association for the Teaching of African, Caribbean, Asian and Associated Literatures. Given Wasafiri’s now global status as the leading literary magazine for international contemporary writing, this is the little-known history of this once ‘little magazine’. I became familiar with this history due to my collaborative PhD project with Queen Mary University of London and the British Library. Commencing in 2020, I have been researching and cataloguing Wasafiri’s archive – acquired by the British Library – and my research completes in December 2024.
To find out more about the ATCAL connection, I made a deep-dive into the magazine’s and several other archives. The George Padmore Institute (GPI) in Finsbury Park (conveniently located above the stalwart that is the New Beacon Bookshop), the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) near Farringdon, and a pleasant train ride out to both, alongside the Reading Publishing Archives and the Library of Birmingham, gave me the answers I was looking for. These archives opened up a raft of reports and newsletters from the Association to its members and funders, revealing fascinating details about their activist origins and activities, which followed in the footsteps of the likes of NATE (The National Association for Teaching of English) and NAME (The National Anti-racist Movement in Education). Both these groups were established in the 1960s in response to the social and educational racism and inequities prevalent in the UK, and lobbied for change, and the inclusion of texts from the ‘Third World’ – as it would have been termed – to be added to Britain’s English Curriculum. Nestled among the papers I found at Birmingham in the Barrow Cadbury Collection is a report providing a summary of the Sixth National Conference held at the University of Kent in 1983, where Wasafiri was launched ‘in absentia’.
Figure 1: Front page of conference report found in Personal Papers of John La Rose - Association of Teachers of Caribbean and African Literature (ATCAL), 1981-1985 – George Padmore Institute
Figure 2: Page 4 of 1983 conference report found in Personal Papers of John La Rose - Association of Teachers of Caribbean and African Literature (ATCAL), 1981-1985 – George Padmore Institute
I discovered that this unusual term meant that the magazine was launched in absence of any physical copies; due to Wasafiri experiencing a severe lack of funds, the first issue was unable to be printed and published in time for the conference. Consequently, founding Editor Susheila Nasta, together with joint editor Robert Fraser, appealed to ATCAL members and attendees to subscribe to the journal to provide the much-needed funds for its publication. A further document revealed that, following the appeal, Wasafiri received 90 subscription contributions of £4 each from the ATCAL membership and, amongst others, the University of Kent, to publish its very first issue.
Figure 3: Extract from the budget document for 1984 ATCAL Conference found in Barrow and Cadbury Trust funding correspondence papers (June to August 1984) at the Library of Birmingham archives
The rest, as they say, is history — and now Wasafiri is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Currently, this history, which has been organically saved and collated over the past forty years is packed away in some 219 boxes within the British Library’s Contemporary Collections that I have had the pleasure of cataloguing in readiness for its eventual release to the public. The announcement of this prestigious acquisition was made in November 2019 at the celebrations of Wasafiri’s 35th anniversary and the launch of its 100th issue at the British Library. During the event, founding Editor Susheila Nasta said that Wasafiri had finally arrived ‘at the centre’ of a nation that previously did not want to acknowledge that the voices and authors it publishes belonged.[i]
Figure 4: Personal photograph of the archive
Unfortunately, due to Covid-19, I missed out on a whole year of being able to catalogue, and my time at the British Library will end before the cataloguing is completed. However, what I have catalogued so far – like at The George Padmore Institute and the London Metropolitan Archives – is a treasure trove of information providing a magazine’s eye view of the inside track of the literary and publishing scene from 1980s up to 2020s.
Bearing the coveted title of NPO (National Portfolio Organisation) of the Arts Council, Wasafiri has steadily built upon its literary roots evidenced by its changing taglines starting in 1984 as ‘The ATCAL Journal’, then from spring 1986 to spring 1992 offering itself as the journal providing ‘Perspectives on African, Caribbean, Asian and Black-British Literature’. Thereafter, from Autumn 1992, it bore the titles and themes of its general and curated issues before finally declaring itself the magazine for ‘International Contemporary Writing’ in 2008.
As seems par for the course, these tidbits of information that reveal these histories and stories are often forgotten, hidden, or obscured — only to be revealed when someone goes looking. It is an enormous history, and my thesis can only offer a partial insight, some of which I have the pleasure of sharing within this and one other blog to follow.
The archive collection at the British Library starts with a small box that contains items relating to issues 19 and 20, published in Spring and Autumn 1994, respectively. Wasafiri 20, published on the magazine's 10th birthday, has since sold out; but ironically, the archive folder relating to the issue contains the least items of correspondence, editorial documentation, and ephemera. This really speaks to the organic nature in which the archive came together; in fact, all the archive boxes containing issues are of varying content and dimensions, and no two are the same. There may have been no overarching strategy but there was certainly an instinct about historical importance and cultural memory.
During my work and research, there have been many moments of revelation for me. One in particular was coming across an article in Wasafiri 20 that went on to spark a debate between scholar Peter Hulme and Poet Kamau Brathwaite, running across three issues: issues 20, 22 and 23. Hulme’s article, ‘The Place of Wide Sargasso Sea’, addressed canon-formation and pedagogical practice. Speaking to the debates which struggled to place texts as either ‘English or West Indian, colonial or post-colonial’, Hulme highlighted Jean Rhys’ novel as an exemplar of those texts that ran ‘counter’ to the traditional categories of ‘national’ and ‘universal’. During his discussion, Hulme called out what he noted as Kamau Brathwaite’s ‘least attractive’ argument in this debate. Brathwaite’s response, titled ‘A Post‐Cautionary Tale of the Helen of our Wars’, was published in Wasafiri 22. Using a very stylistic WordPerfect font of the time (one that editorial correspondence indicates was very difficult to replicate), Brathwaite offered an ‘interchange’ on the matter, which Hulme readily took up in Wasafiri 23.
Figure 5: Photograph of 1st page of Brathwaite's response in issue 22
Figure 6: Photograph of 2nd page of Brathwaite's response
The most comprehensive boxes in the archive, and what I want to particularly highlight here, contain Wasafiri’s financial records, including copies of its funding applications to the Arts Council. Magazine publishing is an expensive business, and a great deal of energy was spent that first decade in trying source funding to print the issues. In the first five years, Wasafiri continued to survive on subscriptions and donations. Fortunately, it managed to receive a grant from the GLC – sustaining the magazine for three issues – before British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher abolished it in 1986. In what was a very precarious and uncertain arts funding environment, Wasafiri turned to the Arts Council in 1989.
This was notably a very fraught political period — an era of multiculturalism and Margaret Thatcher’s dramatic arts funding cuts, which produced an environment of financial stringency as Thatcher introduced a regime of privatisation and business sponsorship schemes. This completely changed the funding culture and landscape in the UK. Nonetheless, Wasafiri was successful in being awarded its first grant from the Art Council for £2000 to produce two issues in the year ending 31 March 1990.
Figure 7: Extract from Arts Council Letter found in the Wasafiri Archive - British Library Contemporary Collections
Figure 8: Extract from Arts Council Letter found in the Wasafiri Archive - British Library Contemporary Collections
In a funding regime that continues to this day – the necessity for and continued cutbacks of which are disheartening and devastating – Wasafiri quickly became an ‘annual client’, and eventually a National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) of the Arts Council in 2011.
Archives are amazing and alive spaces, and I feel privileged to have spent time in Wasafiri’s. In doing so, I have learnt of its tenacious determination to not only survive, but also thrive in the face of its larger commercial and mainstream competitors — one that marks it with ‘the stamp of a single vigorous personality’ attributed to ‘little magazines’.[ii]
[i] Sandra van Lente, ‘An Archive Full of Voices: Wasafiri Celebrates 35 Years and 100 Issues! – Literary Field Kaleidoscope’ <http://literaryfield.org/wasafiri35/> [accessed 6 October 2024].
[ii] Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘Little Magazine - Periodical Publishing, History & Impact’ <https://www.britannica.com/topic/little-magazine> [accessed 2 July 2023].
Photo by Leiada Krozjhen on Unsplash
Related events:
Introducing our 40th Anniversary Issue — Wasafiri 119: Futurisms
This issue brings to the fore writers whose perspectives – on the present and on the future – have historically been sidelined. From alternative histories to critiques of the late-capitalist present; high fantasy, sci-fi and the posthuman; theories of landscape, the city, and the body; this milestone issue will showcase a branching network of writing on and around the power of persistence as resistance, as we continue to imagine into being futures that defy an increasingly oppressive present.
