and seek answers. Seeing that happen and children asking those questions of MPs and even the Queen – and unexpectedly so – has been one of the biggest highlights of my life.”
Opening young eyes to injustice, while showing that people can take control of their destiny is a powerful message running through Onjali’s books. Characters may not always get an immediate or perfect resolution, but they do take back some control of their lives. Away from writing, that notion of control is just as important for Onjali, who works with a number of charities and is the founder of Making Herstory, a charitable foundation focused on helping survivors of domestic abuse and promoting their rights.
Legacy
The foundation is a direct response to the murder of her beloved aunt at the hands of her husband in 2011. Onjali says her aunt’s experience, which includes systematic failures, is one that is repeated for other women in abusive situations. “She fought for her life and for everyone to hear her story for five long years – only to have judges, lawyers, social workers and the police dismiss her and be all too-willing to side with the husband she was trying desperately to divorce from and who would ultimately act to take her life. The misogynies and racisms that governed her fate and led to agencies treating her as they did, led me to launch Making Herstory: primarily as a book club to discuss feminist texts and raise money for women’s shelters. “But, it has gradually grown to so much more than a monthly book club. We work with a network of women’s refuges as
step-in band-aiders; signpost survivors; help lobbying and legal groups, as well as grassroots organisations in whatever way we can to try to save, champion and highlight survivors’ needs and rights to be safe from male violence. And through them, their children too. My aunt, my nieces, the thousands of women I have gotten to meet over the years whose stories deserve respect and protection, inspire me every day. But Making Herstory is ultimately my aunt’s legacy. She is the foundation of, and inspiration for it all. She fought until the end. As will I.”
Onjali’s other work is focused on refugees and anti-trafficking – and again her own experiences have fed into her stories. The Boy at the Back of the Class tells the tale of a Syrian boy who flees the
8 PEN&INC.
ongoing war with his family, and who ends in the UK after spending time in a refugee camp. Onjali has seen first- hand how asylum seekers are affected by the conditions in camps, having worked with a number of families in camps in Northern France through her second organisation, O’s Refugee Aid Team.
Support and empowerment are key aspirations for Onjali in these areas – again, themes that are echoed in her books. Rarely do characters act in isolation – they have support around them, inspiring them to keep going. Onjali says this is as true in life as it is in her books, adding: “That is indeed the dream! I think both my charities just want to strengthen the amazing hearts already out there doing the
Spring-Summer 2021
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