Shamini Flint: I’m only Different on the Outside (and maybe a little bit on the inside too)!

Session Info:

I grew up in a small town in Malaysia, more of a fishing village really that didn’t even have a bookshop. I was the only Indian kid in a school of Chinese and Malay children who didn’t understand me, teachers who thought I was weird because I wanted to play soccer even though I was a girl and parents who were too busy yelling at each other to pay any attention to me.

As a consequence of this fairly difficult upbringing (although there was often a very funny side) I feel very strongly about children finding their own identity and developing the resilience and perseverance to deal with difficult passages in life.

I wrote the book Ten – a little book with a big heart about Maya’s dream of playing at Wembley – to inspire children to believe that they could ‘change the ending’ of their own personal stories into something that makes them happy and fulfilled.

Topics

Growing up in a multi-cultural environment
Growing as a minority
Growing up Asian
Asian values v. Western values
Finding common ground
Fighting gender stereotypes
Dealing with family conflict

This session can be presented as a talk, or in workshop format.

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Shamini Flint: I’m only Different on the Outside (and maybe a little bit on the inside too)!

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