Maria Qamar's Hilarious New Handbook For Brown Girls With Judgmental Aunties
When Maria Qamar was fired from her copywriting job in 2015, she immediately began drawing pop art with a South Asian twist — old-fashioned comic-strip-type illustrations parodying the common refrains South Asian kids often hear at home but seldom see in Canadian culture. She started sharing her work on Instagram and amassed more than 100,000 followers, her fanbase moving from brown girls in the diaspora to audiences in India and Pakistan. Two years later, the Pakistani-Canadian artist has moved from Instagram to showing her work in galleries, counts Mindy Kaling as a fan, and now has a new book, called Trust No Aunty.
The hilarious survival guide has a lively cast of aunties (matchmaker aunty, Bollywood aunty, CEO aunty and of course, the aunty-in-training), but it’s less about aunties themselves than what they represent, which is how young South Asian women “navigate the spaces where we’re judged constantly,” says Qamar. She rounds up all the bad advice given to her over the years by her elders — get married early but don’t talk to boys, be funny but don’t be too loud — and basically makes it one big joke (picture a girl sipping her smoothie while an out-of-frame aunty yells: "Be more like Sarah! She has a nice face!").
Through her work, Qamar strives to create a space for South Asian women in the diaspora that is all their own: “It’s a conversation between us, and everybody else that’s interested is simply leaning in and overhearing the conversation.”
Here, Qamar shares seven of her favourite illustrations from the book.
Maria Qamar: Trust No Aunty
Straight as a jalebi baby
“This one is my favourite. I’ve been questioned about it a lot, which I think is interesting. People will say, ‘Oh, this is controversial.’ I’m like, how the hell how is it controversial? This is a lifestyle for a large, large group of people. The fact that you think it’s controversial is your problem.”
Jalebi is a pretzel-shaped sweet
Rainbow death stare
“I really love this one because it reminds me of when I walk into a wedding or party and there are aunties sitting around dressed beautifully in pretty colours and they all look amazing. As soon as you walk in all of their heads turn to look at you at the same time, and you feel like, oh shit, I’ve done something wrong.”
Your daughter is getting moti
“Somebody actually said that to me at a fam jam. I was eating and I was going for seconds, and she was like, ‘Ah, you’re getting a little moti* your arms, eh?” And I was like, ‘Huh, glad you noticed. That’s the look I was going for.’ And then I took seconds and thirds, I kept eating beside her — I wasn’t even hungry at that point, I was just like, ‘Yeah, you see that?’”
*fat
6ix goddess
“[These] Drake prayer hands to represent Toronto, to represent my presence in Toronto.”
Gori wearing bindi
“[On] somebody took a bindi and put it on her forehead because she thought it would be funny. She was Eastern European, and I was like, ‘Hey, this is offensive can you please take down,’ and she started laughing at me like, ‘Oh no, but I think it’s funny.’ I’m like, ‘Well, it’s not funny.’ It was a really awkward confrontational moment but I had to do it because the gallery was supposed to be a safe space for us.”
Gori is a white woman
Your party looks boring
“I just don’t care for any more dawaats, any more dinner parties. I’m at a point where I’ll be invited and I’ll show up for an hour, 45 minutes, and then I’m gone. Now that I’m [an] judgment. I’ve had people ask me, ‘Why do your characters always have to say something? Why can’t they just not say anything at all?’ And I’m like, ‘But that’s against the point, isn’t it?’”
Our daughter is an artist
“That one had a lot of meaning for me because that’s the first piece that I did with Babbu [a]. Her and I have been best friends since then, so that’s significant for me because that was the start of the exhibits, all the shows. A lot beautiful things that came out of that friendship and out of that partnership. Also, [this] one of the pieces that Mindy [Kaling] bought.”
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