Journeys of Love

""From Mian Muhammad Bakhsh to Zaffar Kunial via rap in Bradford, Hodgson transforms the hardship of Kashmiri migration into a poetic journey, where the spiritual and the everyday intertwine. In this fascinating and original work, Hodgson complicates the experience of a home away from home and vividly explores how poetic verses strengthen the bonds among male migrants, transporting them across space, time, and the duress of borders. To understand migration as being poetic opens up new possibilities and new journeys to theorize on migration, longing, and belonging.” -- Alessandra Ciucci, Columbia University ""In this beautifully written ethnography, Hodgson leads us lovingly through lost and liminal places still standing whole in memory—a drowned homeland, a demolished photography studio, a Sufi shrine that appears annually from the waters of a dam, the multicultural Bradford streets of his own childhood. Journeys of Love is about the everyday worlds of the hard labor and ordinary striving of multiple marginalized working-class men in the unsung parts of post-industrial England and rural Pakistan. This is an intimate musical ethnography of migration over time and space like no other—it is a magnificent achievement.” -- Katherine Schofield, King’s College London ""This gem of a book demands our prolonged engagement. Hodgson offers us a profound tapestry of sounds, histories, and tales—an ethnography that is as fine-grained and as it is theoretically sophisticated. Situated in and between Pakistan and England, crisscrossing weddings and schools, rap workshops and festivals, Journeys of Love is a must-read for those interested in two of the defining issues of our age—migration and multiculturalism. The book stands out for its readability and empathy, that rare text that will appeal to general readers and find a place on graduate and undergraduate syllabi alike."" -- Jim Sykes, author of 'The Musical Gift: Sonic Generosity in Post-War Sri Lanka'