It was such a pleasure to sit down with journalist, author, and powerlifter, Poorna Bell and discuss her new book, Stronger and her work to empower young women and girls. Stronger explores how we socialise the younger generation, how we perceive strength, intersectionality and identity, particularly South Asian female identity, colourism, and all the barriers. that we have to navigate as women in society as we come to love ourselves. Although we focus on women and girls here, this book is about how we frame society as a whole and what we can do to dismantle harmful narratives to achieve parity between men and women within these spaces. This extraordinary book really is for everyone, it was such an inspiring read and Poorna and I could have gone on for hours!
Poorna Bell is an award-winning journalist of 18 years, author and a digital editorial expert, and a competitive powerlifter. She specialises in women’s issues, diversity, fitness and mental health. She was the UK Executive Editor and Global Lifestyle Head for HuffPost and now freelances for The Times, The i Paper, Grazia, The Guardian, Red magazine, and Stylist among others.
Poorna has published two non-fiction books around mental health and her third, focusing on physical strength and women, is with Bluebird/Pan Macmillan.
“Part manifesto, part memoir, Stronger is inspired by my journey to get physically strong after my husband passed away, as well as tons of interviews across size, age, race, and ability. Off the back of becoming a competing powerlifter, I wanted to lay a roadmap for how girls and women could tap into their own physical and mental strength, and not be held back by societal conditioning.”
southasianwriters.com 
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