It was Nelson Mandela who told our leadership that the hardest negotiations are sometimes with your own people and how crucial it is to maintain unity.
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Essay
My fragile sense of peace was collapsing.
Why did a hip-hop artist suddenly become a threat who had to be arrested in order to be silenced?
Serai editor Jody Freeman digs in to the Indigenous roots of blues and jazz.
“Lock and load!” I started noticing The Gateway Pundit clickbait site in late 2020, when the comments sections beneath the articles in that prominent far-right news-and-conspiracy webzine were full of posts urging people to head to Washington well-armed to take […]
When I think of India, I think of many things: of broad fields dotted with the innumerable small villages; of towns and cities … of the magic of the rainy season which pours life into the dry parched-up land and […]
If you were coming home at night and saw a group of people burning down your house and attacking your neighbours, your first inclination would likely be to call 911 and contact the police. But what if you realized that […]
plink, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip plink, drip, drip drip drip drip I hate the sound of raindrops on the roof. So insistent, loud, abusive. Noise is invasive— overpowering the senses. Angry noise dominated my family. As a child, […]
On the evening of January 29, 2017, a white Franco-Québécois gunman entered the Islamic Cultural Centre of Québec City (ICCQ) after Isha prayers, and murdered six Black and brown Muslim men. Survivor Hakim Chambaz was there when his […]
Along these lines of racism, the pandemic brought to light some of our more troubling social reflexes.
The pandemic also confronted society with the nature of work.
Hiding behind a mask will not attract any censure now.
Four hours later, they were intubating Karina for the ventilator.
What does it say about us that we resist the grief expressed in this play, displacing it into wishful thinking about a better king?
I wake up one morning with Macbeth’s line trotting through my head like a horse round a manège
A plague forces us to isolate, sequester into our spaces without the shared moments that make us social creatures.
Saw a police car this morning on my way back from the laundromat, driving around looking for signs of trouble.
Editorial note: Charles William Johnson shares some of his intriguing and controversial research into ancient art forms, with special reference to the legend of Pan Gu as it appears in both Chinese and Maya cultures. He describes how transparencies of […]
Along the south bank of the River Thames strode a sunken-faced man carrying a small book. The man, only thirty-nine years old, was meditating on life and death as he walked down the waterfront promenade. His eyes, bruised […]
My father’s death defeated me; I felt robbed by it. It didn’t come as a surprise because he had cancer, lung metastases to be exact, and we were told at some point that he had a month left […]
One reason to go to medical school can be a letter from a university congratulating you on a successful application, with the suggestion that you bring your thinking cap and your running shoes. So long, Dostoyevsky; hello… Galen, Harvey, […]
The zeitgeist of our times is characterized by creativity and innovation, particularly in the fields of art and science. A question often pondered is where these two fields intersect. Do they touch each other at a tangent? Do […]
My grandmother died in 1969 at the age (I think) of 89. My brother and I weren’t expected to go to the funeral and neither of us now can remember exactly when it was. My grandmother had become […]
Depuis le tournant du siècle, nous assistons à une montée alarmante de l’extrême-droite et d’un racisme décomplexé, pas seulement au Québec mais ailleurs aussi, notamment en Allemagne, en France, en Italie et aux États-Unis. Il est vrai que les […]
Je voudrais dire wliwni (merci!) de vivre à Montréal, qui est en TERRITOIRE MOHAWK NON CÉDÉ! I would like to say wliwni (thanks) for being able to live in Montréal, which is in UNCEDED MOHAWK TERRITORY! Kwaï! Bonjour! […]
This suffering had demonstrated to me the harsh limitation in my heritage, both Indian and Western.
Commentary on La Negrada, Sueño en Otro Idioma and El Violín [Note: References to film portrayals of Indigenous dramas from the golden age of Mexican cinema have not been included because they depict a folkloric and at times disrespectful […]
In 1991, Indian feminist filmmaker Reena Mohan produced a little-known documentary called Kamlabai. The film chronicled the remarkable life of one of the first Indian film actresses, Kamlabai Gokhale – one that began with the dizzyingly modern new […]
Padmaavat (2018), Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s latest magnum opus, became mostly notorious for what was claimed as its attack on Rajput pride and its portrayal of the legendary queen Padmavati (the story of the film was based on a […]
My name is Dina Gardashkin. I’m a Jewish Israeli, and the first time I learned what the word Palestinian really meant was at the age of 23. Since I grew up in Haifa, a city known for its […]
