LIT 101 The dawn, drawing itself up the brick wall, begins conjuring graffiti out of the dark that bore it. A blocky weave of leaning letters, bursting with blood orange arrows, shock red spikes, and vampire violet […]
The Situation The McGill University Health Centre at the Glen (the MUHC) is a mega- complex on the western edge of downtown Montreal. It is the agglomeration of a number of hospitals into one immense entity: the Montreal […]
(*unmâd is a term in the Bengali Language, which is used to designate a totally insane but intellectually possessed person) I knew she was scanning me. Everywhere people are watching. From tall bank towers, security cameras and […]
LA LECTURE (Quatuor de quatrains n̊ 72) Je lisais dans mon lit des romans d’aventure, Une torche à la main, dessous la couverture. C’était une façon de sauter la clôture Dans l’univers où je fuyais par la […]
ATWATER STATION The man in the metro yelled hoarsely to his rush hour captives: “Ma tante Denise has a nice cottage on a lake. Do you know my aunt Denise? She has a beautiful cottage.” This man asked […]
A day doesn’t go by now without reports that disaffected Western youths—some as young as fourteen—are joining or trying to join the Islamic State because they hope it will provide them with a sense of purpose. One might wonder if […]
AUTUMN LEAVES Autumn leaves have been falling, falling near and far. So silently they fall, they make no sound when they fall and hit the ground where standing over them dressed in dark suits are trees in […]
When I think of those who have called me a whore–– lovers, liars, taxi drivers, strangers, men who knew me but didn’t, women too. In a rage, my father, my mother. Those grasping for the scourge that will always […]
Unsteadily into the light a bumblebee sipping nettle flowers now in shatters on a field her party dress partially burned organza, silk tulle becomes just another trope for the scarred and sunken sound of a whipping wind: […]
Loren Edizel was born in Izmir, Turkey, formerly Smyrna. In The Ghosts of Smyrna Edizel deftly interweaves the small and the large: the story of a single family with that of a community; a description of the neighbourhood where […]
We are very average women in the way that we wake up and make up ourselves in the morning. We are very average in how we are working towards our dreams by educating ourselves and living raw experiences, and never […]
Abstract art is always hit or miss, and although taste in any creative form is entirely subjective, the merits and quality of abstract works are arguably harder to qualify. Ideally, the culture of art appreciation would be devoid of the […]
If you were to ask me how my summer went, I might answer you that I traveled to Portugal, to Porto, the city of my birth, and there, for the first time, met family members whom I grew to love […]
The leaves are red, deep red, burgundy, bright yellow, baby green light, crispy brown, dark green, orange mixed with red and yellow. The leaves stick on the windows of cars on the tires and our shoes. The rain and the […]
http://www.nouveaucinema.ca/ *** Review by Mirella Bontempo The Kindergarten Teacher, Nadav Lapid Nira, a middle class Kindergarten teacher, seems banal at first, kissing each student every morning as they enter the classroom to stroking and caressing children during naptime, a practice […]
Beliefs are strange phenomena. They define our values and principles. Some of us hold them close to our hearts, whereas others reject them as baseless and unreal. Although they inform our most important social systems, they are neither rational nor […]
The 10th Montreal International Black Film Festival – 10 MIBFF – closed on September 28 with the screening of Half of a Yellow Sun, a United Kingdom/Nigeria coproduction. It is based on the novel by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie […]
The Universe in a Single Atom. The Convergence of Science and Spirituality By His Holiness the Dalai Lama (Morgan Road Books, New York) Review by Maya Khankhoje. Reviewing a book with such a momentous title is no small task. Can […]
Montreal Serai had the opportunity to have a discussion with Scott Weinstein, Montreal based social and political activist, who has often been in the fore front of organizations that have protested War in West Asia (often referred to as the […]
The human mind is clever – and the human hand as well. There’s much that they’ve discovered, as our books and stories tell. But yet it is enslavement that our cleverness has brought To most of us – who live […]
JO: We have invited Professor Cornett here today to discuss issues surrounding a film called L’Heureux Naufrage/Fortunate Shipwreck: The Ambient Emptiness of Postmodern Society made by Guillaume Tremblay. Professor Cornett held a dialogic session on Sep. 22, 2014 in Montreal […]
Every summer during school holidays my mother would take us from Indian-administered Kashmir to Ludhiana in Punjab to visit our grandparents. The address still resides within me: ‘30 Civil Street. Near Ghumar Mandi.’ Summers are extremely hot there, especially the […]
Turmoil Sometimes I feel consumed by anger, perhaps I ought to say by RAGE, a rage of unfathomable limits! Witnessing what is happening in our world today, particularly in the Middle East, and how our societies are being completely dismantled […]
Growing up in early post-colonial India, the country was so different. The ethos was that we were newly-independent from colonialism and building a new nation; we were all in it together and needed to look out for each other, to […]
Montreal Serai had the opportunity to discuss SOS: Alternative to Capitalism – a handy, slim compendium of vital, essential thoughts and discussions on the concept of an alternative economy and society—with Richard Swift. His new book has been brought out […]
[The prehispanic part of the story is based on sociological findings and traditional legends. The modern part is based on fiction. Sac Nicte and Can Ek were the real names of the doomed lovers.] They had told her she would […]
Artist Statement: The preoccupation of life and death and the search for the transcendent are universal and timeless; it is the core which unites humans in the past as it does now in the present. In my work I interweave […]
“Advertising invalidates people, leading to anger. Anger turned sideways, that’s cultural jamming. It’s a way of reinserting ourselves into culture,” says Shanee Prasad, a BC-based teacher and activist. She was giving a workshop entitled Taking on the Madmen of the […]
This story is in memory of the passengers who were on the Komagata Maru. This happened exactly a hundred years ago. Three-hundred-and-seventy-six penguins arrived on an iceberg (a huge chunk) to the shores of a glittering city. But they […]
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