Artist Statement: Singing and songwriting has become an extension of my dreamtime, a way to distil spirit and set free my pain, passions, confusion, solitude, vanity and love. Bio: Louise began singing in Chœur Maha in 1991 and […]
I have a relationship to traffic, similar to the kind of relationship a goldfish has to the water in its bowl. It’s never just about the fish and the water. Rather, it’s an ecology, and the ecology relates to […]
Exactly two decades ago I left the West Island to come and live in the United Kingdom. Like many expatriates, in recent years I have started looking back on the place where I grew up with a certain degree […]
From Rajahs and Yogis to Gandhi and Beyond. Images of India in International Films of the Twentieth Century, by Vijaya Mulay. Seagull Books, 2010, London, New York and Calcutta. [Vijaya Mulay, a.k.a. Akka, or Elder Sister, was born in […]
Soul Mountain, by Gao Xingjian. Harper Perennial, 2001. [NB: The reviewer has chosen to stay attuned to the Chinese style of the original to enable readers to better capture its flavour.] Although I had heard about the controversial Nobel […]
lines for qi baishi (1864-1957) dear qi baishi your neat little cottages worry me a lot are those just vacant places? aren’t folks sleeping inside or waiting for a son to get back with herbs from town? outside […]
FAR AWAY to the south bayous— ruptured oil well tar balls soiling protected wetlands sea sponges crabs, fish, algae and octopus —coral reefs RÍO LAGARTOS thatch-roofed hut with […]
Where? Somewhere. She walked some more to reach the unknown. Some more, another mile to go there, where? Somewhere. To reach there she had to walk a mile more. Stopped for water but nothing to be seen, so she […]
This morning I plunged into the arms of death. I immersed myself in wisdom. In the silence the secret the mystery of Carthage. The roots of a palm tree bury a Tophet. * In the […]
In the small, dark hours, I perceive frozen chunks set loose in me: jagged blocks of icy skin above the right elbow below my left ankle over the third-eye scar on my forehead. My knuckle. A toe bone. A […]
It was exactly a hundred years ago that Clara Zetkin, leader of the Women’s Office for the Social Democratic Party of Germany, tabled the idea of an International Women’s Day. The occasion was the Second International Conference of […]
Montreal Serai Editor Rana Bose interviewed Catherine Potter, leader of the Catherine Potter-Duniya Project, after her show at the MAI in Montreal. MS : The show La Convergence des Continents at the Montreal Arts Interculturels on 23rd January, […]
Dr. Shree Mulay , Professor Emerita of the Department of Medicine of McGill University in Montreal, is currently Associate Dean and Professor of Community Health and Humanities Division, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s. Dr. Mulay served for […]
Edited by Susan Dubrofsky Has the work of artists who are women been attributed incorrectly more frequently than that of artists who are men? Has there been some kind of blatant disregard, or disinterest, or prejudice against the study […]
Think old people can be troublesome? You don’t know the half of it! Why didn’t my mother warn me? It didn’t feel like it at the time but was it a stroke of luck for me that my […]
Taking Root. The vision of Wangari Maathai. Documentary. DVD 2008, Mongrel Media. Taking Root is the story of Wangari Maathai’s life-long journey as a child in her native village in Kenya all the way to […]
Why would one state government spend sleepless nights trying to provide maximum security to someone whose mere existence is a threat to its own? What threat could an illiterate tribal petite woman of 28, mother of four children, pose […]
English version below. An extract from the documentary George Sand: The Story of Her Life produced by CNDP 2004, Montreal (Quebec) Quelques heures avant de commencer à écrire cet article, j’étais à Radio-Canada, dans la salle Jean-Desprez qui porte le […]
To listen to this text click here: [audio:Womaninalineup.mp3] Oh excuse me, I just got pushed from behind, I didn’t mean to bump into you. There sure are a lot of people here today. I just take this one class so I […]
…I don’t know why I’ve agreed to this… but here I am… here we are… he briskly raps the knocker. We’re standing in the corridor by the stairwell, with its dank smell and hollow sounds. There are 3 locks. […]
In grade seven, I had a crush on Eric. Tall, lean, gorgeous Eric. He was in the same year as I was, but he was a year older. I knew little about him and accepted the rumours that he […]
After years of denouncing Mother Country’s contempt for its emigrants stuck in the 1950s, I am airing the dirty laundry. What makes the immigrants stuck? I do not see peasantry as pejorative, just for some pernicious superstitions passed down […]
I was a teenager the last time I saw Fatma. I had just returned home for my summer vacation after my first year of university and she had come to visit us with her two children. One was a […]
Reading A Woman Among Warlords you may find yourself forgetting on occasion that this is, in fact, a work of non-fiction, so extreme are the terms of its author’s life and homeland. The youngest MP ever to be elected […]
PERFECT HOSTAGE. Aun San Suu Kyi, Burma and the Generals. By Justin Wintle. Arrow, 2007. In Burma there is no prejudice against girl babies. In fact, there is a general belief that daughters are more dutiful and loving […]
The Heart Does Break: Canadian Writers on Grief and Mourning, edited by George Bowering and Jean Baird, Random House Canada, 2009. 351 pp. The Heart Does Break is a Canadian anthology of personal stories on grief and mourning […]
Amongst the most memorable names that I heard as a child, growing up in a South Asian Muslim household, was that of (sir) Salman Rushdie. There was always an air of frustration, anger and utter hatred that seemed to […]
The following poems are taken from Luigi Moneferrante’s new collection entitled: Stiletto Heels And a Pork Pie Hat On the Road Again The door of the camper opens Out jump Billy, Bob & Suzy Pull out their pee-pees The […]
The Housewife’s Lament was written as a protest song, out of the experience of women in the not too distant past. The song originated during the Civil War in the United States. It was found in the diary of […]
