“Them” and Us in Canada

Volume 24 Issue 3
This Us and Them isn’t going away so easy….
Editorial

This Us and Them isn’t going away so easy….

Rana Bose

Sociological (and sometimes mischievous)  terminology like identity gap and cultural appropriation, accommodation and even assertions like Euro-centrism and Orientalism and political programs based on multiculturalism and interculturalism are very simply losing their edge. They have been overused, misused and abused. […]

Teaching “the Other”
Essay

Teaching “the Other”

Patrick Barnard

Dawson – The New “Other” as The New “Us”? Most writers and journalists who have grown up with the contemporary world and have puzzled about it are also people who think about the perennial divisions of “Us” and “Them.” That […]

Art

Looking in and looking out

Jason Botkin

Jason is a 36 year old male.  Thoroughly addicted to pushing charcoal and ink around paper, he is also the co-creator and director of EN MASSE, a large-scale collaborative drawing initiative based out of Montreal.  Graduated from Alberta College of […]

The Multicultural Panic
Essay

The Multicultural Panic

Mirella Bontempo

The mass shootings in Utoya, Norway seemed to have shocked the average person, who has never noticed the trends and the blunt comments on television made by politicos in which racism camouflages itself as snide commentary. Society has become complacent […]

Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa: Revolution Rap

Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa: Revolution Rap

Rola Harmouche & Prasun Lala

Rola Harmouche (RH): Thanks for letting me know about the show. Prasun Lala (PL): Well I needed someone to understand the Arabic….so my pleasure. What does “Tadamon” mean? RH: Ummm…“to stick together”….um…“to join forces” [Googles]….“solidarity!” On June 9th, 2011 – […]

“When did Canada…”
Commentary

“When did Canada…”

Matthew Soule

When did Canada become the country that it is today? Only a few years ago it was seen as a bastion of freedom and democracy, a place where people from around the world could look to, they thought, in order […]

“Where I can cry me a river….”
Essay

“Where I can cry me a river….”

Maya Khankhoje

** Editor’s note:  We rarely re-print essays of a recent pedigree, but in this case, we found this essay particularly relevant to the theme of this issue.  Originally published in 2008. When I return from a trip and open the […]

Reprieve, This is also that & Golden Afternoon
Poetry

Reprieve, This is also that & Golden Afternoon

Arjun Janah

Reprieve Back again in Brooklyn, where it’s hot.Coffee upstairs in McDonald’s withA.C., at eighty-sixth and twentieth.Music piped, that’s not unbearable.The subway, elevated here, in view,And people, people, people, everywhere.For this is home, Calcutta in the West… The NY Times: a […]

Another Earth
Film Review

Another Earth

Jesse Klein

The low-budget aesthetic lends itself best to local, intimate settings. Bedrooms, backseats of cars, unfinished basements are the places where people, most often young people, get to know each other and themselves. Science fiction and the ultra-low budget indie are […]

Profoundly Banned: A Story
Prose

Profoundly Banned: A Story

Sylvia Goldfarb

Their love was banned. He was secular and she was religious. Mais l’amour était profond comme un puit dans le desert, un puit avec tous les permutations de l’eau qui coule. . . Lui et elle/l’amour/les gens qui voyagent/qui traversent […]

Sympathy for a Sadhu

Sympathy for a Sadhu

Subir Das

A fictional rendition of the story of King Dasharatha from the Ramayana Dasharatha could hear the mynas and macaques above him mixed with the squawking peacocks. The young king could not remember this large pond and was happy […]

Budapest Suites & More

Budapest Suites & More

Bryan Sentes

Budapest Suites, I (from Grand Gnostic Central:  DC Books, 1998) “Apply what you know to what you feel that’s more than enough” On Váci utca, mongrel pigeons, flapping, Mount American-style shopfront windows. Grey cops in pairs […]

Captain America

Captain America

Jesse Klein

There are twenty-seven sequels being released this year. The fourth of  Spy Kids, the fifth X-Men, the eighth Harry Potter. Studio executives are trying to mitigate risk, the way a hedge fund manager might. This results in the investment […]

Editor picks