Class, Caste: Cultural labels?

By Day, By Night. Writings on Art. By Edmund Alleyn. Edited by Jennifer Alleyn and Gilles Lapointe. les editions du passage 2013 This slim volume is the first in a hopefully long series of books on art. As the title […]

Canada supports one of the most expensive education systems in the world; yet four out of 10 graduates from the secondary school system do not have the minimum level of essential skills required to function adequately within the workforce. […]

“À leurs yeux, nous n’étions pas humains.” Le début d’un procès historique: le général Efraín Rios Montt accusé de génocide et de crimes contre l’humanité. Les survivants témoignent. La droite contre-attaque et paralyse le processus. Guatemala, mars-avril 2013 N.B. MISE-À-JOUR: Le […]

This document, Kastevæsenet, was written in Danish by Johanne Nielsen, who was born in November 1873, in Fiolstraede, a district located in the inner part of old Copenhagen. She was one of the few women to have completed the Upper […]

“Il est comme un chauffeur de taxi!” Which means he could be Black, Haitian, Iranian, incomprehensible, immigrant, shifty, or that he does not dress well, speaks in monosyllables and may not be a taxi driver at all. But, a “taxi […]

There have been several exemplary articles over the last couple of months challenging and exposing a euro and ethno-centric point of view of looking at Cultural Transitions. There was the explosive “Can Non-European’s Think” (Al Jazeera, Jan 15) by Hamid […]

This edition of Montreal Serai is about “Class, Caste, and Cultural Labels.” Once again class has become a central social issue both in the industrialized world and in many other countries. The “Occupy Movement” in New York City made the […]

A good friend recently reminded me of how I behaved at the Cancun bus station in 1991 when we travelled together through the Yucatan Peninsula. Lilian said that I stood there, surveyed the ticket booth and reception areas , and […]

Phula did not look tall enough for a twelve-year-old, but that was the age she went by. It had been decided for her much before she could remember. Her eyes had an unforgettable stare as they opened wide and looked […]

It is generally accepted that the term caste as applied in India was introduced by the Portuguese when they established their first colonies there. The word is derived from the Latin castus which means pure or unmixed. According to some […]

Accordion I passed a man playing accordion on a park bench filling the thick afternoon sunshine with strands that made me homesick for that time I never had in Paris and movies with saturated colours and quirky love stories and he smiled […]

In the early 20th century, an enlightened Indian sage named Ramana Maharshi lived at the base of a mountain thought to be the incarnation of Lord Shiva himself. Ramana’s radiance attracted many disciples, including westerners like Somerset Maugham. When his […]

The city, with its street grids, the space given over to cars, to stores or housing or public spaces seems, at times, to just be there, part of our everyday lives where we work live and play. But, upon […]

I love the smell of napalm in the morning. –spoken by actor Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now, 1979 On May 16, 2003, in the al Baya neighborhood of western Baghdad, a 155 mm. shell was […]

I. Inequality and Breakdown In the spring of 2013 we are still living in an economic crisis of global proportions, marked by inequality and massive injuries of class. That the Dow-Jones index has broken through the 14,000 mark, or […]

ROMA In the last heat, little puffs of fog lift off the marsh like white birds, and although she is kept in the yard by the old frying pan faced maid, Janet knows where in the reed beds the South […]

12 March 2013 In 1876, a number of Saskatchewan Cree and Chipewyan chiefs, faced with starvation due to a decrease in buffalo and with the dire effects of White colonization, signed Treaty Six without consulting Cree chief Big Bear, who […]

This song has been kicking around in my notebook for a while now. I figured what better time to record a version of it than from the balcony of the Lakou Mizik house in Port au Prince, Haiti during Barack […]

Anne Cimon’s new novella, A Room on the Mountain, (Gemma Books, Greenfield Park, Québec), is a story of grief, following the loss of a beloved spouse. It is told by Caroline Sauvé, a fifty-year-old journalist, waiting for heart surgery in […]

Jennie was seven when she first met Tai,  her father’s sister. Sadashiv, her father,   had been longing to return to India after long years of training and then marriage in London but had hesitated to broach the subject with his […]