TorontoJournal
Diaspora <br>Dialogues
On June 11, 2008 the City of Toronto is launching a literary anthology titled 'TOK 3: Writing the New Toronto' at the Luminato-Toronto's Festival of Arts and Creativity. Among the writers being published is an emerging Toronto writer of Bangladeshi origin and to my surprise it is I! How did I turn into a diaspora writer and what does Toronto as a city do to the Bangladeshi literary soul?
When I landed in Toronto, ten years ago, I had come from the desert land of Kuwait, where I had taught English at a college for six years. Imagine being lifted from the sand dunes of Arabia to the green parkland that is Toronto. The verdant lushness of the drive from the airport to a cousin's place--it seemed like the leafy coolness of home. The word 'Toronto' is a Native American word meaning 'meeting place' and as I explored the city in the days, weeks and months to come, it lived up to its meaning. Here, indeed was the cultural mosaic the Canadian government has been trying to promote--there were people around me of every colour, shape, size. As I sat on a bus looking around the city seemed to be bursting at the seams with variety and colour!
I joined a Toronto community college and was soon enmeshed in the life of an English teacher. As I taught, I also began to read voraciously the multicultural writing that Toronto had to offer. The first (Canadian) South Asian writer whose story I encountered in one of my courses was Himani Bannerji's 'The Other Family.' Himani Bannerjee was born in Bangladesh and is a professor at York University. My South Asian students loved the story about a little Bengali girl. Two of my colleagues published a book of short stories titled 'Stories about Us,' which included Tagore's 'The Kabuliwallah.' As I read parts of the story aloud to my Canadian students, Tagore's simple, poetic prose would melt the snow outside my classroom windows and I could see my homeland in much the way Tagore looked into the Kabuliwallah's eyes and saw the mountains of Kabul. And so in this way, quite unknowingly, while teaching the elements of fiction to my students, I began to write my own stories.
Where did my first stories come from? They came from the human tales around me, what my students told me about bits and parts of their lives, confiding in a desi teacher. My colleagues in Toronto encouraged me, as my colleagues had done at the English Department, Dhaka University many, many moons ago. When I received the Emerging Writers Award 2007 from the Toronto Arts Council, I felt that at last I was beginning a new human journey.
Toronto is a great place to be for an aspiring South Asian writer and artist. It is home to the Ontario Arts Council as well as the Toronto Arts Council that promotes awards and grants to writers and artists from a multicultural background. My publisher, Diaspora Dialogues, was looking for writers who were first- or second-generation immigrants. During one of my readings, I met Shyam Selvadurai, the Sri Lanka-born writer whose short story was in the 'TOK2: Writing the New Toronto' anthology. I asked him as to what was the most important thing that a writer must keep in mind. He said, "A writer must be true to his voice." He told me that the North American publishing industry was a difficult one to get into, and that it took talent as well as luck to crack it.
Toronto has a Desilit book club which is a chapter of the North American DesiLit Book Club. The club meets once a month and chooses a desi book to read. Our selection this month was 'A Pakistani Bride' by Bapsi Sidwa. I run a writing workshop with this group from time to time.
I am currently in a MFA mentorship program with M.G Vassanji. Vassanji is one of the foremost South Asian writers in English, winning Canada's Giller prize twice. He and his wife Nurjehan run the Tsar Publication house in Toronto which focuses on South Asian writing in North America. So here I am, an apprentice to a great writer who is passing on to me what he knows about the craft of writing. The process is inspiring and at times (sigh!) very frustrating as I struggle to write and re-write. And re-write!
Spring is here in Toronto after a long frosty winter, and I mean to enjoy the good weather out of doors with my family and possibly do a little writing. We had two wonderful Pahela Boishak melas in the Bangladeshi community at Danforth Road. There are a lot of aspiring Bangladeshi poets here in Toronto and there was poetry reading and songs at the cultural function. I finally got to wear my cotton Tangail saris and my five-year-old daughter Mikhaela also wore a colourful desi duppata. As we walked along the colourful stalls of the mela, she hummed a Tagore song with a Canadian intonation. I smiled at her…
Sayeeda Jaigirdar's novel-in-progress is The Song of the Jamdanee Sari.
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