Our headlines underscore the geopolitical forces that shape these tumultuous times, but too infrequently do we hear from voices whose lives and homes are impacted by such pressures. Two exceptional journalists and authors share such stories—and discuss their motivation to seek them out. Kamal Al-Solaylee’s Return: Why We Go Back to Where We Come From includes conversations with dozens of people like himself who have chosen to—or long to—return to their homelands. Driven, by Marcello Di Cintio, shares conversations with taxi drivers, their backgrounds ranging from the Iraqi National Guard, to the Westboro Baptist Church, to an arranged marriage that left one woman stranded in a foreign country with nothing but a suitcase. There are thousands of unknown stories around us. By hearing them, we see the world in a new light.
Presented in partnership with SFU Library.
Participants and Speakers
Kamal Al-Solaylee
KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE is the author of the bestselling memoir Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes, which won the 2013 Toronto Book Award. His second book, Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (to Everyone), was hailed as “essential reading” by the Globe and Mail. A finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction and the Trillium Book Award, Al-Solaylee won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. He teaches journalism and literary nonfiction at Ryerson University. (ONTARIO)
Marcello Di Cintio
MARCELLO DI CINTIO is the author of four previous books, including Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, which won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the W.O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize, and Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense—also a W.O. Mitchell Prize winner. Di Cintio’s magazine writing has appeared in publications such as the International New York Times, The Walrus, Canadian Geographic, and Afar. (ALBERTA)