The World is Here: Novels Navigating Love and Conflict

From L to R: Manjushree Thapa, Josh Scheinert,  Eva Salinas
Uzma Jalaluddin and Sharon Bala
at a discussion on
'The World is Here: Novels Navigating Love and Conflict
at the Festival of Literary Diversity  

The Festival of Literary Diversity’s fourth edition was held recently in Brampton. The festival has grown steadily in participation and popularity over the years, attracting the best literary talent that Canada offers.

In 2016, just prior to the launch of the first festival, I interviewed Jael Richardson, the founder and artistic director of the festival, for TAG TV (see the interview here: https://youtu.be/vDklJugI6Xg). Jael said the idea of the festival came to her in 2014 when she participated in a book conference in New York and was stunned at the lack of diversity in the lineup of the authors. Dalton Higgins, author and events organiser, pointed out to Jael that the situation wasn’t too different in Canada.

Jael and a group of people who shared her interests got together and decided to launch a Festival that would celebrate diversity in all its forms – race, faith, sexual orientation, abilities (physical and mental). The purpose was to create space in the world of literature that would reflect the Canadian reality of multiculturalism. Earlier this year, the Writers’ Union of Canada recognised Jael and FOLD with the 2019 Freedom to Read Award.

Since its start in 2016, I have attended all the four festivals in Brampton. In 2017, I was privileged to be invited as an author. And every year, the festival has featured many authors who congregate in the first week of May to talk about themselves, their books, their readers, other authors, Canada, diversity, multiculturalism, and have fun.

This year, the festival’s main venue was the landmark Rose Theatre in Brampton. Spring had finally arrived, and the longish commute from Toronto didn’t seem too arduous, especially because the session that I’d chosen to attend – ‘The The World is Here: Novels Navigating Love and Conflict’ – had fine authors, all of whom had their debut novels published in Canada recently.

The panel included

Sharon Bala (The Boat People which was a finalist for Canada Reads 2018 and was awarded the 2018 Amazon Canada First Novel Award);

Uzma Jalaluddin (Ayesha At Last, a revamped Pride and Prejudice that is soon to be made into a film);

Josh Scheinert (The Order of Nature, set in Gambia, portraying the struggles and fears of being gay in West Africa) and

Manjushree Thapa (All of Us in Our Own Lives is her first novel to be published in Canada).

Eva Salinas, managing editor of foreign affairs news site OpenCanada.org and a freelance journalist, moderated the discussion.

Sharon’s and Uzma’s novels are about their protagonists coming to Canada, and Josh’s and Manjushree’s novels are about their protagonists leaving Canada. In all four novels, the borders between home and away get blurred, and lives are transformed because of physical and emotional dislocation.

Eva asked the panelist about the different kinds of borders in their stories, and how their characters and they as writers respond to these borders.

Sharon, whose novel is about Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, landing off the coast of British Columbia, says that more than personal, physical, and geographical borders, her characters navigate the liminal spaces of silences and secrets. 

In Uzma’s Ayesha At Last, the boundaries are purely personal. A character in the novel, Khalid, knows he appears weird to the world because of in-your-face refusal to abandon his ethnicity and cultural rootedness; but he doesn’t worry overtly about this because he contends that he is who he is because of his belief; the reader is not expected to like him rather spend time with him to understand him.

“People cross borders often without having a choice,” Josh says. In his novel, which explores the relationship between an American (Andrew) and a Gambian (Thomas), the protagonists cross the continental borders, and the borders of control drawn by the society and families. In Manjushree’s All of Us in Our In Our Own Lives, Ava Berriden goes from Toronto to Nepal to find meaning in her life, but realises that she is unwanted despite her power.

The discussion dealt with issues that are common to Canadian milieu – issues such as acceptance, belonging, identity and home. “What gives us our identity, and how much of it is related to race?” asked Eva, whose careful choice of questions accentuated the inherently Canadian character of these authors.

I am an engaged writer, I’m interested in novels of ideas: Manjushree Thapa

Born in Kathmandu, and having lived in many countries, Manjushree Thapa is now a Canadian novelist, essayist, and editor. Her novel All of Us in Our Lives, published in Canada by Freehand Books and in India by Aleph Book Company, was launched last month in Toronto. In an interview, Manjushree says her writing has always been rooted in Nepal, "and will continue to be."

Manjushree Thapa at the launch of her book at Another Story Bookshop

You’ve been a Canadian for a fairly long time, but only now have published a novel in Canada. Is the prolonged delay because of an unwillingness to adapt and accept your new Canadian identity?  

I moved to Canada from Nepal in 2008, mid-career, with several published books, and a novel in its final stages, Seasons of Flight. It took a few years to see that novel through to publication.

Then I began All of Us in Our Own Lives. I finished its first draft at the Writers’ Trust residency at Pierre Berton’s house in Dawson City, the Yukon, in the winter of 2011. It’s taken this long for it to be completed and published. I think it took me this long because it’s the first book I wrote about Nepal from afar. I wasn’t quite sure how to do that.

And the Canadian literary world maybe didn’t know what to do with a writer like me, who migrated to Canada fully formed. My writing has always been rooted in Nepal, and will continue to be. I was fortunate to receive a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts for it, even though none of my earlier writing had been published here. I suppose that’s why it’s particularly meaningful to me that All Of Us in Our Own Lives found a home with Freehand Books. This is the first time I feel like I may be related, in some way, to the world of Canadian literature.

To be honest, I didn’t quite feel Canadian till I became a citizen in 2016. Before that, as a permanent resident, I took an interest, of course, in my milieu. I’d read many Canadian authors before moving here, but didn’t know much about the intricacies of the Canadian literary world – the institutions that shape it, and the writers they produce. It took a few years of reading to get my bearings. I now follow the Canadian literary world’s goings-on, though I do still feel some confusion about being an insider-outsider to it. But then the world of Canadian literature can be quite cliquish and inward looking. I suspect that many writers feel out of place in it as perhaps is fitting, given the revival of Indigenous literature. I’ve learned the most by reading writers such as Eden Robinson, Thomas King, and Lee Maracle. They’ve reframed the entire world of Canadian literature. Perhaps it’s right for all of us to feel a bit like outsiders here.

You’re a rare, authentic, grounded feminine voice to have emerged from South Asia and your oeuvre is rich, diverse and eclectic. Is your latest novel All of Us in Our Own Lives your first attempt at what is generally described (often derisively) as immigrant literature?

Immigrant literature, if I understand the term, refers to literature about what Salman Rushdie called 'the imaginary homeland’ - the homeland of the immigrant writer’s ancestry, perhaps viewed somewhat nostalgically upon an experience of loss through migration.

I started writing as a Nepali writer based in Nepal, and I remain creatively rooted in the contemporary moment. It’s true that I’m an immigrant writer now. But I don’t think this automatically makes the content of my writing immigrant literature. That is a sensibility that I haven’t ever adopted. I am, in fact, decidedly anti-nostalgic. I grew up in Nepal, the US, and Canada, and my family has lived in many other countries - Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Switzerland, India. I was formed by this constant feeling of displacement, and see myself more as a writer of the contemporary global moment. I always try to bring in as much of the world as possible into my work, rather than a duality between my ‘imaginary homeland’ and where I now live.

That said, if someone sees me as a writer of immigrant literature, I don’t particularly mind. There’s a lot of confusion around these terms, and I don’t take the term ‘immigrant literature’ as derisive.

You’re multilingual and a renowned translator, and yet you prefer English. Why?

My family lived in Ottawa when I was just learning to speak. English is my first language, even though Nepali is my mother tongue. I’m far more fluent in English, with a much greater range of expression. 

I did at one point start to write in Nepali, but quickly realized that it would be a better use of my skills to become a good translator of Nepali literature, rather than a mediocre Nepali writer. A good literary translator a rare thing. It has also led to a deeper engagement with the world of Nepali literature. It’s become my way to pay tribute to Nepal, which has a rich literary scene.

Do you see a natural progression in your journey as an author? What are the broad themes that your fiction attempts to help understand?

I am what is called an engaged writer, that is, a writer who takes on large social and political themes. I’m interested in novels of ideas and start with concepts that I then flesh out into specific characters’ personal stories. 

The theme of All Of Us in Our Own Lives is interdependence, as understood in Buddhism: the interdependent nature of the rising and extinguishing of people’s suffering. The world of international aid, and particularly the women’s empowerment industry, became a way to flesh out that concept by having characters whose trajectories would otherwise never intersect come together and spark personal growth and change in one another.  

My main growth as a writer has to do with aesthetics. When I started out as a writer, I was not always in control of my material. I’d start out meaning to write a picaresque and end up, four years later, with a nineteenth-century novel with some picaresque elements. The form would get away from me, or the characters would. Over the years my writing has grown more controlled. I feel like I now end up writing the books I set out to write.   

You have produced quality creative nonfiction. Is the process of creating the same with fiction and nonfiction?

Those processes are completely different. I love writing nonfiction because it’s straightforward. I conduct the necessary research, and then find the best possible form to illuminate my material. There isn’t the existential angst that comes with fiction-writing. Or maybe I’m less ambitious about my aesthetics in nonfiction. 

With fiction, I am keenly aware that I have complete creative freedom: I can write anything at all. And so I’m filled with doubt. Why write this when I can be writing something else? What is at stake in the writing of this story? Why have I chosen this character, this style, this tone, this word? What is the right form for this story? And the eternal question - is fiction dead? 

Every decision is marked by doubt. This makes writing more difficult. Fiction writing feels a thousand times more angst-ridden than nonfiction writing. Yet here I am, launching into a new novel. I can’t seem to stop.

Read an excerpt from Manjushree's novel below.

Buy the novel: All of Us in Our Own Lives

Publisher's website: Freehand Book

Author's website: Manjushree Thapa

All of Us in Our Lives

Excerpt from All of Us in Our Own Lives by Manjushree Thapa. Copyright © 2018 Manjushree Thapa. Reproduced with permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.

Manjushree Thapa was born in Kathmandu and raised in Nepal, Canada, and the United States. She has written several books of fiction and non-fiction, and she has translated Nepali literature into English. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, the London Review of Books, Newsweek, and the Globe and Mail. All of Us in Our Own Lives is the first novel she wrote after moving to Toronto. She is working on a new novel about citizenship.

OF ALL THE European cities Indira had travelled to for work — London and Brussels, Helsinki and Cologne, Copenhagen and of course Frankfurt, several times — Paris was definitely the prettiest. Indira had been here before, eighteen-nineteen years ago, for her first-ever international conference, a UNIFEM summit on women: she remembered it warmly as a blur of national costumes and inspirational speeches. The best part was the city tour at the end. The delegates had been taken to the famous boulevard, the Champs-Élysées, and from a stone bridge, Indira had taken photos of the Seine. Where were those photos now? Awed by all she had seen, she had vowed to return, and now here she was, back in Paris!

A fashionable lady in stilettos sashayed by. A boy drove his scooter onto the sidewalk and stopped in front of an automated teller. A tall man in a tailored suit cavorted down the sidewalk, smoking a cigarette.

Indira shadowed the man so as not to be spotted by the organizers of the Women’s Empowerment Initiative. There were, in her experience, two kinds of conferences in this world. The first was organized by veterans from the developing world, who understood that formal interactions were greatly enhanced by informal activities such as sightseeing or gift shopping. Indira had formed lasting bonds at such conferences. Years later, she still kept in touch with Abena Kwasima from Accra, Rudo Gamble from Cape Town, W. Werry from Jakarta, Mei Wang from Shanghai, Juana Hernández from Lima, and the formidable Kadri Pütsep from Tallinn. Together they formed a sisterhood of global change-makers.

            The Women’s Empowerment Initiative was, however, the other kind of conference, the kind organized by amateurs, usually American, who tried to squeeze out too many outcomes in too little time. From the very first Inspire! Breakfast on, Indira had had to pursue an asset-based approach using the principles of appreciative inquiry to discuss her work at WDS-Nepal. All day long, she had been trapped in lectures and workshops, and in the evenings, she had had to attend Solidarity! Dinners with earnest cultural shows: a one-woman play set in Ciudad Juárez, an all-woman Roma folk band. Tonight there would be a slideshow on female genital mutilation. And tomorrow morning she would leave.

            Why organize a conference in Paris at all? Why not meet, as WDS-International had one dire, under-funded year, at an airport hotel in Frankfurt? Why not save money and teleconference, for that matter, or video chat, Skype-shype, Viber-shiber — all that?

            The tall man turned abruptly into an alley. Spotting a stately stone bridge directly ahead, Indira hurried towards it. Having stolen out of a session on role-playing, she had two hours, or maybe three, to buy a present for Aakriti, for having passed out of ninth class. Indira also had to pick up something for Muwa, though nothing would ever please her witch of a mother-in-law. Aakaash was easy: she would buy him a computer game at the airport duty-free; two bottles of Johnnie Walker Black Label would suffice for Uday Sharma.

            Indira reached the bridge, and her heart fluttered: was it — could it be — it was! It was the very same bridge she had been to nineteen years ago! She reached for the railing as she would for an old friend, and found the stone smooth and hard and warm to the touch. Oh! She had once been young here.

She walked the length of the bridge, overcome with nostalgia.

            On the far side of the bridge, she came across a row of boutiques. A mannequin in a slinky dress stood in one boutique window. A dress would be perfect for Aakriti, she thought — not this one, the neckline was low, but a dress from Paris would be perfect for her daughter.

            The next window contained an array of jars filled with fruits, vegetables, and nuts: dried, oiled, marinated, pickled, preserved. Yet another window was decorated with fine white lace panties. Another contained nothing but wine. Here, she lingered. The bottles — white, red, rosé — glinted like precious gems in the sunlight. She imagined Uday Sharma lifting a long-stemmed goblet and toasting, “To you, Indira Sharma. To our marriage of twenty years.”

“To us.”

“No, to you.”

            It wouldn’t happen, not in this lifetime. Whenever Indira was in the developed world, she always rued the way she, as a Nepali, was obliged to blunder through life without grace, without refinement, merely getting the needful done. Emotionally it saddened her, though rationally she understood why it was so. There was no comparing and contrasting the life of a Kathmanduite with the life of a Parisian, because the developed world was the developed world, and Nepal was Nepal.

            Next to the wine shop was a beauty parlour. On an impulse, she went in: she would buy a face cream for Muwa here. A bell tinkled. The interior smelled like roses. A redheaded saleslady came up to her, high heels clacking, and after babbling in French switched to English: “May I help you, Madame?”

“I need a face cream,” Indira said, pointing at a jar on a shelf.

            “Ah, oui, there is much desiccation.” The saleslady whisked out a magnifying mirror and held it up to Indira’s face, assaulting her with a vision of the furrows and grooves, dots and patches, stains and blotches on her middle-aged face. To Indira’s horror, the lines under her eyes had deepened, and her complexion, once clear, looked mottled.

Briskly, the saleslady said, “I strongly recommend a treatment, for you it is urgent, Madame.” She mentioned something called Eau Vitesse. “That will make the skin tight, but my advice is to go for microdermabrasion. It aids the revitalization of youth.”

Indira noted that the saleslady herself had a flawless complexion, even though she was — how old? Quite old. “How much?” she ventured to ask.

“Just one hour, Madame.”

“No, no. How much money is it costing?”

It came to over twelve thousand when converted into Nepali rupees!

            Twelve thousand rupees for a beauty treatment! That was simply immoral! Though, of course, Indira’s per diem could easily cover it, and it wasn’t unreasonable when you converted the cost back into euros. Plus, a treatment, as the lady said, was urgent for her. A global change-maker ought to look good. Also, a beauty treatment in Paris: when would she ever get this chance again? But then again — twelve thousand rupees! Oof. Chances taken and opportunities missed, longings and qualms, desires and disappointments pulsated through Indira — yes, no, yes, no — till with profound regret she decided: “I will take one face cream only.”

“Bof. Your choice, Madame.”

High heels clacking, the saleslady took a jar to the cash register.

The bill came to nine thousand rupees.

            Nine thousand rupees for a jar of face cream! A high-quality cream, to be sure, a cream from a beauty parlour in Paris. She shouldn’t waste it on Muwa. It would be a gift to herself.

As Indira left, the saleslady called out, “Au revoir!”

            “Bonjour,” Indira replied grimly.

Outside, she felt just awful. What was she doing buying a nine-thousand-rupee face cream for herself? What did she think, that it would bring back her youth? That Uday Sharma would notice, and they would recover their marital happiness? What? Walking along the row of boutiques looking for a dress for Aakriti, she excoriated herself:

Look at yourself, Indira Sharma. Tchee! Look. Just look at what you’ve become.

Inspire - Toronto International Book Fair

Hindi Writers' Guild

Anindo Hazra & Ted Goossen (seated) with other participants

Sheniz Janmohamed

Inspire – the first Toronto International Book Fair was a major success, both in terms of the participation of authors, publishers and readers.

The three-day festival saw some big name authors discuss their work, they included the perennial favourites such as Margaret Atwood, and also rising stars such as David Bezmozgis.

The festival attracted 400 authors, and thanks to my friend Meenakshi Alimchandani, who was part of the organizing team, I had the privilege of being associated with the festival, facilitating the readings of Canadian South Asian authors.

The authors who read at the South Asian kiosk included Cheran, Cheryl Antao-Xavier, Kumkum Ramchandani, Braz Menezes, Farheen Khan, Samreen Ahsan, Vicky Bismillah, Kwai Li and Fong Hsiyng, Meena Chopra, Tula Goenka, Jasmine Sawant, Sheniz Janmohamed, Anindo Hazra, Pushpa Acharya and the Hindi Writers’ Guild led by Shailja Saksena. Eminent diplomat and author Navtej Sarna also read from his works, but at a different venue at the sprawling Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

The festival gave me an opportunity to meet and make friends. I met the suave Antanas Sileika, who gifted me a copy of his novel Underground; and I also met the enterprising Robert Morgan of Bookland Press.

South Asian panel
{l to r: Jasmine, Anosh, Manjushree, Anirudh, Priscilla (at mike)}

The main South Asian event at the festival was the collaboration between Inspire and the Jaipur Festival. The panel comprised AnirudhBhattacharyya, a veteran journalist-turned novelist; Manjushree Thapa, novelist; Anosh Irani, novelist; Jasmine D’Costa, novelist; Priscilla Uppal, poet, moderated the readings.

Anirudh read from his debut novel The Candidate, which is a breezy satire on the crazier than Rob Ford world of Indian politics. Anosh Irani read from Dahanu Road, and Jasmine D’Costa read from her collection of short stories Curry is Thicker than Water. Manjushree Thapa read from her new novel  Seasons of Flight.

Here’s an excerpt from Manjushree’s novel:

Being Nepali

An American woman, a schoolteacher, earnest and frizzy, once came up to Prema and asked, ‘Mind if I ask where you’re from? Originally, I mean?’ But when she heard the answer she just stammered, unable, perhaps, to admit that she didn’t know where that was.

Most Americans did better. They would say, ‘Oh’ or ‘Wow’ or even ‘Cool’ and nod in a friendly manner. Sometimes Prema would help them out by adding, ‘It is near India,’ or ‘Where Mount Everest is’ or ‘You heard of the Sherpas?” so that they might say, ‘Geez, that’s real far,’ or ‘I could have sworn you were Mexican / Italian / Spanish,’ or ‘You speak very good English.’ And then she would smile: ‘Thank you.’

Every now and then, though a response would stop her. One day, a woman on the bust heard her say Nippon and expressed her disgust at the practice of eating raw fish: ‘That’s like eating you-know-what!’ she exclaimed. Another man, a dark-skinned grocer, South Asian himself, baffled her with, ‘Aren’t you usually from Pakistan?’ It was Prema’s turn to stammer. She had also learnt that to the foreign ear, the country’s name could sound like ‘nipple’. More commonly, though, what Americans heard was Naples, as in: ‘I love pasta,’ or ‘My husband and I went to Rome for our honeymoon, but we never made it to Naples.’ 

INSPIRE! Toronto International Book Fair Shines Spotlight on South Asian Literature

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INSPIRE! Toronto InternationalBook Fair is a mass celebration of reading and writing poised to engage 50,000 fairgoers over three and a half days at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

Meenakshi
Alimchandani

Working with Meenakshi Alimchandani, head of Toronto-based South Asian service agency Desi Resources, and in partnership with the Jaipur Literature Festival, the Fair will feature a series of literary events with a South Asian focus.

At “The State of the Publishing Industry Around the World” fairgoers will hear from a panel of speakers from the international publishing community.

Neeta Gupta will speak on behalf of Indian publishing house Yatra Books, a multilingual press that aims to empower Indian readers and connect local and international voices.

This discussion will take place on Saturday, November 15 at 11 a.m. in From the Four Corners, INSPIRE!’s dedicated international programming room.

Navtej Sarna, author of We Weren’t Lovers Like That and The Exile, and India’s Ambassador to Israel, will be in the spotlight at “The Jaipur Literature Festival Presents: Navtej Sarna.”

Travelling from India for this event at INSPIRE!, Sarna will appear on Saturday,  November 15 at 12:3 p.m. in From the Four Corners.

Fairgoers can discover South Asian literature close to home at “The Jaipur Literature Festival Presents: Canadian Authors Published in India.” 

This showcase of South Asian-Canadian authors features Anirudh Bhattacharyya, Jasmine D’Costa, Anosh Irani and Manjushree Thapa and is moderated by poet, novelist and professor Priscila Uppal.

This presentation will take place on Sunday, November 16 at 10 a.m. on the Spark Stage, INSPIRE!’s go-to stage for the year’s most talked about books.

Mahtab Narsimhan, award-winning author of The Tiffin and an INSPIRE! Fair Ambassador, will host “Myth and Magic with Mahtab Narsimham” on Sunday November 16 at 3:30 p.m. o the TD Children’s Stage.

Children should come prepared for fun and prizes at this introduction to fantastic magic, Hindu mythology and more in children’s fiction.

About INSPIRE! Toronto International Book Fair

INSPIRE! Toronto International Book Fair is Canada’s book exposition for all things print and digital, launching November 13-16, 2014.

From literature to children’s books, from romance to mystery, from the science of business to the business of science, the book, in all its forms, will be the star of the Fair. In addition to the English-language market, INSPIRE! will provide for Toronto’s diverse language communities, hosting international, national, regional and local exhibitors.

INSPIRE! Toronto International Book Fair is a place for readers to connect in the most immediate ways with those who write and with those who produce the books they love, a place where people can reconnect with the passion and enchantment of the world of reading.

INSPIRE! is committed to supporting a healthy book business. 

Ticket Information INSPIRE! Toronto International Book Fair tickets are available now. Tickets are $15 per person, with re-entry on all three days included in the price of admission (visitors are required to pick up a re-admission pass). The Fair will run from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on November 14 and 15 and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on November 16. Tickets are available online at torontobookfair.ca/tickets.

Tickets for the INSPIRE! Lift-Off Opening Party (19+) on November 13 go on sale on September 12. Tickets are $25 and include general admission to the Fair.