Solo Feature: Nowhere, Exactly

Name: Solo Feature: Nowhere, Exactly
Start: 2024-9-28T11:00-4:00
End: 2024-9-28T11:45-4:00

28sep11:00 am11:45 amSolo Feature: Nowhere, ExactlyM.G. Vassanji11:00 am - 11:45 am(GMT-04:00)

Event Details

From one of Canada’s most celebrated writers, two-time Giller Prize winner M.G. Vassanji, comes a thoughtful meditation on what it means to belong in the world.

Home is never a single place, entirely and unequivocally. It is contingent. The abstract “nowhere,” then, is the true home.

M.G. Vassanji has been exploring the immigrant experience for over three decades, drawing deeply on his own transnational upbringing and intimate understanding of the unique challenges and perspectives born from leaving one’s home to resettle in a new land. The question of identity, of how to configure and see oneself within this new land, is one such challenge faced. But Vassanji suggests that a more fundamental and slippery endeavour than establishing one’s identity is how, if ever, we can establish a sense of belonging. Can we ever truly belong in this new home? Did we ever truly belong in the home we left? Where exactly do we belong? For many, the answer is nowhere exactly.

Combining brilliant prose, thoughtful, candid observation, and a lifetime of exploring how we as individuals are shaped by the places and communities in which we live and the history that haunts them, Nowhere, Exactly examines with exquisite sensitivity the space between identity and belonging, the immigrant experience of both loss and gain, and the weight of memory and nostalgia, guilt and hope felt by so many of those who leave their homes in search of new ones.

Speakers for this event

Linda Morra

Linda Morra

Moderator
Linda Morra is an award-winning author and podcaster. Using her expertise as a seasoned literature professor, she develops provocative, timely insights for her podcast, Getting Lit With Linda, about books from Canada and elsewhere to show why stories are relevant for all of us. Getting Lit With Linda won the 2022 Outstanding Education Series Award by the Canadian Podcast Awards and was a Finalist for the 2023 People’s Choice Podcasting Awards. Her podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify, and other high-quality platforms.

URL http://lindamorra.com/

Moderator
M G Vassanji

M G Vassanji

M G Vassanji is the author of ten novels, three collections of short stories, a travel memoir about India, a memoir of East Africa, and a biography of Mordecai Richler. He is twice winner of the Giller Prize (1994, 2003); the Governor General’s Prize (2009) for nonfiction; the Harbourfront Festival Prize; the Commonwealth First Book Prize (Africa, 1990); and the Molson Prize. “Nostalgia”, his dystopian novel, was a finalist for CBC’s Canada Reads. M G Vassanji was born in Nairobi, Kenya and raised in Tanzania. He lives in Toronto, and visits East Africa and India often.