No New Land?
With Tina Athaide, Tasneem Jamal, and Hafsa Zayyan
Hosted by Zulfikar Hirji
Monday, November 14, 2022
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre
Hosted by Zulfikar Hirji (York University, Toronto)
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the expulsion of more than fifty thousand Ugandan Asians expelled from Uganda in 1972 by the military dictator Idi Amin. These people, many of whom had known no other home than Africa, some for generations, were given ninety days to leave Uganda or face severe consequences. It marks the anniversary of the full commencement of Idi Amin’s almost decade-long reign of terror during which more than five-hundred thousand Ugandan Africans were murdered. Join our host, York University’s Zulfikar Hirji and authors Tina Athaide, Tasneem Jamal, and Hafsa Zayyan for a conversation about their fictional stories of loss, longing and belonging, each set in the context of the expulsion.
This event is hosted in conjunction with the Ottawa International Writer’s Festival.
Tina Athaide was born in Entebbe. After leaving Uganda she immigrated with her family to Canada from England. She has been a teacher for thirty years. Believing that books can present different experiences to children in an organic, natural way, she started publishing early literacy readers for the educational market before her debut book, Orange for the Sunsets. The Middle Grade book is a Junior Library Guild Selection and winner of the CCBC Geoffrey Bilson award for historical fiction for young readers. In 2021 she published her debut picture book Meena’s Mindful Moment and is currently working on a Middle Grade book in verse about an Indian family expelled from Uganda and sent to a resettlement camp in England.
Tasneem Jamal was born in Mbarara, Uganda, and immigrated to Canada with her family in 1975. The author of the novel Where the Air Is Sweet, she serves as a nonfiction editor at The New Quarterly and is at work on her second novel. When not writing, Tasneem serves as Communications Officer at Project Ploughshares, a Waterloo-based peace research institute. She lives in Kitchener.
Hafsa Zayyan is half-Nigerian, half-Pakistani and was born and raised (mostly) in the UK. She is a dispute resolution lawyer working in the City of London and is also the author of We Are All Birds of Uganda, the winner of MerkyBooks’ inaugural New Writer’s Prize and short-listed for the Goldsboro Glass Bell Award 2022, focusing on the South Asian expulsion from Uganda in 1972. When she is not fighting fires in Court, Hafsa spends her time reading, writing and painting. She recently contributed an essay in a collection titled Of This Our Country, alongside other Nigerian authors including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Inua Ellams and Abi Dare. Her next publication is expected for May 2023.
PLEASE NOTE: For the safety and comfort of all patrons, masks are required to attend in person.
This event is free. It will be held in-person and live streamed. Please register using the link below (Note: Beyond Resettlement conference attendees are already registered for this event).