Ezzy at Westview on February 18th
Learn About Ezzy
Ghadeer Malek facilitating:
SnapShots of Colonization From Turtle Island to Palestine
Friday February 12th at 401 Richmond, Suite 350 in the Boardroom at 5:45 pm
6-9 pm
There will be food and tokens
Colonization is not a historical event, but is processes, systems, and structures of accumulation, dispossession, exploitation and oppression across borders. It lives in our past, presents, and futures. It has become a part of our everyday lives and an uncontested basis for our consciousness. So how do we understand ourselves in relation to this? What are the conditions that colonization has created for us? What are our experiences with it? How do we stand in solidarity with one another’s resistance against colonization?
Join in a creative writing workshop where we attempt to break down colonization through collective and individual writing and sharing. We will examine how colonization played out in constructing the world as we know it today focusing on the examples of Canada and Palestine. We will read, brainstorm, and dig deep to work on a snap shot piece that describes an image of colonization as we see it from our individual and collection locations.
Facilitator:
Ghadeer Malek is a Palestinian writer, spoken-word poet, and educator. She aspires to use art and writing as a tool for raising consciousness on issues of colonization, land, and the connections between the struggles of indigenous peoples in Canada and Palestine. She has been involved in organizing writing workshops, spoken word and arts events, creative awareness-raising campaigns, and developing a community of writers and artists with immigrant youth in downtown Toronto. Ghadeer also worked with the Association of Women’s Right in Development (AWID) coordinating the Young Feminist Activism (YFA) program where she ran international educational institutes and conferences discussing women’s issues from an international feminist lens using writing and art as tools for communication and learning across borders and space. She has written and published academically and creatively on issues of women’s rights, immigration, exile, youth in the diaspora, and colonization. Amongst her publications is an anthology called Min Fami: Arab feminist reflections on identity, space, and resistance and a four-part series of a collective zine called AQSAZine. She recently completed a Masters degree in Adult Education and Community Development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE).
Resources:
Memoir and Fiction:
Rigoberta Menchu (1984), I, Rigoberta Menchu
Ghada Karmi (2002), In Search of Fatima
Isabelle Knockwood (1992), Out of the Depths
Miriam Cooke (2000), Hayati
Randa Jarrar (2008), A Map of Home
Maria Campbell (1973), Half-breed
Historical and Analytical:
Leanne Simpson (2011), Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back
Edward Said (1978), Orientalism
Patrick Wolfe, (2016), Traces of History
Ilan Pappe (2006), A History of Modern Palestine
Olive Patricia Dickason (1992), Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times
Poetry and Anthologies:
Suheir Hammad (2008), Breaking Poems
Mahmoud Darwish (2006), Now, As You Awaken
Paula Gunn Allen (1998), Off the Reservation
Jeanne Perreault and Sylvia Vance (1990), Writing the
Circle: Native Women of Western Canada
Robin Gedalof (1980), Paper Stays Put: A Collection of Inuit Writing
Ghadeer Malek and Ghaida Moussa (2014), Min Fami
Online Resources:
Visualizing Palestine, http://visualizingpalestine.org/
Electronic Intifada, https://electronicintifada.net/
Historical Maps of Toronto: http://goo.gl/Yq23kU
The First Story Blog: https://goo.gl/hvUOkc
How my Neighborhood Looks and Sounds in Ojibwe: http://goo.gl/JQfuh
Lost Lyrics 