WHERE WE BELONG with Pamela Mordecai, Lynne Kutsukake and George Elliott Clarke

Hosted by Adrian Harewood

In Person Fiction History

Admission

Free

Sunday

Apr , 2016

6:30pm

Eastern

Christ Church Cathedral

414 Sparks St. • Ottawa

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WHERE WE BELONG with Pamela Mordecai, Lynne Kutsukake and George Elliott Clarke

The Motorcyclist, functions as a quintessential Canadian novel, to be consumed by Canadians of all stripes while it drives home hard truths on what it meant - and still often means - to zoom along life’s path as a person of colour.

The National Post

We welcome three acclaimed writers with new works that explore difficult coming of age stories. Short readings will be followed by a conversation on history, race, and the search for belonging.

The Red Jacket is the first full-length novel from Pamela Mordecai, an award-winning poet, critic, and short fiction author. Growing up on the Caribbean island of St. Chris, Grace Carpenter never feels like she really belongs. Although her large, extended family is black, she is a redibo. Her skin is copper-coloured, her hair is red, and her eyes are grey. Publisher’s Weekly praises the work, saying “The novel manages to strike a balance between the bleak awfulness of Grace’s life and the lush beauty of it.”

After spending the war years in a Canadian internment camp, thirteen-year-old Aya Shimamura and her father are faced with a gut-wrenching choice: move east of the Rocky Mountains or go “back” to Japan. Told through rich, interlocking story lines, The Translation of Love by Lynne Kutsukake, mines this turbulent period to show how war irrevocably shapes lives.

In his new novel, The Motorcyclist, George Elliott Clarke, Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate, illuminates the life of a young black man striving for pleasure, success and, most of all, respect. Told in vibrant, energetic and sensual prose the story is inspired by the life of Clarke’s father, it tells the story of a black working-class man caught between the expectations of his times and gleaming possibilities of the open road.

Books available for purchase at every event: Proceeds support our free children’s literacy programs.

The Authors

George Elliott Clarke

George Elliott Clarke was the 4th Poet Laureate of Toronto (2012-15) and the 7th Parliamentary/ Canadian Poet Laureate (2016-17), George Elliott Clarke is a revered artist in song, drama, fiction, screenplay, essays, and poetry. His publications number titles in Braille, Chinese, Italian, and Romanian.Born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, in 1960, Clarke is a matrilineal descendant of African-Americans and Cherokee (peoples transported to Nova Scotia during the War of 1812) and a patrilineal descendant of an African-American great-grandfather and a Jamaican grandfather. He be Afro-Métis. Educated at the University of Waterloo, Dalhousie University, and Queen’s University, Clarke is a pioneering scholar of African-Canadian literature. The inaugural E. J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto, Clarke has taught at Duke, McGill, the University of British Columbia, and Harvard. He holds eight honorary doctorates, plus appointments to the Order of Nova Scotia and the Order of Canada at the rank of Officer. Also he is a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. His recognitions include the Bellagio Center Fellowship, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellows Prize, the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, the National Magazine Gold Award for Poetry, the Premiul Poesis (Romania), the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction, the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry (US), International Fellow Poet—Encyclopedic Poetry School Trophy (China), and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award. In 2021, he was named a Life Member of the League of Canadian Poets. Clarke’s work is the subject of Africadian Atlantic: Essays on George Elliott Clarke (2012), edited by Joseph Pivato, as well as a substantial entry in Contemporary Literary Criticism, volume 459 (2020), also overseen by Professor Pivato.

Lynne Kutsukake

Lynne Kutsukake earned a master's degree in East Asian Studies from the University of Toronto and studied Japanese literature in Japan, eventually becoming a librarian in Toronto. Her short fiction has appeared in Grain, Prairie Fire, The Dalhousie Review, The Windsor Review, and Ricepaper. She was a finalist for the Journey Prize in 2010. The Translation of Love is her first novel. The author lives in Toronto, ON.

Pamela Mordecai

Pamela Mordecai was born in Jamaica. She has published five collections of poetry and an anthology of short fiction. She has also written many textbooks and edited or co-edited groundbreaking anthologies of Caribbean writing. Her poetry for children is widely anthologized. Her poems have been shortlisted for the Canada Writes CBC Poetry Prize and the Bridport Prize (U.K.). She is the recipient of the Institute of Jamaica’s Centenary and Bronze Musgrave Medals, the Vic Reid Award for Children’s Writing, and the Burla Award. Pamela lives in Kitchener.