The York Centre for Asian Research (YCAR) has announced the newest recipients of YCAR publication support funding.
The fund is intended to assist in covering expenses that will enable or enhance the publication of research on Asia or Asian diasporas by YCAR faculty associates and graduate associates.
Patrick Alcedo (Dance), Tania Das Gupta (Equity Studies) and A. Nedra Rodrigo (Humanities) received support for editing, indexing and translation of forthcoming works.
Das Gupta’s upcoming monograph Twice Migrated, Twice Displaced: Indian and Pakistani Professionals and Transnational Households in Canada, 2004–2014 is the result of years of exploratory research with twice-migrated professional Indian and Pakistani immigrants in Toronto, a group not studied before.
“Their two-step migration consisted of, first moving from South Asia to the Persian Gulf countries and second, migrating from the Gulf to Canada. They have settled in Canada as permanent residents, many becoming citizens, yet some living in split family formations,” said Das Gupta.
Issues of identity are also examined in a post-9/11 world. University of British Columbia Press will publish the book in 2021.
In the Shadow of a Sword is the memoir of Thamizhini, who joined the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) at the age of 19 and spent 18 years as a combatant, educator and, for some time, head of the women’s division of its political wing. It weaves back and forth in reminiscences between her childhood experiences of state violence to her decision to join the LTTE, her experiences with the many projects she undertook for the civilian population as a member of the LTTE, her participation in the Peace Talks of 2002, the freedoms granted and the constraints placed upon her during the armed struggle, and her experiences in combat training, political negotiations, diplomacy and in the battlefields. Rodrigo received support from the Publication Support Fund for the memoir’s translation into English.
“It is a narrative weighted with grief and remorse yet glistening with moments of humour and thick with compassion. The memoir contains wry observations on gender roles and media manipulation in times of war and is a valuable archive that rescues female combatants from oblivion. The memoir is also deeply immersed in an ecological context that speaks to a relationship with terrain and environment that is inseparable from culture,” said Rudhramoorthy Cheran (University of Windsor), a YCAR research associate who wrote the book’s introduction. The book is scheduled for release in fall 2020.
Alcedo was awarded funds in support of the final editing of his new documentary, Luther’s World. The film is centred around Luther Perez, a former professional dancer with the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the Manila Metropolis Ballet in the 1970s and 1980s. He now teaches ballet to underprivileged children and at-risk youth in Manila, Philippines. The film explores the realities of life in a world of precarity with the search for meaning and purpose. The film delves into the material challenges faced by young dancers from the city’s lower class and examines how dance allows them both a reprieve from the struggles of urban poor life, as well as giving them a chance to dream of a world beyond it. Their lives are juxtaposed against that of Luther, their aging teacher and mentor, who once gave up an American green card – and the opportunities for a better life that come with it – in order to have a life with meaning. The documentary will be released in 2021.
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