The Cochrane Public Library, as part of its series commemorating Black History Month, will present a discussion entitled, “Home is what the tortoise bears on its back: Be/longing and Un/settling,” on Feb. 25, from 2 to 3 p.m.
The guest speaker is Dr. Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike, an inaugural recipient of the University of Calgary Provost's Postdoctoral Awards for Indigenous and Black Scholars. He is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Calgary.
Umezurike will share his experience looking at issues of home, family, kin, identity, community, and country.
“As an African scholar and writer in Canada, I cannot help but think about home, where home would be for someone like me who lives in two countries: Nigeria and Canada,” he said.
“Questions about home provoke concerns about belonging, hospitality, norms of intimacy, and citizenship.”
Umezurike asks questions like: Who is a stranger in our community? Who is alien among us?
“I wonder where home is for the migrant who flees his home . . . , who desires, despite harrowing and alienating circumstances, to recreate home on someone else’s land, in this case, the ancestral home of the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island,” he said in an interview.
“I desire a good life for myself and my family in Canada, but I also recognize the colonial violence that contoured and ruptured the world of Indigenous peoples – aspects of which still permeate and structure how we relate with one another.”
Umezurike said the longer he settles among Canadians, the more he realizes that it is not enough to re-create a sense of home, or to aspire toward the good life. He said he also feels he needs to nurture a way of life “that does not perpetuate the abjection and degradation of Indigenous life, regardless of whichever part of Canada I find myself.”
He said these questions are a matter of both ethics and politics.
“In other words, one must recognize that they have a part to play in highlighting racial injustice and advocating for a collective humanity that asserts every person’s right to exist and thrive in the world,” he said.
Umezurike’s teaching and research interests include African and African Diaspora literatures, post-colonial literatures, gender and sexuality, cultural studies, and creative writing.
He is the author of Double Wahala, Double Trouble (2021), Wish Maker (2021), and there’s more, a poetry collection forthcoming from the University of Alberta Press in 2023.
His library talk will explore what it means for a Black African Canadian to claim a home on Indigenous lands.
