The Vancouver Latin American Cultural Centre presents:
To Write is to Resist. To Write is to ReCreate
A panel discussion featuring Wanda John-Kehewin, Carmen Aguirre and Rita Wong. Moderated by Carmen Rodríguez.
Monday, October 3, 2016, 7-9pm
Ice Rink Mezzanine (Britannia Community Centre). Parker St., just west of Commercial Drive, Vancouver.
FREE ADMISSION
“In an incarcerated society, free literature can only exist as denunciation and hope.” Eduardo Galeano, 1976.
If we were to envision today’s society as a gigantic prison, who would be our jailers? Undoubtedly, the same ones that Galeano exposed and denounced: Capitalism, Colonialism, Imperialism and White Male Supremacy. These are the forces that for centuries have dominated the world, created profound economic and social inequities and now threaten to destroy our planet.
In their writing, Wanda John-Kehewis, Carmen Aguirre and Rita Wong unmask and decry these forces and the impact they have had on the environment and people’s lives: cultural genocide, state repression, systemic racism, displacement, and the pillage of natural resources, to name a few. But in doing so, they also chart journeys of human dignity, courage, love of life, beauty and activism. Theirs is a literature of denunciation and hope. For them, To Write is to Resist. To Write is to ReCreate.
Cree poet Wanda John-Kehewis is a graduate of Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio and the author of critically acclaimed In the Dog House. She uses writing as a means to understand and respond to the near decimation of First Nations cultures, languages and traditions. In 2013, John-Kehewis was the winner of the World Poetry “Empowered Poet Award.”
Rita Wong is the author of four books of poetry: Monkeypuzzle, Forage, Sybil Unrest (with Larissa Lai), and Undercurrent. Forage was the winner of the 2008 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and Canada Reads Poetry 2011. Wong is Associate Professor in the Critical and Cultural Studies Department at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design.
Carmen Aguirre is a Vancouver-based multiple-award-winning theatre artist and author who has written and co-written twenty-five plays, including The Trigger, The Refugee Hotel and Blue Box. Her first book, Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter, won CBC Canada Reads 2012. Her second book, Mexican Hooker # 1, was published earlier this year.
Carmen Rodríguez is a bilingual Chilean-Canadian writer. She is the award-winning author of Guerra Prolongada/Protracted War, a volume of poetry; De cuerpo entero/and a body to remember with, a collection of short stories; and Retribution, a novel. Between April and June of 2017, Rodríguez will be Writer in Residence at Historic Joy Kogawa House.