Join us for an evening with Mariam Pirbhai\, writer and academic as she disc usses her new book \;Garden Inventories: Reflections on Land\, Place and B elonging\, a combo of nature writing and memoir\, exploring her r elationship\, as an immigrant who has lived in other parts of the world\, to what it means to belong and settle a new land&mdash\;specifically here& nbsp\;in the Grand River region\, in Waterloo. The book is filtered throug h the lens of gardens and gardening.
\nPresented in partnership with Words Worth Books.
\nAbout Mariam Pirbhai:
\nMariam Pirbhai is the auth or of a debut novel titled Isolated Incident (Mawenzi 2022) featured among CB C&rsquo\;s &ldquo\;65 Works of Fiction to Watch For in Fall 2022)\; and a short story collection titled Outside People and Other Stories (Inann a 2017)\, winner of the IPPY and American BookFest Awards. Pirbhai is Prof essor of English at Wilfrid Laurier University\, where she teaches and spe cializes in postcolonial studies and creative writing. She is also the aut hor or editor of several academic books on the global South Asian diaspora \, including Mythologies of Migration\, Vocabularies of Indenture: Novels of the South Asian Diaspora in Africa\, the Caribbean\, and Asia-Pacific ( University of Toronto Press 2009)\, and Critical Perspectives on Indo-Cari bbean Women&rsquo\;s Literature (Routledge 2013). Pirbhai has served as Pr esident of CAPS (Canadian Association of Postcolonial Studies\, formerly C ACLALS)\, Canada&rsquo\;s longest-running scholarly association devoted to postcolonial and global anglophone literatures. Pirbhai is the daughter o f Pakistani immigrants whose arrival in Canada followed a circuitous route from England\, the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines. She and her husband live in Waterloo\, Ontario.
\nAbout Garden Inven tories - Reflections of Land Place and Belonging:
\nIn Garden Inventories: Reflections on Land\, Place and Belonging\, scholar M ariam Pirbhai looks carefully at the square of land she has called home in Southern Ontario for the past seventeen years\, which she notes is a mile stone for her\, and asks how long it takes to be rooted to a place? And wh at does that truly mean? Seeing the landscape around her with the layered experience of a childhood spent wandering the world\, Pirbhai shares her e fforts to create a garden and understand her new home. From the strange No rth American obsession with non-fruiting fruit trees to the naming convent ions of plants that erase their heritage\, she casts a sharp eye on the ch oices that have shaped our gardens\, and our society. Pirbhai considers wi ldflowers and weeds\, our obsession with lawns\, the choices in our plant nurseries and even our Canadian dedication to the cottage with warmth and humour. The result is a delightful collection of essays that invites the r eader to see the beautiful complexity of the land around us all in a new w ay.
\nProgrammer: Nancy
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