In the case of migration studies, this is even more resonant (and needed), given a majority of individuals who work in the feld- taking on roles as researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and in other support capacities- are motivated to select this feld professionally due to their personal experience of mobility and migration transitions; they believe, quite rightly, that they understand in-depth the challenges and issues immigrants, refugees and newcomers face. Also, this work for many comes from a personal place of passion and commitment, advocacy and social justice ideologies; arising from the desire for making a difference, and for impacting transformative change. Besides, we know well that, both in Canada and globally too, not everyone who studies migration has interest or aspirations to work in the academic or research sectors. It is important to also add a side note here that for many individuals aspiring to situate their work in the academic sector, lack of opportunities and other complex structural barriers exist. These challenges often lead them to experience these spaces as inaccessible, precarious, or low-paying, and this causes many to change sectors or leave the feld completely to seek other more sustainable areas of work (although the context is not exactly the same, there are signifcant similarities between the above discussion and employment conditions prevalent in the settlement sector; and it is a well-known fact that access to permanent status in academia is even more diffcult. For aligned discussions about precarity, uncertainty and lack of career mobility for employees who work in settlement and integration [often immigrants and newcomers, refugees and women of colour], see Turegun (2013), and Bauder and Jayaraman (2014).

Exploratory projects in migration, similar to the StOries Project, could then be a practical and engaged way to bridge the so far silo-ed worlds of teaching, research and practice in this feld. This would also help disrupt power dynamics that create hierarchies between academics, researchers and practitioners, leading to democratising and leveling the playing feld through expanding partnerships that value collaboration and co-creation between diverse stakeholders who work across sectors in the felds of migration, settlement, and integration. Given the global numbers of migratory populations currently on the move, and growing, based on international scenarios-from refugee movements to environmental disaster-related mobility and the consistent fow of economic migrants, and international students-the importance of this sector cannot be underestimated. As per the latest available statistics (MPI, 2022), if the number of global migrants-280.6 million in 2020, representing close to 4 percent of the world's 7.8 billion people- were to form their own country, it would be the fourth most populous country in the world in 2020, after China, India, and the United States. Hence, new, innovative and additional ways to understand these experiences and stories of movements, as well as the needs, challenges, and opportunities that arise on account of such unprecedented transnational mobility, will add more depth to our understanding of migration.

### **2.4 Workshopping a Book Project, Using a Research Lens**

Although this is not a conventional research project leading to a book; but looking back, and wearing (my) researcher hat, I do retrospectively see a series of research questions that guided us in the envisioning, planning and developing the project, and this collection. I would frame these as follows: how can research methods grounded in lived experience and storytelling- that consider narrative practice, creative writing, and autoethnography as alternative methods of qualitative enquiryshine a light on the migration experience? How might we articulate the raison d'être for putting these methods front and centre in migration practice, for producing knowledge about the (migration) experience?

Further, as the project proceeded, the following sub-questions began to also emerge: is such an approach a methodological gap in migration studies so far, and if such perspectives and frameworks were used more widely, what additional insights might they contribute to the study of migration? Following from this pilot project, viewing it as a case study and a model, what might the potential be of strategies involving 'workshopping' and storytelling in the migration feld as an 'alternative research process' to address current absences and silences that are too complex to reach using conventional research methods? How does this approach, and a process that stems from it, contribute 'differently' to knowledge production in migration?

Finally, we also ask a bigger question in presenting this innovative and experimental approach-how do we defne the boundaries of research; is it possible to entirely separate the spatial, temporal and methodological parameters in which projects are developed and pursued; and how can the specifcs of these multiple contexts contribute to shaping the knowledge being produced? For instance, as Sjöberg and D'Onofrio (2020) note regarding the conditions under which anthropological research is being done in the present, the research feld has ceased to be a geographically contained and a temporally bounded space in the strict sense. Accelerations in this way of thinking about research have been ongoing pre-COVID-19, but the pandemic has further accentuated many experiential realities, including helping us to reimagine a completely new dynamics within the relational. As Barad (2007, p. 466) expresses it, (cited in Murris, p. 14), naming the pandemic not an "abstraction" but rather "an entangled state that reworks notions of contiguity and identity… (not just touching) us here and there, or just offering us individual moments of refection, but rather (getting) inside our skin and (reworking ontologically) who we are." Is it then not logical that these seismic shifts that compel us to live and ' be' different in a hyper mobile transnational world will lead us to pursue 'different' heuristic processes, and these will shape insights about migration that are more fuid, emergent and ongoing? Certainly, the above discussion is rooted in approaches that centre resistance and theoretical frameworks that go against the grain, using counter-storytelling to disrupt dominant narratives.

### **2.5 Exploring Some in-Between Spaces, the Shape of Things to Come**

As previously noted, in the StOries Project, the participants-all researchers who share a common positionality through being graduate students (or recently graduated) at a Canadian university-turn the lens upon themselves. They use the standpoint of self-representation and storytelling, to examine- authentically and deeply- the (selfe) picture that emerges from such a self-construction and selfconfguration of their selves, shining a light on their understanding of their own experiences of migration, be they personal and immediate; or deeply buried in the histories, psyches, and stories of their families and of their past homes where these multigenerational narratives originated.

Given the interest and stakes civil society actors at large have in migration related contexts and issues- from all perspectives, economic, sociological, and political- the hybrid nature of this collection has the potential to appeal to a range of players in the migration feld. Emigrants and immigrants, as well as individuals who work in settlement agencies and community organizations, the educational sector, employers and businesses, as well as policy makers are likely to fnd the 'lived experience' lens in this collection not only innovative and refreshing but also intellectually engaging and emotionally resonant. Further, we hope that readers across the spectrum will also fnd the experiential narratives showcased here as relevant in contributing new insights in relation to the overall experience of migration and settlement, integration and return (and other migration tropes); and that they will add new dimensions and nuances to our current understanding of migration trajectories, themes, and motifs.

Although all stories in the collection are authored by writers who currently reside in Canada, their backgrounds and their profles vary greatly; and the personal experiences they recount in their stories are transnational, often being intergenerational too. They communicate a kaleidoscopic sense of the migration experience with a feel that is both international and multi-layered. This is obvious when we note that the personal narratives that live between the covers of this collection-to be found in chapters three to twenty-two are situated in spatial contexts that range from Iran to Brazil, Guyana, Trinidad, Jamaica, to many countries in Asialike China, Taiwan, India- to Turkey and Italy, and of course Canada. Avoiding though the trap of 'methodological nationalism,' we do not want to present these stories as 'an Italian origin Canadian' or a 'Brazilian migrant in Ontario'. We rather emphasise their complex trajectories and biographies and seek to highlight the ways in which these emerge through their own narratives and from workshop-writing.

Memory, involving travels into landscapes of the mind, the heart, and the past are some common denominators several stories share. Some essays and stories are analytical, others meditative and refective; above all, mostly they are told from personal standpoints but they go beyond being the story of the individual alone, becoming often starting points to explore their relationships and their interconnections with the societal and the ideological, the political and the historical. In doing so, these narratives inhabit the creative spaces between autobiography and autoethnography, and some of the nitty gritty of these approaches will be discussed in later sections of this chapter.

In terms of the temporal realms these stories inhabit, the author-protagonists often seamlessly travel between generations and histories of homes past and present; and they use sensory memory as one of the important tools to re-visit (and reconstruct) their relationships with loved ones, and with their 'homeland.' The idea of home, in some shape or form, is a powerful and pervasive presence in most stories; and these writings also re-create-using rich description-emotional states of loss, belonging, and un-belonging through navigating an individual's own intersectional identity sites, as located not only in their deep longings, but also shaped by their complex everyday environments. This makes it easier to see how belonging is located simultaneously both in the past and the present.

What follows in the second section of this introduction are some insights about more recently developed migration tropes gleaned from research studies found relevant in the context of substantive migration themes the stories in this collection highlight. The studies cited below are grounded in a narrative inquiry framework. They also align with methods and strategies we used to develop and present our experiences and our standpoints in our stories, using creative writing formats to amplify our voices. Our objective was to employ expressive and literary writing genres to tell personal stories of migration, giving voice to dilemmas and contradictions, often leading to highlighting complex societal issues, relevant in Canada and globally. The concluding section of the introduction uses the takeaways, both from the project process and also from the stories in the collection, to show the relevance of these emergent methodological directions as a way to decentre and decolonise migration research and practice.

### **2.6 Setting the Methodological Stage, Using a Storying Approach**

Using a critical pedagogy approach, based in radical educational politics and pioneered by Paulo Freire in *Pedagogy of the Oppressed* (1968) and subsequently, into the 1970s, we used teaching-facilitation practices grounded in refexive practice and peer learning for the birthing of this edited collection. Strategies were employed that encouraged experimental and iterative processes for co-creation of personal and family stories rooted in self-representation. For example, using the metaphor of a 'braided river,' Comer (2015) writes about the personal essay (in migration) as a literary form that communicates the experiential elements within migration as an interweaving of the external worlds that need to be (simultaneously) navigated by a migrant while they journey into the innermost recesses of themselves and their identities. Aligned with Comer, and using refection and analysis, the authors and their stories in this collection also probe complex spaces that lie between 'inner and outer, home and journey, experience and meaning-abstractions intrinsic to our sense of self and world'(vii). Further, from a research perspective, our objective was to explore the potential of self-narrative and storytelling to oppose dominant migrant narratives presented by researchers and media depictions.

Following on Freire who argued for education to think critically about power structures, and who encouraged educators to interrogate established practices with the objective of promoting freedom, democracy and social justice; in the process that went into creating this collection, we too valued principles of relationality and equality rather than maintaining classroom status quo hierarchies. Freire's framework of critical pedagogy was rooted in intervention; and to do this through conceptualising education never as neutral but as always taking a stand, either on the part of dominant culture or actively critiquing it. Our working sessions alternated between being instructor led, and others being organized and led by project participants-the contributing authors of this collection. This reduced the sense of pressure and top-down power dynamics that are (often) normative in academic environments; and members felt ownership of the big group dynamics and the free-fow process, feeling engaged to create intimate spaces through group interactions with peers in their own small group, or across groups. They led sessions, and they initiated and accessed collaborative thinking, participating in other activities involving group-think and collective refection, collaborative journaling and peer mentoring. We kept an online collaborative journal too. Weekly teaching-learning sessionsmodeled on the graduate seminar format of discussion-ran over nearly six months, culminating in a writing seminar and workshop with a renowned Canadian writer of international fame, MG Vassanji.

### **2.7 Challenging Mainstream Narratives, Focusing on Self-Representation to Impact Action**

Methodologically speaking, from the frst stages of envisioning the StOries Project, to its implementation, and fnally, to its culmination in this book, a few elements have remained constant; and these are also the core principles of this project. One of these is the impulse for counter-storytelling. The very frst brainstorm session we met for, made it clear that the only way participants could tell their stories in their own words was by asserting personal voice, through using a process of contradicting many of the story versions about them that had been forever in mainstream circulation. As an example-and similar stories were reiterated by many participants- if, as a racialized female-identifying individual, someone carried an Arabic-sounding name, it was quickly assumed by 'others,' that they were a practising Muslim. Further, for those who perceived them so, these few external and visible signs were enough reasons to stereotype them as immigrants from certain parts of the world (even if Canada had been their only home for most of their lives); and it was assumed that these individuals followed certain cultural practices, consumed (or would not consume) specifc foods and drinks.

Many upon whom these categories were imposed found such assumptions problematic as they believed them to be not only one-dimensional, but also stereotypical and offensive. They felt misunderstood and restricted by these categories thrust upon them, especially as in many cases they believed these descriptions about them were simply inaccurate; and nobody had bothered to ask them how they selfidentifed, or what their real story was. In fact, in the academic environment, and

although they were often in a researcher role themselves, there was neither context nor safe spaces where they might narrate or lay claim on their own counter-story.

Moreover, the authors in this anthology believed that dualities, multiplicities, and paradoxes were the stuff upon which their own constructions and articulations of self would begin; and they wanted to tell their own story from a nuanced perspective that encapsulated these differentiated aspects of 'who they are.' See Vassanji's *What you are: Stories* (Vassanji, 2021)*,* a collection that uses story-ing to enter into complex intersectional worlds of identity constructions and representations, with the 'immigrant' individual or the family always at the centre.

As an example, and making a similar case for self-representation in a bid to challenge dominant media portrayals of migrants and refugees-with the objective of changing the grand narrative- Ruzic (2021) proposes a counter-visual approach where fragmented, subjective, and personal migrant stories are foregrounded. The rationale provided for this is the need to challenge media narratives about refugees that present a complex and unsettling paradox; their depictions in popular culture, on the one hand, 'giving' visibility to their struggles in an en masse kind of way that is stereotypical and monolithic, for instance, refugees making unsafe passages across the oceans-hungry and desperate, appearing threatening or a burden to host societies, and being queue jumpers. On the other hand, as these mass images fail to individualise and personalize-even when they shape a response that is humanitarian and human rights based-Ruzic argues that their impact can dissipate without creating real affect. In a similar vien, Slovic (2007) observes too, "If I look at the mass, I will never act: Psychic numbing and genocide present us with research and statistics on human emotional response…(and) as the psychophysical research indicates, constant increases in the magnitude of a stimulus typically evoke smaller and smaller changes in response."

The point then is that such homogenising representations about refugees as a broad category-including pervasive visual images that are often faceless- can then end up creating stereotypical grand narratives that de-personalise rather than humanize them as individuals, thus carrying the danger of rendering a generalised population of individuals invisible.

The multiplicity of voices that expand the reader's understanding of complicated grey areas in the migration experience- with the spaces and cracks in-between – are easier to access through creative practice and literary writing because the experiential canvas has more possibility to become vast and luminous in such a medium. Intersectionality theory, as developed by Crenshaw (1989; 2017) -who in turn drew upon black feminist and legal theorists' discussions of multi-layered oppressions to come up with it- was one of the key theoretical frameworks we used for our discussions. While being extremely useful as a feminist theoretical approach relevant for academic discussion, we found it applicable not only for understanding our lived experiences of marginalisation, social exclusion, and discrimination but rather more for individuals to use as an 'agentic' tool to see how it felt 'being boxed' by preassigned categorisations. It also became a way to collectively share experiences of how such perceptions (on the part of others) had negatively impacted the selfperceptions of most individuals in the group (and in many cases, their self-esteem).

It was in fact, from such a place of courageous determination that as story-owners, authors contributing to this collection decided to tell the 'actual' 'what you are' story from their own perspectives; and their personal voice became for them a political tool of resistance. Their telling of their own stories also became a pathway to own their counter-stories, and claim such self-constructions as a way to push back against any labels that had been assigned to us by others.

In the academic study of migration, since the predominant approaches have been sociological, (or situated primarily in social science oriented disciplinary contexts), there has so far been little interaction with literary studies, or with migration literatures, diasporic and immigrant writing; and with postcolonial critical approaches. King et al. (1995) note that while there are commonalities between academic literature in migration studies and literary writing on migration, when it comes to exploration of themes, motifs and tropes-in the case of the former, the focus is more on societal forces and underlying structures that impact immigrant movements, like political, economic, social-rather than the individual as an entity, or their experiential realities.

As the review and analysis of literary writing on migration by Burge (2020) demonstrates, this signifcant absence can be addressed by literature, given literary accounts centre individual experience and its expression; King et al. arguing that "literary accounts focus in a very direct and penetrating way on issues such as place perception, landscape symbolism, senses of displacement and transformation, communities lost and created afresh, exploitation, nostalgia, attitudes towards return, family relationships, self-denial and self-discovery, and many more." (x).

Further, postcolonial critical approaches have directly delved into issues of critique in relation to dominant narratives, especially in the context of representations of refugees and asylum seekers. While this is a diverse and fertile feld of ongoing cross disciplinary inquiry, Edward Said, a leading literary critic, and father of postcolonial and post-structuralist thought, in *Orientalism* (1978), theorised the relationship between power and knowledge, deconstructing the assumed supremacy of the west over an orient *seen as* (italics mine) inferior. Other postcolonial theorists, Homi Bhaba, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak among many others, have since created well-established frameworks for resistance, for 'writing back to the (colonial) empire,' while also shaping pathways in the discourse that construct an 'us and them' binary that (constructs) and excludes 'the other.'

### **2.8 Inversions and Disruptions in Our Experiential Journey, Leading to Paradigm Shifts**

Creating inversions and causing disruptions was part of the process of the making of this edited collection. We focused on making the private public; and this was one of the inversions that helped many of us in surfacing our memories, leading us to excavate challenging moments from the past, to claim space in the present moment

but on our own terms. This also meant making somewhat explicit the messiness that is the raw material and the underside of whatever looks outwardly shiny and fnished, through recording and documenting the incremental journey of this project that has led us to this stage of culmination. One of the ways to achieve this is to share the feel of the experiential journey we, its participants, walked on together, as well as the nitty gritty of processes we employed to create conversation hubs every week where we could hold space for each other, and feel empowered and free to speak our truth.

For instance, during the six months of workshopping substantive migrationfocused themes, as a group we also navigated topics related to the craft of writing as well as the purposes and objectives we wanted to achieve through employing selfnarrative techniques to tell our untold stories. Such a 'storytelling' focus in the methods employed, that helped contributors in the journey to get to our fnal chapters, was relevant as these stories were often those most important to us, maybe also the most challenging to tell. We collaboratively refected and journaled about why in the frst place we wanted to write, and who we wanted to write for; or what kind of readers did we imagine would read what we wrote, and why did we-as individuals and as a collective- fnd the process of writing enticing. Many offered that they had always wanted to write; others shared that they were good writers in their frst language and it was the migration transition-and the spaces that opened up between their frst language and English, their second language, that had caused their selfexpression to freeze up, often due to the plummeting of self-confdence and selfesteem; and now they felt like they were falling through the cracks, incapable of writing creatively in any of the languages they knew. For others still, those bilingual or multilingual, writing in English as a second or additional language offered a sense of freedom to write about their experiences in ways that may have been prohibited or imprecise in their 'other' language(s).

As members of a kind of collective space, we did spontaneous free writing on a regular basis in response to writing prompts, with a timer set for 6–7 mins. Some examples of writing prompts we used were:

Have you ever wondered…When I saw those familiar streets…My greatest strength is… When it rains, I feel…If I allow myself to think… I'm a really respectful person but… For me writing is…I love writing because… On my walk last night, I saw that beautiful… I wish I could write everyday…

These brief writing exercises turned out for writers to be pockets of time that they experienced as productive in the thoughtfulness-space they inspired. Most individuals experienced these exercises as interesting and surprising ways to get into a stream of consciousness kind of writing where although there was pressure created by the timer but it was relaxing as nobody else was going to read this raw overfow of spontaneous emotion, or powerful thought. If they wanted to share what they had written, with their peers in the larger group, they were welcome to do so. Many did, and even sharing how the process felt for them-of engaging in these activities with the group-felt inspiring for others; and as these prompts enabled the writers to delve into hidden spaces within themselves, often without self-consciousness or self-censorship, some of the ideas for fnal stories or their pandemic writing emerged from the spontaneous vignettes they wrote. Contributors to the collection were encouraged to develop regular writing habits, and refection prompts they could use in free pockets of time were provided as home tasks.

A few topics we used are noted below: recounting a story associated with our name, the history and the meaning of the name if it was a word with a meaning, or any connection their name may carry to their family, and what emotional resonances, if any, did our name evoke in us; recalling a key memory from childhood that still lingers; vividly describing a place where you played as a child-was there a swing, a tree, were other children playing, describe them too, were you happy or sad, and what did the remembering of that experiencing now feel like; a time when you were fearful, describing the feeling, the situation, the trigger; your participation in a racist incident, either if someone displayed racist behaviour towards you, or when you were complicit in a racist act, either as a perpetrator or a bystander. These are just a few examples to communicate a sense (and favour) of the collective journey we experienced during this frst phase of the project.

The approach throughout was envisioned, and implemented, as exploratory and evolving, provisional and emergent; most signifcantly, it was based on a responsiveness principle so that it was important that each of the project's segments proceeded and fowed into the next stage, and that we could ensure that all along the way individuals felt ready and supported to delve into the diffcult emotional terrain of memory and nostalgia, storytelling and self-assertions. In that sense, since this was the frst iteration of its kind that had been initiated at our centre- and even elsewhere, we had not come across similar examples that brought the particular mutielements together as this project did- there was a distinct experimental feel to this journey.

Moving from margin to centre, to co-create refexive spaces to 'be ourselves' in, was a kind of reversal we achieved, and part of this was also about making explicit the messiness at the heart of research, usually peripheral to the main story. Both the research process and the space it created evolved as we inhabited it together. Our being together in this-what became for many a passion project-and through sharing personal anecdotes and diffcult stories, we were creating conversation spaces that felt respectful to ourselves and to each other. Built by us in collaboration- all of us academics and researchers-it was jointly owned by us; and this place also felt strangely different as here was somewhere we could be truly 'ourselves,' a feeling so far not experienced by any of us in the academic environment that we knew so well. We found that we could more easily show up in this space in our fullness, as our holistic authentic selves- personal and professional rolled into one.

As a group we began to feel a kind of strength in our collective vulnerability, feeling enabled to participate in engaged conversations about experiences of migration and of living in Canada, and write about these-for some, being newcomers, and others as the second generation born and raised here; still others, being a part of the 1.5, or as frst-generation immigrants. This process of sharing and group-think was a place to co-create that helped many of us remember and surface pieces of our missing memories; and the momentum built by these discussions led many of us to

pursue research into stories of family, and of our relationships, with homes past and present, and with loved ones, now passed, or living in far off parts of the world. Encouraged by the sharing, and using strategies for refection and writing prompts, we were able to fnd common ground as well as validation from each other. This made us feel further affrmed and empowered to process our personal stories, excavate them using a kind of stream of consciousness form of journaling, and other expressive creative writing forms to explore deeper connections between who we are; the societal issues we felt impacted by; and the bigger context of the world we were living in. These contexts we were situated in were often shaped by discourses of migration and integration, racism and transnationalism, and they also carried simultaneous intonations of the past and the present that felt immediate and passionate for many, being close as they felt to our lived realities.

Needless to add, all this while, as we participated in this project workshops and built brick-by-brick our self-narrative stories through going deep into the recesses of who we are, the COVID-19 pandemic was raging full steam around and within us. The realities being exposed around us were inequities and systemic fragilities; highlighted and exacerbated, these vulnerabilities disproportionately impacted racialized groups, immigrants and refugees, newcomers and women, added complex new layers to our experiences, our conversations, and also to our understanding of ourselves and our writings. Chapter 23 in this collection delves into the details of this broader context that was the backdrop of the StOries Project; it is both a compilation and an analysis of pandemic times and themes provided by the editors, Ari and Atar; and individual submissions by the authors are written in a variety of narrative styles, from stream-of consciousness journal entries, arts-based and autoethnographic analytic vignettes.

The last chapter in this collection, Damiano's "Becoming through Story," although a chapter by itself, is also a kind of continuation of this chapter as it houses the behind-the-scenes processes, and in some cases, 'raw' material that for many contributors shaped their fnal stories. The introduction to that chapter provides an overview that analytically situates this material in the context of the methodological frame of this anthology while it also provides a rationale that highlights the theoretical signifcance of its positioning in this work. Demonstrative of a paradigmatic shift, it brings to the centre of the discourse the unfnished notes in the margins that help recount the methodological journey of this book project by not only taking the reader backstage but by shedding a light on the underpinnings of our heuristic and methodological approaches. It does this by considering our views of knowledge and the ways it can be created in relation to migration and storytelling. The purpose of the chapter, originally conceived as a collection of 'feld notes' of the story-writing process, is about our shifting concern with belonging, to one about the role of story in 'becoming,' especially in the context of migration.

As mentioned previously in the introductory section, this chapter also shares with the fnal chapter, submissions from contributors, including journal entries, individual and collective notes and refections- in some cases visualizations- to curate that chapter. Narrative analysis is provided by the chapter editor, linking these artefacts to an overview of research methods used throughout the life cycle of this project. The objective is to help the readers simultaneously experience several stages of this evolving journey while they read not only the contributions that emerged from it but also some of the additional evidence of 'truth-telling' processes that produced these writings.

### **2.9 Qualitative Research and Truth Telling, Learning from Indigenous Research Methodologies**

Speaking of 'truth-telling,' when we examine conventional non-positivist qualitative research processes, the emphasis is on premises of authenticity and credibility, the objective being trustworthiness in data gathering. Tuckett (2005) maps strategies for attaining rigour, relying on Guba and Lincoln's trustworthiness criterion, to discuss research modalities like triangulation, researcher as instrument, and feld notes and personal journals, as aimed at getting as close to the 'truth' of experience as possible. When we re-examine the 'process' leading up to the creation of this collection, and we assess how closely it followed the above 'trustworthiness' criteria, we note close similarities but also a paradigmatic reversal. When conducting qualitative research, the researcher broadly employs techniques like interviews, focus groups, life-history methods, including participatory research methods, to explore and excavate participant stories. Applying analytical tools, this data is studied and the fndings used to arrive at conclusions. In the most essential and central sense, the objective of the StOries Project: Strangers to Ourselves- the project and the collection- is not so different.

Guba and Lincoln also emphasize the need for social science research to be emancipated from hearing only the voices of Western Europe, as well as from generations of silence, and seeing the world in one colour (Guba & Lincoln, 2005, p. 212). Further, Chilisa (2012) makes a similar argument to note the disconnections these predominantly western ways of knowing create – from multiple relations we have with our communities, including with the non-human world. How then can we create spaces of inquiry that centre decolonial discourses when colonialism is ongoing?

It could be argued that indigenous research methodologies are not as prevalent or being employed in other parts of the world to the same extent as they are in Canada, given the history of colonization of indigenous peoples in Canada, as well as the pervasiveness of structural inequities that marginalise these groups in present time. Further, the stories and testimonies provided to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (conducted from 2008- to its conclusion in 2015) provided opportunities for the documenting of this history, impact, and legacy of the residential school system. This has created visibility in the mainstream, both in Canada and internationally, around historical wrongs perpetrated against indigenous populations, as well as resistance and calls to action in which everyone can participate to redress these in the present.

Given this collection, and the StOries Project that led to it, are both situated in the Canadian context, the alignment that indigenous research methods share with this migration-focused project appears natural and organic as storywork and counternarrative are foregrounded in both; and possibilities are abundant to explore research methods that can help researchers, educators and practitioners to conceptualise frameworks for 'knowing differently.' The objective of the following discussion is to highlight the close relevance and conceptual alignment of indigenous research methodologies with postcolonial research approaches.

Wilson's (2008) discussion, articulating research as ceremony, is relevant here. As a researcher, to understand his own work and methods as an indigenous researcher, Wilson fnds that creating his own unique pathway to 'knowing' must happen frstly by being fully cognisant of the tradition he is currently situated in- for instance, the well-travelled path already out there- and engaging with it. The next step, the discussion suggests, is for the researcher to come to one's own reckoning about the 'how to' of research that's authentic to them, and this means becoming aware of the dissonances and the gaps with current methodologies, and understanding why things seem out of sync, and the pre-established framework does not work. In other words, Wilson's refections take him on a journey where he frst maps the phases within western research frameworks- moving through stages, like positivist, post-positivist, critical, and constructivist- till he arrives at a place of developing indigenous research methodologies he fnds relevant for 'knowing,' i.e., fnding (and creating) emergent indigenous research frameworks that mesh authentically with his worldviews and life's everyday practices, thereby leading to truth telling.

Smith (1999, 2021a) cites Audre Lorde, 'The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house'; and she describes the challenge of decolonising methodologies as a set of knowledge-related critical practices that must simultaneously work with colonial and indigenous concepts of knowledge, decentering one while centering the other. In other words, the need to engage with both at the same time is key to this process as it is also about 'confronting the Western academic canon -in its philosophy, pedagogy, ethics, organizational practices, paradigms, methodologies and discourses and, importantly, its self-generating arrogance, its origin mythologies and the stories that it tells to reinforce its hegemony' (xii), and reimagining and bringing forth Indigenous epistemic approaches, philosophies and methodologies.

Furthermore, the case studies by practitioners in Smith's *Decolonising Methodologies* demonstrate that 'decolonising practices are not all about theory or all about action but they are really about praxis and refexivity that is necessary for the integrity of research and of the researcher themselves.' Some of the personal notes written by conference participants engaged in case studies where decolonising knowledge is at the centre, and shared by Linda Smith here, are telling. For instance, Martinez-Cruz and Vasquez from Nicaragua write about the ways this book helped them reframe the 'social problem,' refect on our practice, and problematize our ways of seeing, feeling, thinking and writing. They go on to say that in their experiences, decolonisation as a process, situates them within 'a multi-layered social dermis where imperial and colonial powers have impregnated politics and cultures. For instance, in Nicaragua, the left and the right, academia and intellectuals, civil society organizations and political parties, everyone with power to speak and be heard in the public sphere, portrayed the insurgents without thought and without history, reducing them to simple boxes such as 'proletariat,' 'popular classes,' 'indigenous,' 'campesino,' youth' and 'women.' Those with power to classify apply old categories without questioning their own assumptions, histories, motivations and values that charge such ways of producing the social.' Smith (2021b, xv). One of the core elements in the case studies and in Smith's discussion is a reiteration of the foundational signifcance of relationships and connections, as well as reciprocity and accountability embedded in indigenous understandings of ethics and knowledge as a way to decolonise theory and praxis.

Following on Smith's articulation, the (ideological) research framework that Jo-ann Archibald et al. (2019) propose when they discuss Indigenous Storywork as Methodology, is also relevant here. The principles and values that undergird this framework are the most important, for instance, that it should be a 'holistic meaningmaking process (that includes) understanding the impacts of colonization on people, families, and communities, (ensuring) that Indigenous values, philosophies, resilience, and resistance that are at the core of Indigenous stories help ease the pain of intergenerational trauma that may surface when sharing lived experience stories' (p. 9). Further, situating Indigenous Storywork in the context of decolonizing methodologies, Archibald describes it as giving voice to the "lions" (7), seeing it as a way to "equip our communities not only to voice, listen to, and understand our stories with "respect, reverence, reciprocity and responsibility" (Archibald, 2008), "collectively become an Indigenous research community across tribal nations, borders, and countries…encompassing powerful forms of academic knowledge creation and production, enabling us to collectively assert a space that contests and challenges colonial research conventions" (2019).

Interrelatedness and synergy are additional core principles highlighted by Archibald; similarly, aligned with the above reasoning, it was important for us all collaborating on this project to produce this collection, to work through personal storytelling and story-ing to mine our lived experiences, grounding our self-narratives in the relational and in creative practice- to also re-imagine a theoretical and a methodological framework that would 'ft' with our vision, and our objectives; and these factors would then shape the outcomes, whatever these be. In line with such an evolving kind of methodology, later sections in this chapter explicate several signifcant theoretical disruptions and inversions that occured along the way-some deliberate and others serendipitous; and these led us to re-imagine and argue for the use of methodological approaches and research methods that have so far been little used in the migration feld to study important mobility-related themes.

### **2.10 Confronting the 'Who You Are' Question Ethically, Approaches for Navigating Complexity and Power**

The StOries Project and this edited collection are premised on exploring how we can use narrative methods (and practices of narrative inquiry) as well as creative writing as conceptual and methodological tools to expand our understanding of the lived experience of migration. Regarding the interpretive narrative approach in anthropology, Eastmond (2007) observes that it is a way to illuminate diverse aspects of human life; pointing to the relevance of largely subsumed personal narratives and life stories to explore lived experience. Not only that but these personal narratives also provide a commentary on the subjective dimension of social life and the dynamics of embedded power relations.

In our role as researchers, ethical concerns are front and centre as we must always ensure that other people's experiences are represented with accuracy, and that justice, not harm, is done. About the authenticity of data that is gathered, we can only know what our research participants tell us, and also as researchers, we need to be refective regarding the baggage we bring to our interpretation of what we hear. For these reasons, research outcomes vary hugely, reliant on multiple subjective factors, like the personality traits of the narrator and the listener, the quality of the communicative act and the relationship between the researcher and the researched, and the power dynamics within the research environment. Other relational elements, and intersubjectivities, are important too, and these are subtle and nuanced, for instance, considering questions like the following is also important: are we fostering nonhierarchical research relationships; have we established trust and mutual respect in the research process; and are we always being ethical?

Cederberg (2013) and Wolf-Knuts (2014) (cited in Bucitelli, 2016), argue for diversity and complexity in the interpretive approach when it comes to making sense of migration narratives as these are not only multi-faceted; they are often embedded in complicated broader social structures and power relations. Context is critical, and attention must be paid to factors that constrain interviewees. What Buccitelli (2016) observes, making a case for combining a life 'history' approach with oral history and narrative practice to study migration narratives, is somewhat resonant in relation to the StOries collection, especially in the case of secondgeneration immigrants for whom remnants from the past are ever present in the way family relationships, and cultural practices defne individuals' self -constructions of identity and how their subjectivities play out in the present. Hybridity and experiences of always living in in-between spaces are factors that end up impacting the coming- of-age experiences 1.5 and the second-generation immigrants have- be it in educational or romantic, social or political settings- and these formative times can lead to shaping their futures for always. For instance, one of the authors in this collection, James, in their intent letter, articulates the interest they have in contributing to this project process, and the collection as follows: "My experience as a 2ndgeneration Canadian has been full of complexity, uncertainty, and a yearning to belong. How is it that I don't feel entirely at home in the one place I've called home my entire life? Why do I feel proud of my Jamaican heritage, while simultaneously feeling ashamed for not being "Jamaican enough"? For James and for other authors too, there were struggles with continuously interrogating how their positionality and self-perception was impacting their sense of fnding their community, or how these emotions were making them experience deep feelings of personal isolation, which in turn end up blocking pathways for healthy movement into the future.

In the refective personal story James writes, and also through engaging with the experiences of peers, the author explores questions that confront and confound her deeply. It is through the process of teasing out the many pieces of the puzzle that come together for her that she creates the complex self-narrative that leads to new understanding for her. She puts the pieces back too, again through storytelling, but taking them apart has helped her to better understand where the misalignments are, and also, through experiencing the process of this journey, she is better able to learn what course-correction she might try to effect change. Perhaps, using story to simply understand things better, or pushing back against dominant narratives, was all that was needed to feel more comfortable being the person she herself believes that she is. Other contributors to the collection followed broadly similar paths to storytelling, but as you will see when you read the stories in this collection, the uniqueness of each individual's circumstances, and also their particular 'who you are' going into the mix, and in a personal and creative (non-academic) style, always led to new ways of knowing and translating experience into story.

### **2.11 Self-Representations, Self-Narrative Viewed Through the Lens of Narrative Inquiry**

Narrative inquiry, as described by Collins (2022), is a framework within the narrative turn that re-imagines representation, from how in the context of migration, people are seen and how we see ourselves, to who we become, and how we act in new environments where we create new lives. Referring to the 'big story, small story' approach of narrative inquiry to understand the experiences of African Caribbean immigrants who moved to England, experiences of navigating specifc processes of transition and meaning-making in relation to their post-colonial identity are referenced here. Collins breaks down the approach as the former being about the stories told and refected upon by the frst- generation teller; and the latter about the process of next generation African Caribbean participants refecting on what they heard and how they made sense of these stories. Multiple issues come together to complicate these representations, from histories of slavery impacting family and community lives in new contexts; issues of language and fght for survival, and these intertwined trajectories of movement leading to overrepresentation of migrant individuals in mental health and social care systems.

Self-narrative, a term described by Gergen and Gergen (1988) as 'the social process whereby people tell stories about themselves to themselves and others' is relevant as it has implications for methodology in the framework we're trying to explore and articulate through this anthology. In such a context, 'small story' is especially relevant, as, given it relies on others' interpretations, it is likely to contain ambivalences that lead Kim (2016) to describe it as a term used in life-story narrative work to refer to the 'atypical, non-canonical, unpredictable, and fragmented' (cited in Collins, 115). The use of lived experience, translated into self-narrative, if used as an additional element within the research process to further illuminate and triangulate 'data,' perhaps has chances of representation of migrant experience that has further reliability built into it. Although in self-narrative too, there is reliance on memory work, and that too is partial and selective, and in that sense may be viewed as unreliable; but if the story is about the self and told by the story-owner, it is also about the freedom to self- construct and pursue missing narratives that have special signifcance to particular individuals and communities, with them owning the act of 'sense-making'-often a political one- in relation to the past in the context of the present. The emphasis in discourse can then shift to highlighting values like voice, agency, and choice, rather than elements like accuracy and credibility. Re-framing of this kind, in turn, has potential for positively impacting ways in which we create our new lives in homes of our own making, what Collins describes as the shift from 'constructions of self to paying attention to the performance of self in different contexts' (114). Certainly, while such ways of thinking about research processes carry implications that are foundational to methodological thinking, they could lead the way to re-imagining interventions in research that can enhance bottom-up approaches, thus enhancing values of inclusion and social justice, as well as disrupting power dynamics in environments where there are racisms and other forms of systemic discrimination.

### **2.12 Re-Thinking the Normative, a 'Moving Stories' Paradigm for Crafting New, Mobile 'Immigrant Identities'**

The common ground between narrative (or storytelling) and migratory movements is quite obvious as every individual, family, and community has a particular unique migration story; often they may also carry complex historical stories of movement from one place to another. Further, as Clandinin (2006) observes, qualitative methodology, and within that, narrative inquiry, analyses the *telling* or *living* of stories, using a range of research methods; it is the task of the researcher to interpret these stories in ways that are open and fexible. As argued by Fabos et al. (2021), narrative inquiry provides researchers the tools to interrogate not only dominant cultural and institutional frameworks, but also established migration-story tropes that lead researchers, practitioners and policy makers to make sense of migrant experiences in certain entrenched ways; these default ways of understanding lived experience often leading to certain directions in policy making.

Centering lived experience stories while amplifying the voices of individuals is an alternative way for such experiential stories to be owned by story-owners and integrated into research methodology. As an example, research projects, coming at research from approaches that include perspectives emerging from social justice, human rights and advocacy ideologies; and that employ methods grounded in cocreation and collaboration between researchers and research participants-like photo-voice and other visual co-creation methods-are increasingly being used to foreground lived experience stories and voices of refugees. In the context of migration studies, other creative and innovative projects- already most abundant in the refugee mobility and diaspora space- are participatory and co-created in collaboration with communities, and often they are arts-based. Lived experience is methodologically at the centre in research studies conducted in these contexts.

Fabos et al. focus on the refugee experience too, and they offer the 'moving stories' framework as a new narrative turn that disrupts the normative place-based understanding of forced migratory movements. For example, traditionally, the forced migration condition is understood as always being temporary and full of continuous movement, with refugees feeing from conficts and violence, always leading precarious lives marked by victimhood. A kind of nomadism exists in this discourse that fattens difference and complexity between individuals, focusing rather on refugee aspirations as a group, to return to re-emplacement solutions (and sedentarism) as a normative strategy to fnd solutions to the refugee cycle they are stuck in. Naming the regimen of border regulations 'methodological nationalism,' Wimmer and Schiller (2003)'s term, Fabos et al. go on to show how analysis divides the world into citizens and lawful residents, grouping many other vulnerable people as temporary or undocumented, with unidirectional movements.

The 'moving stories' narrative paradigm they offer suggests a counter storymaking migration trope with potential to shift the narrative focus to bring in fuidity, a sense of multi-sited mobility, and agency that aligns better with ongoing diasporic movements in our current time of transnationalism. These lived experience narratives can be moving, and they can simultaneously also come from an enablementfocused paradigm that can challenge the stereotypical dominant representations of refugee displacement as the single story. These narratives that disrupt established mainstream discourses (often rooted in defcit, representing refugee as being a burden on receiving societies) highlight instead the complex and resilient journeys of these individuals, with the fuidities in their identities intact, and the potential of their diasporic (and digital) networks active at a time when new modes of social organizations are shaping a world defned by global mobility quite differently. This kind of representation is contrary to the often more typical refugee narratives that are predominant not only in popular culture but also in academic studies. That said, employing a storytelling approach that centres self-narrative is a way to reiterate that neither of these versions is necessarily 'truer' than the other; and the point is that both may be equally true depending on the individual who gets to tell their story. This is why we need an abundance of stories, and research methods and processes in the migration feld that can diffuse power in a way that can support and see as equally valid, these multiple ways of seeing, being, and knowing.

### **2.13 Using an Autoethnography Lens, Writing the Self**

As previously articulated, the objective of this project, and the edited collection, was for contributors to use non-academic writing modes, employing a lived experience lens and personal storytelling approaches. Following such a focus, and given that none of the story-chapters are written in an academic format, the contributors to this collection did not explicitly employ autoethnographic research methods to craft their stories. However, given this project straddled the spaces that lie inbetween academic and non-academic, and the authors are all academics and researchers, we discussed autoethnography as an approach for telling stories about the self that would also help us connect purposefully with the social context- helping us better understand the (autobiographical) experiences we were having, situated in the world around us.

As an example of autoethnography relevant in the context of this project, Murphy's (1987) *The Body Silent*, a personal narrative about his disability, is telling. Being an anthropologist, the sudden onset of spinal cord disease set him off on an investigation of the social context and the medical infrastructure surrounding disability, and he describes his narrative as "research among the motor-handicapped, and (he shows how) participation in these organizations forced me to see myself in their lives, and this left me feeling that my own status was insecure and threatened.... I had learned a valuable lesson about the relationship of social standing to disability. I had also learned a great deal about myself (1987, 126). As a research method then, auto-ethnography as a genre, appropriate for writing the self, and intermingled with the social, is explored and complicated in multiple ways in the forms of "self-ethnography" (Okely & Callaway, 1992; Reed-Danahay, 1997), and "interpretive-ethnography" (Johannsen, 1992; Lichterman, 2017), and in its countless other manifestations. It is important though, as Keles shows in their review of studies (in Applied Linguistics), that when employing the autoethnographic method of research, that researchers be clear about the epistemological foundations and methodological alignments with their research topic to ensure its appropriateness.

Some of the other implications of the autoethnographic approach that underpin the telling of the stories in this collection align with Muncey's (2005) analysis of the autoethnographic approach; when she shares in a journalistic and research mode, personal account of her teenage pregnancy and sexual abuse, they trigger questions about her integrity, when the real reason is that her story cannot be told as it is about taboo topics; this is the case even though she believes it would contribute a body of knowledge to help inform practice. Her memory is called into question, and she is asked questions like, why now, why not then, and could the passage of time have altered her story. This is a common challenge with personal storytelling if used for the purpose of research; for instance, Kierkegaard (1957) (cited in Muncey), suggested that life must be lived forward but can really be understood backward, confrming again the messy nature of interactions between lived experience, the selectiveness of memory, and refexive practice. Muncey states, "Autoethnography celebrates rather than demonizes the individual story." If a version of the story does

not align with the dominant narrative, and it gets dismissed as a deviant story, she adds that perhaps, "my story is deviant just because no authority voice is telling it, I am left with a puzzle. Perhaps there are no deviant cases; perhaps there are just lots more individual stories waiting to be told, stories that are sometimes diffcult to tell, that need support and understanding in the telling." (78). The above perspective aligns with the experience we had participating in the StOries Project that some of the authors affrm in their own words and voices in the next section.

Further, as a research method, we argue that autoethnography, including collaborative autoethnography is particularly relevant for the study of migration, given the reliance such theoretical and methodological tools have on lived experience and positionality, as well as their focus on in-between and liminal spaces and refexivity. Moreover, while the story-chapters in this collection do not deliberately employ the autoethnographic approach, they are informed by it; and in line with these perspectives, they bring the personal in communication with the sociological and the political.

### **2.14 Concluding Refections, and Pathways for Moving Forward…**

Borrowing from theoretical underpinnings around what Phillips and Bunda (2018) term 'research through, with and as storying,' in this concluding section, I tie in some of the central ideas highlighted in this chapter with a few 'storied' refections the contributors of this collection have shared with me. I asked them to refect upon what this experiential journey was like for them that culminated in their developing and submitting their story-chapter for this collection, and what the entire process meant to them; how their experience compares with the anticipations and expectations that had frst motivated them to join this group of academics in the frst place to share their migration stories using the medium of creative writing. Phillips et al. observe: "Through storying, we come to live, breathe and feel deep penetrating understandings of identity and place" (39); they also reiterate the importance of 'declaring' our standpoints that we bring to our stories, locating the self within the entanglements of our ancestral histories when we tell our stories, acknowledging the presence of our past in our living present.

Given that the following generous contributor refections are personal, emotional, even intimate, it seems more beftting to honour their words when I share them here, through including both the frst and the family names of the authors. Melanie Zuzarte notes, "I experienced the loss of my father (while this project was ongoing). I used the grief that I experienced to refect on how my father's life trajectory shaped my life as a racialized Canadian woman. I realized that faith, although I had denied it most of my life, was a gift that my father had offered me to support me in my healing in the present and in the future. I also embraced through my work on the StOries Project that it was important for me to slow down and truly consider all the gifts my father had offered me through his lifetime using the written word. Without this project – I don't think I would be where I am in my healing today."

Born in Canada to Italian and Azorean parents, Natasha Damiano was keen on exploring the transnational, intergenerational, and multicultural aspects of her family's migration stories. These aspects included the legacy of her parents' and grandparents' resettlement diffculties, and her own complex feelings as a settler on Indigenous territory. As an academic, she understood the importance of decolonising methodologies in this process, in order to grapple refexively with her place of identity within the complex tapestry of her family and Canada, past and present. In the additional chapter she writes for this collection, we learn much more about the dilemmas of her positionality, also the vantage point of her story.

For Sarah Ostapchuck too, the need to piece together and record her Christian-Trinidadian legacy was important as it was for her a way to understand her complex identity as a mixed-race woman of faith. The process of navigating these complexities-with the project compelling her to build in time and space for personal memory work in a communal setting to tell her story- helped her see, "those parts of my grandfather that are alive in me and make up large portions of my identity, and though I may not carry very obvious physical markings of him upon frst glance, there are both physical and non-physical parts of me that will always bear his legacy."

Nabila Kazmi wrote, "Stories, even though deeply personal, are equally political; when I said this in my motivation letter, I was establishing that my story as a recent immigrant to Canada was both personal but also exposed systemic ideas behind migration of people to the western world. As I refect on this now, I fnd myself amazed at how the project exposed me to the political ideas of migration while at the same time placing my own experiences at the center of them. I am glad to have joined the project and to have an opportunity to write my story of migration. This gave me confdence in my own writing while at the same time assuring me that the struggles of a new immigrant are not merely my own but shared across people with similar stories."

At some level, the lines are blurry between the two stages through which the StOries project was implemented: one was the experiential communal nature of this project, in the way it drew us all in, committing to participate and actively 'be together,' for a few months. The second phase was the actual process of writing and submitting our stories for this collection that writers completed independently; although the formal mentoring structures and activities remained ongoing throughout. The relationships of trust and support that were fostered-at personal and professional levels- are still ongoing, based on the strong mutual bonds that we formed, manifest now through voluntary collaborative learning-oriented initiatives and, in some cases through implementing other professional partnership initiatives. Methodologically speaking, the experience of participating in the project was instrumental in moving us from an individual-centric place of just writing and submitting our stories for this collection, and the collective identity construction that happened through engaged storytelling in community.

Karen refects, "I was interested to be part of this project because of how it would build onto my budding interests in exploring immigrant and diasporic experiences using unconventional approaches to research, refecting, and creative writing. I realized, however, how approachable of a space this felt compared to challenging experiences I had entering an online graduate program as the frst in my immediate family pursuing graduate studies. The learning experiences felt familiar enough to graduate level seminars yet more informal where fellow participants and I led peerbased sessions that were sensory-based and fun; I found a profound connection with each and every one of the participants through the vulnerability we shared and expressions of how much this intersection of research, writing, and refecting meant something unique to each of us."

Jenny Osorio shares her refections too, "I think this is the frst time that I am given the offcial space to tell my story, not as an anecdote one tells at a party, but as my truth. And that was what drew me to send in my application the same day I saw the announcement."

In the context of the contributor refections shared above, I fnd extremely pertinent and resonant the way Louise Gwenneth Phillips and Tracey Bunda articulate the imperatives of their collaborative story-work and writing-both as a counterpoint to their standpoint as being part of the academy, and also as a continuation of it. Framing 'storying' through the play of words, (and the metaphor) of 'Together/two gather,' they tease out the differences between outcome-driven and competitive scholarship on the one hand and the more friendly value-driven work they do that reminds them of their 'humanness.' In their words,

In this spirit we commence with a play on words through naming our shared interests, not only as a coming *together*, but also *two-gather*. *Together* as known in normalised grammar conventions calls attention to our joining, but we are also signalling our warm-smile-onthe-face desire to transform conventions through a thoughtful playfulness with words, to rewrite our connection and therefore give breath to another grammar convention of coming *two-gather*. In refecting on our practice, that is, what we have done and what we are aiming to do, our affnity with stories draws us close so that we *two-gather* to write this text.

There are similarities too, between the work they do as academics, and what they do outside through their story-work, infuences from indigenous methodologies being an important aspect of their standpoint; and although the worldviews that shape the academy are different from those that defne community, in both realms they ensure they lead with accountability and transparency.

Some fnal refections add other dimensions to the experience and the learning we went through together. Arun Rajavel observed, "I am fortunate enough—and even privileged enough—to be an economic migrant who had the luxury to choose. The case is not the same for other kinds of migrants who are forced to migrate due to various external factors. It is of utmost importance that we listen to both the stories, to avoid the narrative being dominated by the former—as is, unfortunately, the case now. I think that StOries is one such initiative that will help bridge this gap. My experience listening to my fellow participants' life stories and their perspectives made this a rewarding experience. The activities we did together such as meaningful objects added an additional dimension to the people I participated with, and even made me introspect and cement a part of my own identity."

"Creative writing is something that I lost when me and my family moved to Canada," Negin Saheb Javahar shared in her refections, "and participating in this collection as a contributor gave me a reason and structure to pursue my passion in creative writing while allowing me to incorporate all the experiences I had achieved since I migrated. The workshops had a different vibe than academic circles, and for me it truly became a space to just talk about a shared passion and fnding the space to work on tying all the pieces of me (the migrated teenager, the student, the researcher, the maturing professional) together. I believe that the project helped me grow closer to creative writing substantially even though I struggled with a very busy schedule; we explored experiences and identity crises in migration from an angle I had not encountered in my academic experience, and I have been impressed from the nuances of understanding I believe I gained from them. I am more than ever convinced that we cannot have a more understanding and inclusive Canadian society unless we give each other the space to tell our stories and to speak about ours."

Finally, looking ahead to ascertain what the way forward might look like, I go back to the shared love of story, and to the multiplicities of interpretive potential stories carry within them. Their power also lies in their ability to challenge hegemonic status-quoist grand narratives. It is helpful that the human need for storying in our lives is a primeval and visceral urge. In this collection too, it is story that is our common ground, between the worlds (and worldviews) of research, pedagogy, and practice. Further, 'declaring' our dual standpoints as contributors to this collection-positioned as we all are, both within the halls of academia and outside of them-and it is from these points of overlap that the voices in this collection are together/to-gathered.

### **References**

**Alka Kumar** I work both as a researcher and a practitioner in migration studies, and for my doctoral study, I used a practitioner lens and an autoethnographic approach to understand the labour market experiences of skilled and racialised individuals in Winnipeg, Canada. In addition to my role as a MITACS Elevate Postdoctoral Fellow at CERC in Migration and Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University, as an independant consultant, I also contribute to the not-for-proft newcomer settlement sector: as an instructor in Business Writing and Communication Skills in Bridging Programs for skilled immigrants; facilitating capacity building through workshops in upskilling training and career development; writing blogs and op-eds; mentoring, as well as doing equity-focused work with organizations.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

### **Part II Identity Negotiations, Othering the Self**

### **Chapter 3 How I Became an Alevi Muslim Woman**

**Esra Ari**

Is he one of those who burned or those others who were burned to death? Ever since I could remember, this was the frst question my mum asked me when I had a new boyfriend. She always wanted to learn if this man was a Sunni or an Alevi. My reaction was always the same: "Mum, I don't care whether he is an Alevi or a Sunni as long as he is a good person." Even though I come from an Alevi family, I had never identifed myself with my religious identity.

With this question, my mum was referring to the Madimak Massacre, which took place in Sivas, Türkiye, on July 2, 1993. On that day, some intellectuals, mostly Alevis, gathered in a hotel for a conference organized by Pir Sultan Abdal Cultural Association (PSAKD), an Alevi organization. Some locals targeted participants of this event on the grounds that they were infdels. They also protested Aziz Nesin, one of the guests of the conference, because of his attempt of translating Salman Rushdie's *Satanic Verses* to Turkish. This novel was not well received by some Muslims because it was accused of ridiculing Islam. After Friday prayers in a mosque, a group of extremist Sunni Muslims marched to this hotel and set it on fre. Thirty-three Alevis, mostly intellectuals and artists, were killed in that mob attack. It is a known fact that this was a state-backed incident and the lawyers of the perpetrators had been actively engaged in politics with the ruling Islamist party AKP (Justice and Development Party) in Türkiye. Unfortunately, it was not the frst time Alevis were massacred, and it was not an isolated incident either, but rather, just another attack against them for centuries, both during the Ottoman Empire and its successor, the Turkish Republic. Some recent attacks against Alevis include, but are not limited to, the Maras massacre in 1978 and the Corum massacre in 1980.

E. Ari (\*)

Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
The followers of Alevism, Alevis, are a minoritized religious group in Türkiye, a country where the majority of citizens are Sunni Muslims. Alevism is a liberal and an alternative theology when compared with the orthodox interpretations of Sunni Islam. Alevis are known to be secular, peaceful, and respectful of differences in faith. They have always been keen supporters of democracy, and of the modernization process in Türkiye. The religious practices of Alevis are quite different from those of the Sunnis. While Alevis gather in a "*Cemevi*" (their place of worship), Sunnis worship in a mosque. Unlike Sunni Muslims, Alevis, both women and men, pray in the same room during their rituals. However, Sunni Islam does not allow women and men to worship together. The two groups' ways of worship are different too. In the case of Alevis, worship includes singing and Samah (a spiritual dance), whereas Sunnis perform *Namaz* (prayer)*.*

My parents have talked about their Alevi identity all the time. My dad was telling us some stories about his dad, a "dede" (elderly religious leader of an Alevi community) in their village. As an elder, his dad led religious and funeral ceremonies, acted as a judge to resolve day-to-day conficts between community members, and so on. However, my parents did not practice their religion strictly. Maybe it is because they migrated to Germany when they were young. My father was ffteen years old when he went to Germany as a guest worker. My mum was around twenty-two years old when they got married and she joined him in Germany. Living in an urban setting, mostly with German neighbors, would have distanced them from their traditions, I'm guessing. They returned to Türkiye after staying in Germany for about twenty years. As non-practicing Alevis, they often talked about how Alevis have been systemically oppressed since the Ottoman Empire. I would hear my parents talking about how some of their friends hid their Alevi identities so they would not be discriminated against. My parents never hid their Alevi identity. Indeed, they were proud Alevis.

The state and some in society have been suspicious of Alevis for decades. Therefore, Alevis had to worship secretly for the fear of being discovered and persecuted by the authorities or fundamentalist Muslim groups until recently. They have been systematically forced to assimilate into Sunni Islam. For example, the Turkish state has built mosques where Alevis were the majority in number. However, being isolated from everyday clashes between Alevis and Sunnis, and growing up in a secular environment, I never had to think about my Alevi identity seriously. *If not an Alevi or an assimilated Sunni, who was I? Did I have to choose between being one or the other, I asked myself?*

The Turkish Republic was founded on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923. The New Republic claimed a fundamental rupture from the Ottoman past and its Islamic culture. It turned its face to the "West" as the so-called West symbolized "civilization" and "progress." On the contrary, the East was associated with fundamentalist Islam and backwardness. From a very early age at schools, we were taught

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that secularity was one of seven principles of the Turkish Republic that differentiated the Turkish Republic ("our" country) from *other* Muslim countries. With the establishment of the Turkish Republic, the New Republic adopted the Latin alphabet and dropped Arabic. The new dress code, introduced in 1925, made it mandatory to replace traditional headgear with the western hat for men. Women were banned from wearing hijab in public institutions until the election of an Islamist party, AKP, in 2002. Political parties associated with Islam were shut down to keep the secular state intact, usually with the support of the Turkish military.

However, it is not easy to break ties with the past. The identity of Turkish society has been caught between Ottoman/Islamic culture and Western identity. The Turkish Republic has always carried the social and political heritage of the empire. Indeed, the election of AKP with the majority vote, frst in 2002, and until now as of 2022, has clearly indicated the Ottoman legacy. Alevis were amongst those who felt most insecure and anxious. The newly elected AKP's rhetoric of freedom did not calm the feeling of insecurity among most of them.

The Ottoman empire had a very cosmopolitan structure because of its expansionist policies. Although the empire was a caliphate- an Islamic state governed by the Muslim community's ruler-it gave non-Muslim groups the authority to govern themselves in exchange for being taxed. On the contrary, passionate about Western modernization, especially the French model of nationalism, the Turkish Republic was founded as a unitary secular state. It established the Directorate of Religious Affairs in 1924 to have control over religious groups and prevent their attempts to intervene in secular governance. However, the Turkish Republic, although claiming to be a formally secular state, continued to promote the Sunni interpretation of Islam through a generously funded Directorate.

The Republic emphasized Sunni Muslim Turkish identity as the constitutive element of the nation. Accordingly, it pursued Islamization and Turkifcation policy to construct an imaginary unitary nation. This policy attempted to assimilate all groups other than Sunni Muslim Turks, including Alevis, Kurds, Jews, Armenians, and other Christian groups. Acts of violence have taken a systemic form of controlling these groups. Indeed, it would not be speculative to suggest that violence is ingrained in the psyche of the people of Türkiye. The history of the Turkish Republic has been marked by the confict between different groups, including massacres of Alevis, civil war against Kurds, the 1915 mass deportation of Armenians, ongoing harassment of those deemed others such as non-Muslim groups, and the tension between secular and radical Muslims.

Interestingly, in an atmosphere like this, my Alevi identity never stood out until I moved to Canada. My family sent me to a private elementary school in a midsize town, which shielded me from the realities of Türkiye to a certain extent. I had to take a mandatory course on religion built on Sunni Islam; it was a watered-down version of it, though. For instance, as an Alevi student, I was never forced to pray in Arabic, which has always been a big problem for Alevi students. Indeed, our teacher was more like a grandpa telling stories about Islam. But he never told us stories about Alevi Muslims: his stories were always about Sunni Islam. Although Sunni Islam was the major narrative in my school, and where I then lived, people around me always had liberal interpretations of Sunni Islam. They were passionate defenders of the "Westernized" and the secular Turkish Republic.

\*\*\*

When I got to high school, we moved to Ankara, the capital city of Türkiye, in 1998. This time, I went to a public school. My high school was not the best in Ankara, but it was similar to my elementary school as ideologically it aligned with a secular and modern Türkiye. That was the frst time ever that I realized the extent of poverty. I also had friends who self-identifed as Kurdish for the frst time. I began to understand how some Kurds had suffered at the hands of the Turkish state. My interaction with different ethnic groups crystallized my Turkish identity. At that time, I saw myself as a secular Turkish woman, with an emphasis on my gender. My life was mainly shaped around my gender identity more than anything.

My body defned my everyday challenges when I lived in Türkiye. I knew that when it was dark, the streets were not safe. Like most women in Türkiye, I received comments about my body all the time from total strangers, friends, family members, and even educators. I was ridiculed because of my weight a great deal during this time. When I was in high school, one of our teachers surprised us with baklava (a Turkish dessert). He turned to me and said: "Obviously you have eaten enough, it is okay if you don't eat." It was a joke for him to cheer everyone in the class but it was not fun for me. Another time, when we, girls, lined up for our physical education class, our gym teacher commented that other than me everyone was in good shape in front of my peers. When I was at university, after a gathering with friends and professors, one of my professors begged me to go home with him. However, I was so numb from my previous experiences that I did not even think much of it, let alone make a big deal of it. Sexist comments and jokes were so common. When we reacted against them, we were treated as frigid women; singled out, stereotyped as being oppressed and so unable to experience our sexuality freely; or worse still, accused of exaggerating. Men always looked up and down our bodies walking on the street. Overall, it was inevitable that in my self-perception, my gender identity stood out among my multiple identities.

All women's bodies are controlled in different ways. When I was an undergraduate student, women wearing hijabs were denied access to public institutions, including universities. Some female students would wear wigs to hide their hair. When I ran into them in the washroom, I could not help but stare at them looking into the mirror and fxing their wigs. I always felt sorry for them. However, their eyes always seemed confdent. Rather than being victims of the state policies, they were resilient and created ways to acquire a university education.

\*\*\*\*\*\*

It was the summer of 2002. I went to the United States to spend my summer holiday. Not even a year had passed after the 9/11 attack. Before getting onto the plane, after already passing security checks, I was searched a second time. The airport security stopped me just after the security checkpoint so that they could go through my carry-on luggage in detail.  I thought it

was odd. Why was it me? It was embarrassing. Everyone passing by looked at me. Back then, I did not have the tools to evaluate my experience. I would have never guessed that I was seen as a threat to the United States of America.

I stayed at my uncle's apartment in New Orleans. He was travelling back and forth between Washington DC and New Orleans, and I was enjoying staying alone almost all the time. A few days into my American holiday, I began to meet and mingle with new people. Most of them were university students working at my uncle's restaurant, or they were his customers. After having numerous questions thrown at me, I came to see that they were curious about me and where I came from. It became clear from their questions that Türkiye as a "Middle Eastern" country was an "exotic" place to them: *Do you ride camels in Türkiye? Oh wow, you wear miniskirts and shorts, you didn't buy them from Türkiye, right? You should have bought them from here. Oh wow, do you drink alcohol?* Although I did not see myself as a Middle Eastern woman, or Türkiye as a Middle Eastern country, the people who asked these questions certainly did.

There were some Orientalist assumptions about "Middle Eastern" countries and people: We were all suspended in time. Our culture was not open to technological advancements and "modernization". All Middle Eastern women are oppressed. I came to understand that the Middle East was seen as one homogenous entity. To them, all the countries in the region, and all the people living there were identical. Interestingly, though they had never been there before, they had a lot of ideas about this part of the world, and its inhabitants. Now, I understand better where their information comes from. It is the news, the Hollywood movies, and maybe the educational institutions as well. Indeed, let alone the ideas about the Middle East, even the term "Middle East" was not proposed by its inhabitants. It was frst coined by the British and later used by the U.S. and became widespread.

I was shocked by the questions. I lived in my little bubble, and I was not exposed to the outer world so much. I was just out of high school without a critical understanding of politics and cultures. I was very defensive about Türkiye and the Turkish people. As a racialized woman with a colonized mind, I tried to prove the contrary: "We" in Türkiye were very different from *other* "Muslim" countries. We were a Westernized democratic nation with its secular institutions. I sometimes felt like a diplomat who had to present their country successfully abroad. When I look back, I can see three things. Firstly, their questions refected an Orientalist approach- a set of European assumptions and knowledge about the Middle East. Secondly, I noted that I had internalized the superiority of Western values, and there was this constant effort in me to prove that we were just like them. We, "secular Turkish people," waited for an approval from Europeans to be counted as one of them. And fnally, I reproduced the dominant discourse about the Middle East by claiming that "we" were so different from "them" (the rest of the Middle Eastern countries).

In response to these loaded questions and assumptions, I continuously told them-I mean my interlocutors- that I had nothing to do with religion.  However, nobody asked me or my parents if we preferred to have it on my ID card. During these discussions, I resented that the Turkish state imposed this "Muslim"

identity upon me. Now, it was white people who imposed a Muslim identity upon me. In my mind, I shouted at them, "Hey, I am a free soul. Can't you see it? I am a nineteen-year-old woman travelling alone. Why would you think that I am an oppressed woman?"

\*\*\*\*

Almost ten years after my U.S. trip, in 2011, I arrived in Canada as an international student. Following three months of homesickness, I went out with some of the Ph.D. students from my department. I had jeans and a simple tee on me. We were out for drinks. One of the Ph.D. students in my cohort, a self-identifed Muslim woman, asked me if my parents were upset because I did not wear a hijab. I smiled and said 'no' to her. To myself, I said, on the contrary, they would be very upset if I wore a hijab. But I did not get into a potentially controversial discussion. I thought to myself that even a Muslim woman has some assumptions about *all* women in the Middle East.

After my arrival in Canada, driving from Canada to the United States, I was always made to wait at the border by police offcers. While every white person made it across in 5–10 minutes, I always waited at least two and a half hours in a room full of people like myself, i.e., not white. I grew more nervous each time this happened because I knew it was not coincidental. They targeted me because of my Middle Eastern passport. Driving from Canada to the U.S. became a nightmare for me. To this day, I still try to avoid going to the U.S. via car because of the fear of being stopped and questioned. These border police offcers have a typical attitude: intimidating, snobby and rude. Subconsciously perhaps, in response to such a treatment, when I see police at border crossings, I feel anxious and nervous.

\*\*\*\*

I have learned from these experiences that even if I don't feel like a Muslim, I am seen as a Muslim. As a member of a minoritized group, I have understood that how I identify myself is less important than how others see me. Tired of explaining myself, I began to play the part. *Yes, I am a Muslim woman.* My experiences and interactions with people have defnitely turned me into a Muslim woman.

If I am a Muslim, what kind of a Muslim woman am I then? I did not have to think about this question previously. Certainly, I am not a Sunni Muslim. I was brought up in an Alevi family. I remember our neighbours fasting and celebrating Ramadan. As a tradition, my friends' families would buy them new clothes before celebrations. I always asked for new clothes during that time, too. But it was always a "no." My parents' explanation for "no" was never about our Alevi identity. It was because I had enough clothes. They would have bought me new clothes if I had needed them. Still, I was very aware that we were different from most people.

To my understanding, being an Alevi is more like a lifestyle rather than a set of religious practices. There are some adages I have consistently heard from my parents growing up. For instance, "watch your hand, tongue and waist." In other words, don't steal; don't gossip and don't commit adultery.

So here I am, close to my forties, thinking about my Alevi Muslim identity seriously for the very frst time.

London, Ontario, Jan. 19th, 2022

**Esra Ari** My name is Esra. I came to Canada from Türkiye as a PhD student in 2011. Currently, I am an assistant professor of sociology at Mount Royal University. Before joining the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Mount Royal University, I was an SSHRC postdoc fellow at the Toronto Metropolitan Centre for Immigration and Settlement (TMCIS).

I decided not to go back to my country after completing my PhD in Canada because of the social and political turmoil in my country. With a tendency to view everyday experiences with a sociological lens, I'm critical of oppressive systems, including capitalism, racism, and patriarchy.

I have realized that writing is an empowering process. In a similar tradition of *counter-storying*, *talking back* or *writing back*  (Hooks, 1989; Smith 2021), I respond to representations of Muslimhood and Muslim women through storytelling as part of my anti-racism stance and work.

My story is about the process through which I have become an Alevi Muslim woman. This story focuses on how identity construction is never simply a personal choice for racialized groups. Instead, it is formed by an interaction between how a person sees themselves (asserted identity) and how others perceive this person (assigned identity).

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

### **Chapter 4 Kingston Blues**

**Ozlem Atar**

#### December 2021

How to begin a personal story of migration and un/be/longing? One must fnd a port of entry. Blessed are you if a story beckons you.

Recently, my nephew has asked me what it is like to move to Canada in midlife and without your family. I couldn't help noticing his condescending tone. "Was it worth it?" was the question he repeated. I smiled and told him we would talk about it when he grew up. My nephew doesn't speak English. If he did, I would share my diary with him and ask, "What do you reckon?"

How does it feel to be in a foreign country on your own? Any insights into making space for yourself in a new place that is alien in many ways? There is the 'alien' language you rely on in day-to-day interactions. Then there is the let-metell-you-who-I-am desire you keep suppressing inside yourself when someone asks you questions about where you come from but doesn't really show genuine interest in what you have to say. Toss in silence. Lots of it. There is embarrassed silence in graduate seminars: the turn-taking strategies you learned in artifcial classroom settings prove useless when you fnd yourself among native speakers.  Oh yes, and puzzled silence when watching locals mark their calendars and approve minutes at board meetings at lightning pace, long before you get that they are going over the agenda and setting the dates for the rest of the year.

Surely, I cannot speak for others who have made a similar major life change in midlife. But, for me, one way to capture my feelings of being in a new country is through the songs I listened to repeatedly when I was `home.' They say music is

O. Atar (\*)

Cultural Studies, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
<sup>©</sup> The Author(s) 2024 A. Kumar, A. Triandafyllidou (eds.), *Migration and Identity through Creative Writing*, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41348-3\_4

closely connected with identity, and familiar songs evoke personal emotions and re/ kindle memories in unique ways.

So, here is my textual album where you, the reader, may encounter some of the music that sustained me in my frst year in Canada. The tunes map a geography where the multi-origin paths converge in Kingston. They provide clues about who I am and how I experienced my new surroundings.

### **4.1 By Lake Ontario**

October 2018

I am by the lake. Late afternoon. I am gazing at Shoal Tower in the harbour. "A little nippy," said Poppy, my landlady, as I left the house. A Canadian expression added to my vocabulary. I take out my phone and capture a few shots of the lookout, abandoned long ago. I am listening to a piece from Björk`s 2011 *Biophilia*: the second disc of her Crystalline Series. "Mawal" has a distinctly Middle Eastern tune.

The Middle East is a peculiar term. It denotes the transcontinental area that falls to the south and east of the Mediterranean. A legacy of the British colonial enterprise. A label that ushers in other words: Muslim, Arab, belly dancing, fercelooking bearded men. It is home to an estimated population of 371 million. Some stretch it to include Türkiye: a cartography and a gesture of inclusion I've always felt uncomfortable with. This expanded area's largest cities include Istanbul, a city I call home.

"Mawal" is very slow in beat. The emotional instrumental interlude is longing for someone. *Hayati*. My life. The quirky and riotous Icelandic singer is collaborating with Omar Souleyman, a Syrian singer. I save the song on my "Kingston Blues" list. Later, I will fnd out that Souleyman comes from a village in northeastern Syria and has been in exile in Türkiye since the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011.

I associate the song with weddings in my village in northern Türkiye even before I read somewhere that Souleyman started his career as a part-time wedding singer. This song reminds me of forlorn tunes local musicians play during the day as they are adjusting the sound equipment and announcing to the villagers that there is a wedding in the village. Everyone is welcome to attend later that night. After the cows are milked. After the hens are safely locked away in the shed. After everyone is washed and has put on their best outfts.

I press the repeat button again. And again. A wedding scene in my village. I am in my early thirties. I am sitting on a makeshift bench strategically placed around an imaginary stage for the dancers. A handful of girls are folk dancing. It is early yet. The bride, a distant cousin's daughter, must be 18. I am looking past the dancers. A few drops swell in my eyes. I swallow. Then and now. I haven't spoken to my parents since I last visited them in August. Ten weeks. My father won't speak to me. A daughter must remain in the community. Am I homesick? No. But I feel rootless. I don't belong in Kingston. Not yet. And I am longing for another place and another moment. "Mawal"carries me away from the Confederation Basin Marina. Even the images I captured early on will not anchor me to the nation's former capital.

### **4.2 Walking to the Isabel Bader Centre**

#### 18 January 2019

Today's blues tune is "Zolf" by Mohsen Namjoo. I've recently discovered a version recorded live with The Netherlands Wind Ensemble. I am listening to it for the zillionth time now. The xylophone opener is timid. So are my frst steps out the door this morning. Voices in my head are in a heated debate. I am leaving home for my theory class. I've got to be at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts before 8:30 a.m. The instructor does not appreciate folks streaming in after the session has started. Another crispy day. "Don't worry about the wind chill," says my landlady. The dispute in my head? Should I walk? "Take 501 Express," says the other. Should I take the bus from the downtown transfer point? I'll have covered a quarter of the total distance by the time I get to the downtown transfer point. A few false steps down Princess Street. Maybe I should skip today's class. A change of heart. Reverse. Steps up Princess. "It is only a 35 minutes walk to the Isabel Bader," the dominant one convinces the weaker ones. Got to be careful. Black ice. Another expression added to my personal Canadian English dictionary.

*Zolf* is *zülüf* in my mother tongue. Is it a face? I'll look it up later. The beloved's hair. Hair undulating over the beloved's temples. Using his voice as an instrument, Namjoo holds my hand as I take faster yet cautious steps. Thus, my thoughts begin to wander. I am drawn to a rainy evening in Ankara. Was it January 28, 2015? Maybe. The melody is closing my heart and ears to Kingston's frosty morning. Willem van Merwijk's saxophone pierces the morning chill as I pass Chalmers United Church at the intersection of Clergy, Barrie, and Earl. How very odd that I am listening to this fourteenth-century love poem in a loveless Kingston? I restart the song at the traffc lights. Got to hear it again. Namjoo's whistle sequence and van Merwijk's saxophone take turns. The trumpet joins in. Namjoo's fuctuating feminine and masculine vocals are trickling in. Each syllable is taking its time to spill out. Hafez's reproachful lyrics ripple in Namjoo's voice. Together, they fow through the riverbed of Merwijk's saxophone. The Persian poet's pleading with his sweetheart is etched onto the surface of Kingston while I am walking along Union. Namjoo's voice peaks and valleys as I stride down a side street towards the lakeside building.

Later in class, I think about my new discovery. Fifth month in Canada. I am itching to share the song with someone. Anyone. I haven't made real friends yet. I turn to the ghazal in my head while my classmates are busy self-authoring themselves, with statements squeezed in the main discussion, as smart graduate researchers. Embodiment. Trajectory. Intersectionality. I feel swallowed by these big words, which push me away. Out the window. Southeast over Lake Ontario. Past the winter land. Across the rolling ocean waves.

### **4.3 Quality Time with Parents**

#### Part I.

11 August 2018

My last visit with my parents before I leave for Canada. My father does not know yet that I'll be leaving Türkiye in about two weeks. He also does not know that I want to leave for good. The two of us are picking plums. Some are tart; most sweet. Firm and juicy. They have purple skin and amber fesh. "It sells well," says Babam. He is content. We listen to folk songs on my phone. "Ozlem, play Gışlalar," he demands. We listen to "Kışlalar doldu bugün" as performed by Neriman Altındağ Tüfekçi. It's our song.  I love it because I associate it with my father.

Part II.

Summer 2021

I am on a video call with my parents. Out of habit, I place my left hand under my chin. Babam: "You've put your hands over your ear as if you are going to sing. Sing Gışlalar." I have a better idea. I turn to *YouTube* for help. We become silent when the performer croons about a visit and a farewell. Muffed sobs on each side of the camera. Babam and I are hiding our faces from each other. Separated for a few years and not knowing when (and if) we will embrace each other again, we remain silent. I don't tell him that I've missed him. I don't want to encourage more tears. He has dropped the tough father mask he's worn for years. Ageing has softened his edges. But he will still not say he misses me. His "When are you coming home?" is to be interpreted as such.

*Ozlem* is longing. Yearning. Coming to Canada, I thought I would also leave behind the nagging feeling. Now I am yearning for what I left behind.

### **4.4 Month of Qualms**

February 2019

"February just drags," complains my landlady. For me, it is the month of "Gretchen am Spinnrade"(Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel) by Franz Schubert. I've encountered this *Lied* in the German culture course I am assisting. It is from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's *Faust*, the tragic play written in rhymed verse. They say Goethe penned this part at 17. He must have been a wildly romantic soul.

Gretchen, the main female character, is captivated by Faust, the disillusioned scientist and all the promises he has made. She sings of her heartache. The object of her desire is after illicit worldly pleasures only. Unaware of her tragic end, Gretchen is ready to be drawn into Faust's arms. "My peace is gone/ My heart is heavy" confesses the young woman. The song escalates in intensity and peaks at Gretchen's remembrance of Faust's kiss. My thoughts pace with Gretchen's feet at the wheel.

I added the word "earworm" to my glossary the frst night I heard the song. The ballad runs in a loop. I am obsessed with the opening bar. I've listened to recitals by Waltraud Meier, Jessye Norman, and Wallis Giunta. No one could dramatise Gretchen's emotional turbulence better than the American Soprano Renée Lynn Fleming.

Gretchen, Renée, and I meet through a desperate poem about a ruinous love story. Gretchen is sharing her heartache. Renée, on stage, is singing of the girl's anguish. I am tucked in my bed listening to this classic song in a language I barely understand: my German is rusty. My headphones are building a no man's land between the song and the cold tiny rental room. The song spins my head like the wheel under the girl's feet. My feet replace Gretchen's on the pedal. I spin and spin. Gretchen sounds as if she has lost her sense of reality. I, too, have drifted away from the immediate world around me listening to her sing of her heartache.

Why this song? No. I am not a hapless Gretchen. I haven't fallen in love with a man. Or a woman. In fact, I connect to the discontent of the beloved in the text. His dissatisfaction with his life is very resonant. My initial excitement at being in a new country wore off. I stopped taking photographs of the city. I am questioning my decision to leave a secure job and a warm apartment in Ankara behind. Life in Kingston is cold, and I am almost always by myself.

### **4.5 Divine Encounters**

March 2019

Loreena McKennitt, the queen of Celtic music says "in one way or another, we are all an extension of each other's history" on her webpage. My connection to McKennitt goes back to the 1990s, when I frst listened to her "Tango to Evora''with Turkish lyrics. I have been listening to this fery- haired woman for more than twenty years now. Who could tell that, one day, I would live just miles away from Perth County, where the composer resides? I had never associated McKennitt with Canada, either. Maybe she sat on the same couch where I often read in Stauffer. After all, she holds an honorary degree from Queen's!

There is something about McKennitt's music. It takes you along the Silk Road. For me, "Tango to Evora" is a walk along Istiklal Street on a spring day. The moment I close my eyes, I tango in Istanbul. Such is the charm of its melody.

January 2021

But "Tango to Evora" is now accompanied by other McKennitt songs. Some of her tunes taste divine. "Caravanserai" is another favourite. The Persian word refers to the roadside inns dotting the trade routes weaving the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, and Southern Europe. McKennitt places more stones along the way to help the Silk Road extend beyond the ancient roads. Those ancient guest houses were not only safe respite for travellers and their caravans from near and far but also centres for the exchange of goods and culture. McKennitt's piece, too, doubles as a hub for the exchange. It calls to mind memories from other places and maps them onto Kingston as Rueben and I take our afternoon walk. An ebb away from Kingston, a fow towards the road that pulls me elsewhere every time I hear McKennitt sing:

What is this life that pulls me far away/What is that home where we cannot reside/What is that quest that pulls me onward/My heart is full when you are by my side/Calling, yearning, pulling, home to you…

### **4.6 From Elsewhere: "So Where Is Home?" and Other Questions**

"Masar" is an instrumental piece by Le Trio Joubran. The rumour goes that the three Joubran brothers composed this piece during a rehearsal break. I tend to listen to it when I am taking a pause from "So where is home?"

Home is a geography of the heart, wrote bell hooks. I need to close my eyes to be able to touch that geography these days. This tune from elsewhere puts me on a winding path towards home.

 The frst notes amble away, taking me to a warm Istanbul afternoon. I am roaming the crowded streets in downtown Kadıköy. His brothers Samir and Adnan join us. Wissam, Samir, and Adnan on their ouds; me in a trance. We are strolling through the busy town centre. I am setting my eyes on fresh produce in Kadıköy Çarşı. The brothers are playing the same melody again and again. We are trotting slowly at frst. I remind myself to buy pastry from Beyaz Fırın. The Joubrans` percussionist friend is pointing at the coffee houses on each side of the street. I am choosing to have tea at Piraye Café. I am fond of the cats sunbathing in the sunny patches of the garden. In my mind is a poem by Mahmoud Darwish written in a language I cannot read. We are taking a sharp turn onto the left. We are picking pace. We are running. We are following the afternoon crowd up the street. We are climbing. We are stumbling. We are lurching. It feels as if we are running downhill when we are going 'home' at the top of the hill. We all know we've reached a state of ecstasy when the piece suddenly ends. And again.

"Masar" places me on a meandering route to home. It is one of those tunes that make me refect on how I have become a Middle Eastern in Canada.

How did I become a Middle Eastern? Is it possible to wear with pride what was given to you with a touch of scorn? How do you digest an identity shovelled down your throat along with a few other not-so-savoury labels?

I remember the sting of that frst rejection well. I was still in Türkiye then, far removed from associating with the Middle East. The elaborate enquiry emails I sent to many Kingstonian homeowners who were advertising their spare rooms were mostly unanswered. I later discovered that seeking rental housing from afar with the label Middle Eastern on my back negated my laborious descriptions of myself as a mature, clean, and reliable woman. I didn't know that my 'spicy' food would trigger potential landlords` food allergies. Polite racism, I would learn later, is the term to capture the essence of an email I received from a homeowner: "I am sorry, but … allergies to spicy food." Never mind that they hadn't asked me what I really ate.

Then, there was that moment when I stared at a world map in a public park in Vancouver. Each continent was painted a different colour to help children, the target audience, locate the countries of their choice easily. Türkiye was placed in Asia although the country sits uncomfortably on the edges of two continents. I was furious. Obviously, the creators of this map had not done their homework. How could they miss that my country is in Asia *and* Europe? Why would they push it further east? I remember looking for some contact information. I would write to the cartographers and get them to correct the error. … I have given much thought to the politics of representation since then.

Besides, there were random questions and comments at informal gatherings. One: Did I speak Arabic like my Saudi companion whom I met in Canada, and with whom I happen to be in the same graduate program? After all, we are both from the Middle East! No, not everyone from the region you call the Middle East speaks Arabic. Two: Did I wear sleeveless tops in Türkiye? Yes and no. Certainly yes in Istanbul, where I lived eighteen years. And yes in Ankara, the city I found diffcult to call home though I made certain neighbourhoods mine over the period of six years I was there. No, not when I was visiting my parents in my rural birthplace once or twice a year. I covered my shoulders and legs in the village because my parents would not appreciate it if their neighbours gossiped about their eldest daughter, and I wanted to make them proud by looking modest. My transformation from a peasant girl who left home at ten to an educated woman evolved to accommodate their wishes; in time, I softened my usual I-can-do-whatever-I-want-withmy-body attitude. Three: Was I not acknowledging that I was queer because I come from an 'oppressive' country, as one of my classmates insisted in my frst year in Canada? No. I am not queer. Just because l sport very short hair and an androgynous dress sense doesn't mean I prefer to date women. Let's talk about the adjective 'oppressive' at another time.

"So where is home?" A taxi driver asked me one day, after I told him I was relatively new to Kingston. "Take a guess!" I responded, feeling less nervous about interacting with locals. Nova Scotia? No. Latin America? No. Spain? No. Let me clue you in. A country in the Middle East. Silence. … Then, I thought to myself: the Middle East is not wedded to a defnite physical territory. It is a place of the heart where songs like "Masar" take me.

"Leaving to Come Back"

January 2021

Music is thought to help alleviate pain and boost performance during physical exercise and study. It is praised for its potential to reduce anxiety, too. I would add that it may deepen or ease feelings of loneliness and displacement. Also, the music someone likes speaks volumes about them. It reveals where they belong.

Going through the "Kingston Blues"'list I listened to during my frst 'Canadian' year, I see a woman who has stronger ties to places that look and feel different from Kingston. The tunes seem to de-territorialise the actual places I have passed through in this limestone city.

**Ozlem Atar** I moved to Canada from the Republic of Türkiye on 1 September 2018. I hold a master's degree in English Language Teaching (ELT) and a doctoral degree in Communication Sciences, with a project sitting at the intersection of women's post-9/11 literary fction and Intercultural Communication inquiry. I am halfway through another PhD degree at Queen's University.

I write because I have something to say. If you fnd that my refection resonates with you, we will be companions through words. Ideas for my writing come from my lived experience. I often scribble memories of single incidents from my early life because I fear that I may lose these memories. I hardly share these personal notes with anyone. One day, I will. Other times, I write academic essays and my dissertation. To me, writing is a messy process. I tend to do a lot of research before I put a word on paper. I use pencils and paper to give shape to my thoughts.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

### **Chapter 5 On Immigration, Religion and Home**

**Bibi Baksh**

I prefer to leave Toronto in January when short, cold days, and overexposure to fuorescent light crashes down on my mood. But this summer trip is a much needed escape before I return to in-person teaching for the fall semester of 2021. Covid travel restrictions were recently modifed allowing some international travel and I took the opportunity to visit Guyana, my country of origin. The journey was by no means long; Cheddi Jagan International airport is only a fve-hour fight from Toronto. But it is a tedious trip, all the 'new normal' of travelling is very complicated and costly. As I observe fellow travellers, many with small children and oversized luggage, my hope for a comfortable fight diminished rapidly.

The full Caribbean Airlines fight, with a stopover in Trinidad, and mask requirements are the perfect combination to make passengers more grumpy. I focus my thoughts on the journey ahead and contemplate my three destinations: my primary school, my secondary school, and the house where I grew up in. I must have drifted off to sleep as I was jolted awake by the shriek of an infant. By the time the plane landed, I was tired, but eager to get through the slow immigration/customs rituals and out of the stifing building. The hummer was waiting outside and the drive from Cheddi Jagan Airport to Zeeburg is less than an hour; anticipation shrunk time and excitement overcame fatigue.

I recall the drive to get to those familiar streets on crowded buses from the distant memories of my teenage years. A community of travellers that you recognise and come to appreciate - or, in some cases, dislike - would be on the bus.  It is always diffcult to hang on to possessions as sudden incessant, yet unexpected jerks result in dropping things in the scramble for a handhold. The best thing about being on the bus is that the public road runs almost parallel to the seawall – the barrier between

© The Author(s) 2024 A. Kumar, A. Triandafyllidou (eds.), *Migration and Identity through Creative Writing*, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41348-3\_5

B. Baksh (\*)

Wilfrid Laurier University, Kitchener, ON, Canada e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
the Atlantic Ocean and the below sea level coast. On one side, a window seat provides an unobstructed view of the ocean stretching into the horizon allowing the imagination to wander as far as the ships and boats out on the water. On the other side, the unending rice felds meet the sky at some distant point. Window seats are coveted and provide ample nothingness to stare off into with an excuse to ignore the person next to you. You would jump off at your stop and there is sure to be people: friends standing at the street corner, women in their brightly-coloured dresses – some wearing romals or head-kerchiefs – chatting, street-sellers trying to entice with their fruits and home-made treats, children playing, drunk men staggering around. There was life and energy in the hustle and bustle of the main street corner. But the windows of the hummer are tinted, and the air-conditioning is on. This is a quiet ride with a hazy view, carrying only myself and the driver, my cousin once removed. The scenery is familiar yet engulfed in the mystery of the eerie silence and hazy scenery.

At my frst stop, the driver pulls onto a side road that is the main intersection of Ocean View, a small village on the ocean side of the main road. The big potholes on the street made the ride feel similar to the 'Sledgehammer', the one ride at Canada's Wonderland that I could not tolerate. However, this is an important stop: around the corner would be the primary school I attended from 1966 to 1972. Like other schools, children were provided with a morning snack; a cup of milk made from powdered milk and two sweet biscuits. Ms. Singh allowed me to bring a bottle to school and fll it with the extra milk to take home along with broken sweet biscuits. She knew I had younger siblings at home. I arrived at the corner but could not see the schoolhouse. My heart sank! I was hoping to see familiar faces, retrieve old report cards, visit the library that fuelled my imagination, and fnd something that would direct me to the one connection I had with Canada before moving there: a pen-pal, through a school-to-school project.

Her name was Carol Brown and she lived in Canada, a land of snowfall, Halloween and houses with white picket fences. Carol Brown was my age and like me, she was a good letter writer. My teacher hardly had to make corrections on my letters to her. Anyway, Ocean View Public school no longer existed; the tent-like structures that housed the two kindergarten classes, the main building, and the library were all gone. The only thing left is the Mandir that was connected to a section of the school. I stood on the now overgrown feld where we used to have our assembly every Monday. Assembly consisted of saying the pledge. I still remember it…'I pledge myself to honour always, the fag of Guyana', after which we will sing a few verses of the national anthem. And naturally, we concluded the assembly with the Lord's prayer standing right next to that Mandir. No one spoke of tolerance or religious diversity. It was as natural as the sunrise and the heat it brought with it in July, or as expected as the tropical rains that fooded the villages in December. As I stand where my school used to be, I remember.

I remember going to Sunday school, singing Hymns and learning Bible verses. What was that about? Both my parents were Muslims, albeit with different levels of religious commitments or practice. I recall a story of my paternal grandfather coming on the last ship, the SS Ganges, bringing indentured servants, "bound collies" to what was then British Guiana (1917). The trans-Atlantic trip was similar to the slave trade it replaced as a more "humane" option to slavery. The approximately 9500 miles took over three months. And we now know of the untold horrors: the mortality rate, bodies being thrown into the sea, the beatings and starvation on board, but my grandfather was tight-lipped about all of that. According to the narrative, the only one he told was that, if caught praying on the ship, Muslims were beaten and as the story goes, groups of Hindus would surround the Muslims to hide and protect them. This tolerance stayed with people of religion and it is what I recall. No policies, no state rhetoric. But I must stop this useless retrospection and move on to my second destination, my high school.

Photo credit: Abbas Mohammed.

My high school, my second stop, is a short distance from Oceanview, over a high bridge build so that the sugar plantation can use the waterways to transport sugar cane in large pontoons. This was a frightening bridge with no pavement for pedestrians who competed with the two-way traffc. Off the main road and past the back street is the familiar building. I could hardly contain myself; it is still there! This was the centre of the village. Now, here I am in Zeeburg, a small fshing village on West Coast Demerara in Guyana. Beyond the back street is a bridge that crosses over a trench to a narrow strip of land bordered by the seawall stands Zeeburg Secondary School, the pride of the village that drew students from the entire West Demerara and the Island of Leguan.

Leguan, situated at the mouth of the Essequibo river, is my maternal ancestral village. My grandmother's house is still there. It used to be a bustling place with ferry services four times a day to get passengers to and from the island and, like the bus ride on the West Coast, this ferry had a community on board. What is signifcant about Leguan is that it had good schools. My mother was a brilliant student and was awarded a scholarship for a nurses' training program. However, there were two conditions. She had to become Christian and change her name. Colonization? Guyana was a British colony up until 1966. And what better way to suppress people than to deny them education?

I had many friends and some great teachers at Zeeburg school. And again, our school day started with the Lord's prayer even though Christians were an almost insignifcant minority in the school. Being the seventh of nine children, I wore my older sisters' outgrown uniforms. I hated that word uniform then and I hate it now. Uniform, confrm, accept, agree! Looking at my old high school, it appeared maintained. I could see the classroom I sat in on the second foor where both the view and the sound of the ocean were clear and would often be my fxation when I should have been paying attention to my physics and biology classes. I did not want to be in the science classes but wanted to be reading Shakespeare and the novels that were part of the art classes. However, I had to be in science because like my clothes, my textbooks were my older siblings' hand-me-downs. I was channelled into the sciences for the practical reason of we *already* have the textbooks.

I recall the notion that reading stories and novels was a waste of time. After fnishing homework, there was housework and yard work. Animals to be fed, plants to water, younger children to care for. But in school and during any science class, I could look out at sea and forget about physics and chemistry, I could forget my existence. I read and I imagined. I got a glimpse of Moby Dick under the surface of the rough brown Atlantic water. As boats and ships passed by, I would pick out the Pequod and see right through to Captain Ahab on his one leg. I could even see the sailor Ishmael watching Ahab as he schemed to get Moby Dick. I got lost in their names. There is something familiar sounding about Ishmael and Ahab. Where would an American writer in the 1851 know about such names? Maybe the world was smaller than I thought. I remember my mother reading stories about a Prophet named Ishmael, but surely, he could not be on the Pequod. He was an Arabian Prophet in the desert far away from the ocean.