A Message from the Publishers January 8, 2021 – Posted in: From the Publisher, Roundup – Tags: New and Upcoming, Year in Review
For the 40 years they have been active in the Canadian literary scene, the publishers behind Mawenzi House have sought to bring you, our cherished readers here in Canada and beyond, a world of diverse books that speak to the full range of human experience. In 2021, too, we continue to be dedicated to filling your year with rich, delightful, indelibly different books.
We at Mawenzi House send our sincere best wishes for the new year to all our patrons and friends; we hope that we will be free at last of the anxieties we have all suffered in every corner of the world. If anything, COVID-19 has made us aware of how closely we are connected to each other and to the natural world around us. Despite the lockdowns and worries and frustrations large and small, the past year was still a productive year here at Mawenzi House.
In 2020, Munira Premji’s Choosing Hope taught us how even in the face of impending catastrophe, the right mixture of hope, humour, and perseverance can ultimately win the day. Shaukat Ajmeri and Edem Awumey in their novels reminded us of the injustice and intolerance many still have to face, in places as far away as India and West Africa. Also from West Africa, Elizabeth Allua Vaah told us stories about women’s restricted lives in a small fishing village in Ghana, and one woman’s struggles to overcome. The precocious teenager Uma Menon told us in her remarkably mature poems that you’re never too young to think of identity in political terms. We also had inspirational, searching poetry from Gavin Barrett, Leslie Roach, Natasha Ramoutar, and Terry Watada, who are of widely diverse backgrounds. Gavin is of Anglo-Indian background, Natasha of Indo-Caribbean, Terry of Japanese Canadian, and Leslie is second-generation Barbadian Canadian. Despite our inability to hold public literary events, we found that we could have more events, sometimes more intimate, through online platforms. Critical topics were discussed, and our authors could form new and lasting friendships.
The highlight of the year came in October, when our publisher Nurjehan Aziz was honoured with the annual Ivy Award by the Toronto International Festival of Authors, given to an individual who has made a significant contribution to publishing in Canada.
This new year, 2021, promises to be as exciting. In the spring we will release the much-awaited anthology of writing from Scarborough, Ontario, edited by Adrian De Leon, Téa Mutonji, and Natasha Ramoutar. We look forward to publishing poetry by H Nigel Thomas, Charles C Smith, Sheniz Janmohamed, and James Yeku. Nigel’s poems are deeply personal, Charles’s consider the life of the remarkable Black American composer Julius Eastman; James Yeku’s are inspired by his stays in Lagos, Nigeria, and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; and Sheniz is at her metaphysical self. Forthcoming also are a novel by Rima Elkouri, translated from French, about the impact of the Armenian genocide on a Quebecois family of Armenian background; two novels from a quartet by renowned Sri Lankan Tamil and Canadian writer Devakanthan, translated from the Tamil; a memoir by Zul Premji, a pathologist from Tanzania who rose from a childhood of village poverty to become a world-renowned professor and doctor of that dreadful disease malaria, which claims so many children’s lives in Africa; appropriately, it’s titled Malaria Memoirs, and the author has now retired in Calgary. We also look at the history of pioneer Muslims in Canada, Minarets on the Horizon, beginning from the early twentieth-century Lebanese Syrians who went about as peddlers in northern Canada, even travelling by dog sleighs when required. The author and editor is Murray Hogben.
Please go to our website for details about our books. And remember, there are some very interesting online Mawenzi events lined up for the coming months. Please keep an eye out for announcements on social media.
Once more, we wish you a wonderful 2021!