Their art is also a rumination and dissection of a violent, racist, Islamophobic, misogynistic reality. Throughout this zine, they reject the relentless gaze of a world that constantly seeks to reduce and constrain them. If you were looking forward to reading Somali Semantics in the hopes of finding the often repeated narrative of sad East African girls, you would realize your mistake through seeing the creators talk, as their faces are almost constantly lit up by a contagious laughter. Their work gives insight into key places and spaces that have helped shape their multifaceted identity.

The Daily interviewed Ugas and Abdulqadir to find out more about their project.

The McGill Daily (MD): You are very upfront about who you consider the target audience for this zine: how do you see the importance of Somali girls making art for Somali girls?

Sumaya Ugas (SU): Well this zine was born out of a strong desire to see ourselves represented in ways that went beyond the typical sad diasporic narratives; beyond the nostalgia of an ocean many of us second generation kids have never really seen, and especially beyond being used as “visible minorities” by a country so bent on proving its ‘tolerance’ through its ‘multicultural’ social fabric.

Y. Abdulqadir (YA): Yeah, exactly. Also, most Somali girls exist at a really complicated intersection of Muslimness and Blackness that we really wanted to explore.

This zine was born out of a strong desire to see ourselves represented in ways that went beyond the typical sad diasporic narratives.

MD: Throughout your art, you use varied media to convey intent and a variety of topics and tones – these touch on the tragic natures of xenophobia, sexual assault, family tragedies, and the more lighthearted music playlists. How did the use of media help you convey these emotions ?

YA: For me, the use of different forms of media really helped us capture the full complexity of our identities – especially as Black women. So often, we are put into a box and are only allowed to be one thing – happy Black girl; sad Black girl; et cetera – and we really wanted to use media to deconstruct that idea. The reality is, as living , breathing human beings, our lives are tinged by an array of emotions – and we wanted to honour that truth through our work.

MD: The Soomaali language’s recurrence throughout the zine seems to tie the various narratives together. How are your thoughts formulated in Soomaali versus in English or French?

YA: This is actually a recurring conversation between the two of us. Whatever language you are speaking, I think it’s always informed by all the different languages you are thinking in, or know. Often, I find myself trying to say something in English, but being stuck because my entire thought process in that moment is happening in French. This is why we chose to keep Soomaali in our zine. Because so much can be lost in translation, and because our main audience (we assume) has a minimal understanding of the language in ways that enables them to get the references we make throughout the zine.

MD: Are you reading, or have read, anything in particular that has inspired you in your writing?

SU: I’ve recently gone back to reading Diriye Osman’s short story collection, Fairytales for Lost Children. He’s easily become a writer whom I admire on so many levels, and his words often feel like he is writing into existence so many realities – on being young, queer, Muslim, Somali, displaced, et cetera – that have been denied.

YA: Last year, I read Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism (edited by Bushra Rehman and Daisy Hernandez) and it really inspired the hell out of me. More than anything, it drove home the fact that women of colour should take autonomy of their voices and their narratives.

MD: There’s a very purposeful focus on place and space in Somali Semantics. How do you define “home?”

YA: I would define home as this weird grey space between Toronto and Mogadishu: classic diaspora-kid floating. As time has passed, I’ve come to realize the beauty of existing in this grey space, and the power that lies in the ability to mix and borrow aspects from different cultures.

I would define home as this weird grey space between Toronto and Mogadishu: classic diaspora-kid floating.

MD: Sumaya, there’s a sentence that you use that seems to brilliantly summarize what this zine is really about; “I am tired of talking about identity for the sake of talking about identity, it’s exhausting.” Where do you see the role of lived experiences in artistic creation and where do you see academia in this picture?

SU: That line you quote came from a place of refusing to write about our identities in ways that are devoid of feeling and of reality. I wrote this during a semester where I was increasingly alienated by all the discussions that were happening around me when it came to identity – how everything felt so dry and compartmentalized, even conversations about intersectionality.

Audre Lorde once spoke on fear, visibility, and silence, saying she was a “Black woman warrior doing [her] work” and that “your silences won’t protect you.” I think the need to write those words down came from a place of refusing to give in to the fear and exhaustion. Academia is useful in so many ways, but lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how it gives voice. Academia and knowledge production have always been sites where certain experiences, realities, et cetera, are given importance. Basically what scholars choose to study [and] write about […] is not objective and us deciding to write our own lived experiences in this way is us reclaiming that voice.

MD: Both of you put great emphasis on parental narratives and how, as first generation Canadians, your sense of identity is necessarily formed differently than your parents’. Are those narratives worth reclaiming, and what emotions stem from this process?

YA: I love this question. As children of the diaspora, I think parental narratives are so important to reclaim. Despite the fact that our identities are conceptualized differently, our parents’ movement and migration stories are directly linked to why we were born in North America, why we speak English and French. That being said, it’s impossible not to reclaim these narratives, because they are intertwined with our own. Also, so many of our parents have also experienced incredible trauma in the process of migration and resettlement – and I believe it is valuable and necessary to honour those lived experiences.

As children of the diaspora, I think parental narratives are so important to reclaim. Despite the fact that our identities are conceptualized differently, our parents’ movement and migration stories are directly linked to why we were born in North America, why we speak English and French.

SU: Yes! I mean, we are born out of the lived experiences of our parents. We are hybrids and aliens in this Canadian space that is either constructed as white or as ‘multicultural’ and devoid of any real meaning. We, as children of immigrants, often inherit this reality of parents who’ve abandoned everything to build a better tomorrow for us.

At the same time, for many of us born and raised here, Canada is all we know. These realities are in constant communication with one another. My father is the best storyteller I know, and I wouldn’t have this love for words and stories if it weren’t for him and how he talks about Somalia.

So in terms of reclaiming our parents’ narratives, for children of immigrants trying to make sense of who they are and where they come from, while [also] figuring out how they fit into this “new” space, I think nothing is more important than being aware of how the realities of our parents influence how we exist in this world.

The post Not your sad East African girls appeared first on The McGill Daily.

After receiving her BA in creative writing at Concordia, Martinello was part of an exodus of English-speaking talent from Montreal to Toronto, due to the decreasing space given to artists in the city. A $2.5 million budget cut to the Quebec arts and letters council program (CALQ) is the latest of a flurry of budget cuts to the province’s arts scene, with far-reaching consequences.

Martinello’s latest chapbook, Interzones, exposes the lifeblood of her artistic spirit, which challenges the status quo on gender roles and questions her surrounding space with a deep sense of self-awareness. In so doing, she has gotten a well-deserved nod from Toronto’s literary circles by getting published in online journals, including Lemon Hound and carte blanche, and has reinforced her position as a Canadian poet to watch.

Martinello’s tone is sometimes sentimentally tender, often carnal, with notes of the abject; it is one that is engaging and speaks starkly of truth. The tone is emblematic of Martinello’s inexorable drive, from endless nights of reworking sentences to find the words to reflect an accumulation of extraordinary experiences. These experiences include bitter, harrowing ends, but that doesn’t matter to Martinello, because those who avoid vulnerability avoid meaningful experiences.

What makes her work so pleasant to read and listen to is her dexterous depiction of a full range of encounters – from her descriptions of mundane Toronto workdays to surprisingly anatomical details of intercourse, all presented without compromise.

Martinello sat down with The Daily to talk about juggling work, reading and writing in Toronto, and her latest chapbook Interzones.

The McGill Daily (MD): Have you read anything recently that you’ve particularly enjoyed or that has marked your own work?

Domenica Martinello (DM): What I’m really pulled to is prose that blurs genre and defies easy categories. The feminist tradition is full of exciting cross-genre writing – Hélène Cixous and Adrienne Rich jump to mind – that blends poetry, theory, activism, essay, fragment, and manifesto, sometimes all in the same text. Recently I’ve read and loved Chris Kraus’ I Love Dick and Kate Zambreno’s Heroines, two books with novel-like qualities that could also be filed away under fiction, literary or art criticism, gender studies, or personal essay. They are both innovative texts that parse challenging ideas while being unapologetically raw and readable. Basically, ‘fuck form’ texts.

When I was in university, I had a creative non-fiction writing workshop. Each time I turned in a non-fiction piece, my professor would praise the energy of the writing, but warned me, rightly so, that editors wouldn’t know what to do with my fragmented essay hybrids if I ever wanted to publish. Though it can be hard to find an audience or a ‘market’ for this type of writing, it’s what excites me most to read.

MD: In your work you talk about the adaptation process behind moving to Toronto in quite crude words. Earlier this year, Jay Baruchel, in a controversial interview with the National Post, talked about linguistic tensions and Quebec’s politics as reasons for leaving Montreal. Would you attribute this exodus to the same things, and how have you fared in your transition to your new surroundings?

DM: I’m hesitant to throw my coin in with Baruchel, though it’s undoubtedly true – there has been an exodus of sorts. I feel like the Anglo writing community in Montreal is very small and insular, mostly orbiting around the university. You can view this as negative or positive, depending on your perspective, but I personally find it a bit stifling. Toronto feels huge and open in comparison. There are so many different things going on, and I have felt only warmth and support from other writers here.

One stereotype about Toronto I’ve found to be true is that people’s lives revolve around work. The culture does not cater to la vie de bohème the way it does in Montreal. There is something nice about the quirky character of Montreal and Montrealers, their love of life, politics, and pleasure. Alternatively, writers, publishers, and booksellers in Toronto apply their […] drive and work ethic to accomplish gargantuan things for Canadian arts and letters, and that’s inspiring. Though, some Montreal expat friends of mine absolutely hate it here and I understand that too.

MD: Do you feel like your work is markedly influenced by your home cities, or would you consider yourself as more of a cosmopolitan poet?

DM: I do think that my surroundings have influenced me. One thing that fascinated me after moving from Montreal to Toronto was how similar and dissimilar cities can be. A city is a city is a city – except not. After moving, I felt stuck in this liminal, in-between place – imagine a Venn diagram, and you’re trapped where the overlap occurs. Things feel uncanny, not right. From that vantage point, you look back and forth between the two sections that are clearly separate from each other, without being able to navigate those spaces. This was the main structuring principle of […] Interzones.

MD: It seemed for a long while that the world of poetry was a bullhorn for the tired trope of the misunderstood middle-class man who reads Bukowski, listens to Bob Dylan, and sips on whiskey on the rocks. Do you think that there’s still much of the same power dynamics behind what is put forward in artistic communities?

DM: I think so, yes, but gains are being made. I think you’d be surprised to find how ‘likable’ and resilient that trope is. We are very fond and forgiving of our great, white misunderstood men. But there are a lot of women doing their work and being loud about it, taking up more public space, and not letting the injustice of toxic power dynamics go unchecked.

Unfortunately, the burden of change often falls on the very communities that are being marginalized – women of colour, queer women, trans women, [gender non-conforming] people. […] There’s been a lot more transparency in our artistic communities, in great part [due] to organizations like Canadian Women in Literary Arts (CWILA) who build meaningful dialogues around issues of gender and representation in the literary world. But there’s still work to be done.

MD: Your depiction of sexual encounters bears a tone of quasi-detachment, focusing more often on accurate anatomical descriptions than romanticizing euphemisms. It almost feels like an inversion of narratives where lust and envy have been abundantly utilized by male authors in an effort to objectify female sexuality. You seem to be using just that to challenge gender roles.

DM: I do think that my writing on sexuality aims to challenge gender roles and subvert the male gaze. By writing starkly and openly about female desire – it’s a topic worthy of exploration just like anything else – I feel as if I am reclaiming the power to narrate, contextualize, and validate my own experiences. Yes, I want to reclaim the word “cunt;” yes, I want to be tender; yes, I want to break down the body to its most barren anatomical parts. I want to do all these things and more, and I don’t want someone else to do it for me. There is still an undercurrent of shame when I perform some of these erotic poems, like I’ve just ‘outed’ myself, or have opened the door to an inappropriate or unintellectual response to my work. Which goes to show how deeply we internalize stigmas.

MD: Any parting advice for potential authors or artists in general who wonder how to juggle work with their social lives and artistic creations?

DM: I haven’t quite figured out how to juggle writing with supporting myself and making a living and all that. I recently quit my decent-paying, high-stress day job and am doing some freelance work and weekends at a bacon sandwich shop. It is incredibly difficult and I think it’s dishonest to pretend otherwise.

What little advice I can offer has been given to me by better, smarter writers. First: embrace rejection. It is a huge part of the writing life. Feel bad about it briefly and move on. Second: read voraciously. I truly believe reading every day is more important to your craft than writing every day. Lastly: don’t talk about writing, just do it. That guy at the bar talking so animatedly about how he’s writing a great novel? That guy used to make me feel lazy and terrible about my own writing – often chugging along slowly and bumpily. But I’ve come to realize that Bar Guy will probably be talking about working on a novel for the next 15 years and never finish it. Sit in your chair every day and do the work. It is not glamorous work. It doesn’t get easier. But once you’re done, you can talk about it until you’re blue in the face, [though you] probably won’t want to. Be proud of yourself, enjoy your moment, and then get back to writing.

Interzones is available for purchase on Etsy.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The post Creating in the interzones appeared first on The McGill Daily.