Worldtown Hearsay :: June 7th, 2009
We trawl the news media so you don’t have to.
Czechs Cool to Presence of Workers From Asia
PRAGUE — Trieu Dinh Van’s long journey two years ago from the rice paddies of northern Vietnam to a truck-welding factory in the Czech Republic was supposed to open up an economic lifeline. Instead, Mr. Van, 25, is jobless, homeless and heavily indebted in a faraway land, set adrift by a global economic crisis that swallowed his $11-an-hour job and those of thousands among the wave of 20,000 Vietnamese workers who came here in 2007. The New York Times: Read More…
Meet Toronto’s little poet man
Mustafa is in Grade 7 at Nelson Mandela Park Public School in Regent Park. This poem, “A Single Rose,” earned him a standing ovation at the Hot Docs film festival. Video Randy Risling, Tara Walton.
He writes poems about poverty in Africa, where his family is from, and poverty in Regent Park, where he has lived his entire life. He writes poems about the value of education and the importance of trust. He writes poems that make white adults cry – this is what happened at the Hot Docs film festival – and other black students jump to their feet and clap. The Toronto Star: Read More…
The Intersection of Islam, America and Identity
Part of a series of Statue of Liberty images by Asma Ahmed Shikoh, a Pakistani artist now living in New Jersey.
Here, however, her art turned deeply personal as she grappled with her new identity as an immigrant and, having rarely set foot in a mosque back home, as a gradually more observant Muslim. In her first American paintings Ms. Ahmed Shikoh reimagined the Statue of Liberty in her own image: in a Pakistani wedding dress, as a pregnant immigrant and as a regal mother, baby on hip. Next she transformed the subway map with paint and calligraphic script into an Urdu manuscript that made the city feel more like hers. The New York Times: Read More…
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