Post Your Map :: We will regularly present a featured artist, writer or performer who is exploring questions of identity and personal narrative through their medium of expression.

The map is your representation. No rigid lines, no defined routes. You direct it on your own account.

Contribute your story to a forthcoming volume: “Mama Says Good Girls Marry Doctors.” This book focuses on the pressures on South and East Asian women who have grown up in North America to be “good girls.” It seeks to collect the stories of such women, and their traumas, victories, and defeats as they face the control that their immigrant parents try to exercise over them in relation to the choice of a partner, or a career, or their freedom. We want to know how negotiating these pressures affects young Asian diasporic women, their relationship to feminism, to their parents and to their partners or siblings.

Know the true meaning of Malcolm X, and you cannot help but be moved. You cannot help but stand up taller and aim to live with greater courage, committed to the upliftment of oneself and of all people. The life and death, struggle and change he underwent from 1925 to 1965 still stands as a powerful source of learning and inspiration. The burden now falls upon those of us who know to ensure that new generations aren’t deprived of also truly knowing Malcolm, and living better because of it.

The following resources and selected quotes have been gathered as a brief, introductory primer for those unfamiliar with Malcolm X.

:: Dispatches from London Fashion Week ::
This Is Worldtown joins the street style bandwagon, and is it ever fun!
We spotted these stylish and pulled together men and women in and around London Fashion Week venues.

Can we talk about poverty in a way that doesn’t exoticise it? Is this possible anymore? When we talk about elitism and about golf courses and convertibles, can we admit that conversations about privilege are also about government housing, about skipped school fieldtrips, and the way roaches will scatter in swarms across tile floors when you flip the kitchen switch at midnight?

This is Worldtown contributor Seemi Choudry reviews Lukas Moodysson’s film “Mammoth” starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Michelle Williams.

“The story is about families and how they can communicate without communicating. Telecommunication replaces actual human communication.”

This Is Worldtown contributor Abdullah Malik takes on the must-see films of 2009, with a mix of mainstream releases and some quieter gems, to check out in to the new year.

Compared to the juggernaut films that ruled the cinema in 2008, one couldn’t expect 2009 to top the cinema experience that last year did. But somehow, the last three hundred and sixty odd days brought with it a gamut of unmissable films. Here are the five most essential films of ‘09…

Diaspora Youth Speak (DYS) is a project based in Toronto for youth who identify as part of a Diasporic community. DYS uses multi-media arts to explore themes of displacement and mobility to reflect on personal stories and the roles that we play in local and global contexts as Diasporic peoples– fostering leadership & participation; strengthening the voice of Diasporic youth.
Find out more…watch the video…

On October 10th 2009, the Canadian Arab Federation hosted an evening entitled ‘Disowning Canadians Abroad’ where a number of guest speakers discussed the trend of Canadian citizens from racialized backgrounds being abandoned by the Canadian government when facing challenges while abroad. Many spoke from first-hand experience. Faraz Siddiqui was one of the speakers.

Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.
How do you get there?