We trawl the news media so you don’t have to.

News 21: The New Voters, Identity & U.S. Politics :: Mixed-Race in U.S. Struggle to Form Political, Personal Identities

Welcome to Beirut, Lebanon where you can be everything you want to be - among the glitterati in sky high clubs with polished heels, discussing politics among the expatriot intelligentsia in bohemian backdoors, or setting up an evening Nargileh (water pipe) outpost in your car on the Corniche. Even as an observer of Beirut’s many worlds - the contradictions, the contrasts, the tragedies - I feel the unmistakable heartbeat, the pulsing arteries filled with suffocating cigarette fumes and a persistent, intense desperation to stay alive.

Michael Jackson seemed crushed under a weight of identity: black/man/star/brother/father/son. Add philanthropist/media-victim and -manipulator/accused pederast/primate owner/fashionista and dancer. Owner of, and now perhaps a returnee to, Neverland.

I keep waiting for the moment when I say: “yes, this is where I’m from, this is what my culture means, this is a connection I’ve been waiting for all this time. Everyone I meet keeps saying, “yes you are Canadian, but you belong to India” – which just heightens the disconnect between what I want to feel and how I actually feel.

These are my people, and yet there is an unreality about being here that occupies most moments. I feel as though time and place are suspended. I never know what time it is, either here or at home, and my head spins from the difference in time – day feels like night, and my stomach growls while I sleep.

Bored by the main street, I wandered off into a labyrinth of back lanes housing street side food stalls and tiny children running around on the dusty paths…Landmarks that I thought I were markings in my head disappeared, and the sun’s rays started to beat down hotter and hotter. I realized there were no street names, and precious few women around.

We trawl the news media so you don’t have to.

Czechs Cool to Presence of Workers From Asia :: The New York Times:

Meet Toronto’s little poet man :: The Toronto Star… Watch the Video!

The Intersection of Islam, America and Identity :: The New York Times… See the art pieces

We will regularly be presenting 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.

Third culture. To me, the phrase conjures up images of mould growing in Petrie dishes. The third generation of such a mould, perhaps, carefully reared in a sterile laboratory environment. Someone once told me that the phrase third culture referred to children such as myself. Children of twentieth century migrants, children who belonged neither to the culture of their parents, nor the culture of their host land. People like myself who created a new, hybrid third culture, a marriage of the heritage of our parents with the culture of our adopted homeland. But what happens when you have not one adopted homeland but two or three?

We will regularly be presenting 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.