Return: The Call of the Homeland

Migration is not a new phenomenon, nor is it unusual. Since the day life appeared on this planet, it’s been on the move. Plants, animals, and ultimately people followed needed resources as climate, geography and man-made borders evolved — a pattern that continues to this day. In our new inter-disciplinary series, we examine the impact on geopolitics, societies, public health, the environment and ourselves.

In this Zoom presentation, Kamal Al-Solaylee explores a natural yet frequently misunderstood desire to return to homeland.

Kamal Al-Solaylee is the author of the national bestselling memoir Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes which won the 2013 Toronto Book Award and was a finalist for the CBC’s Canada Reads, the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Lambda Literary Award for memoir/biography and the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Nonfiction. His second book, Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (to Everyone), was hailed as “brilliant” by The Walrus magazine and “essential reading” by the Globe and Mail. It was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Awards for Nonfiction, the Trillium Book Award and won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. Return, his third book of nonfiction, was published in September 2021.

His nonfiction books mix geopolitics, personal narrative with deep reporting. He has reported from 20 countries around the world, including Taiwan, Qatar, France, Britain, Jamaica, Malaysia, Egypt, Israel, Spain, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and the United States.

He holds a PhD in English from Nottingham University. For the past 14 years, he’s been a professor at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism. He has taught at the theatre departments of both York University and Waterloo University, Ontario.