Sir George Williams: Alice Munro

Michael Ondaatje Dept: Calcutta-born Mukherjee and North-Dakota-born Blaise his parents were Canadian became immigrants together when they moved to Montreal in the early 1960s and he took a post teaching creative writing at Sir George Williams now Concordia University. He moved immediately to the forefront of the new Canadian writing. “Peggy Atwood, Alice Munro, Hugh Hood, Michael Ondaatje – these are all old friends from my early 20s,” Blaise says. Both became Canadians, eventually drifting on the tides of history down the 401 to Toronto, according to Globe And Mail. “It was because I hadn’t yet accepted – and still haven’t accepted – social demotion as a consequence of immigration,” says Mukherjee, an effortlessly aristocratic woman, born a Brahmin and raised amid wealth. “For me, the demotion was so steep. And I had the guts to say, ‘I think this is wrong and I’m going to say it as loudly as I can.’ ” The occasion marks the launch of Blaise’s The Meagre Tarmac , a suite of linked stories about successful Indian immigrants to North America, told in their own voices, as well as the recent appearance of Mukherjee’s Miss New India , a novel chronicling the adventures of a provincial girl in the now-booming home country. More symbolically, it signals the couple’s ultimate reconciliation with a country they left in anger 30 years ago. By then, they were happily ensconced in good academic jobs, with literary careers that included one co-written bestseller Days and Nights in Calcutta . But Mukherjee grew increasingly infuriated by the casual racism she encountered in 1970s Toronto and insisted they leave the country for an unsettled life of mainly temporary jobs in the United States – leaving behind her a blistering j’accuse in Saturday Night magazine. As reported in the news.
@t globe and mail, peggy atwood