Massachusetts Institute Of Technology: Tanzania

Canada Dept: Born in Kenya and raised in Tanzania among a long-established community of Gujarati Indians, Vassanji has been dodging pigeonholes ever since he came to Canada, via the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to work as a nuclear physicist in Chalk River, Ont. The first, widely used in Canada 30 years ago, was Paki. Even today, having morphed from immigrant scientist into one of most recognized literary figures in the most multicultural nation, he fights against the misnomers, according to Globe and Mail. You don t call Margaret Atwood a Christian writer, he adds. I mean, how stupid is that and such an emphatic declaration could easily confuse readers of Vassanji s latest novel, which follows an alienated African-Asian- Canadian professional as he revisits his native Tanzania in search of the communal identity he has lost. No pigeonholes limit the 305-page result, titled The Magic of Saida . But as this and indeed all of Vassanji s six previous novels show, intrusive questions of identity are not so easily shrugged off. You have people saying, Oh, he s an African writer, or He s a Tanzanian writer, or an Asian writer or a Muslim writer, Vassanji complains. But I don t consider myself Muslim or Hindu or anything else. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.