{"id":21811,"date":"2018-10-03T17:39:10","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T21:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=21811"},"modified":"2018-10-03T17:39:10","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T21:39:10","slug":"what-does-it-mean-to-be-brown-in-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/what-does-it-mean-to-be-brown-in-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"What does it mean to be Brown in Canada?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Al-Solaylee set to spark conversation at Wednesday\u2019s Lit On Tour Aurora<\/em><\/p>\n

What does it mean to be \u201cbrown\u201d in Canada?
\nBeing on the \u201ccusp of whiteness and the edge of blackness\u201d is an issue Canadian journalist Kamal Al-Solaylee has considered since he was a child, and one he was able to explore in-depth in his critically acclaimed and award-winning book Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (To Everyone).
\nFirst published in 2016, the issues explored within its pages remain as timely as ever and the themes will be explored deeper next week at the Aurora Public Library in a community conversation.
\nToronto International Festival of Authors presents Mr. Al-Solaylee in their second Lit On Tour Aurora event, which will take place at APL next Wednesday, October 10 at 7 p.m., in a talk led by Brock Weir, editor of The Auroran.
\n\u201cA daring and politically resonant work, Brown challenges assumptions about race, immigration and globalism and recounts the heartbreaking stories of people caught in the middle,\u201d says APL on the book, which a finalist in the Governor General\u2019s Literary Awards, and a Globe & Mail, National Post, Toronto Life, Walrus, CBC Books, and Chatelaine Book of the Year.
\nMr. Solaylee says he first began thinking about exploring this topic in greater depth in 2012, long before the rise of Donald Trump in the United States and the impact of Brexit across the Atlantic. His first step was to look at the issue of being Brown from the concept of labour.
\n\u201cI wanted to talk about this idea of Brown people kind of being the world\u2019s working class at the moment,\u201d he says. \u201cI had no other format to do this; I\u2019m not a filmmaker, I\u2019m not a singer, I\u2019m not a playwright, and the only way I can do it as a journalist in a reported way. It sounds callous, but I didn\u2019t think history would be in my side, in a way. As I was reporting it, and as I was finishing it, both Trump and Brexit happened and that gave the book a kind of immediacy.\u201d
\nNeither of those world-changing events came as a surprise to him; Brown people, he says, have seen the \u201cwriting on the wall\u201d for years, but they each forced everyone \u2013 regardless of skin colour \u2013 to \u201cconfront what has been bubbling under the surface.\u201d
\nThese issues have come into sharper focus in the last year, he says, with the rise of right-wing politics and anti-immigration platforms offered by politicians at home and abroad.
\n\u201cThere\u2019s no form of nationalism without xenophobia,\u201d he says, citing the final chapter of the book which focuses on the 2015 Federal Election with then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper framing issues from the perspective of \u201cOld Stock\u201d versus \u201cNew Stock\u201d Canadians. \u201cThat was a polite way of saying \u2018whites\u2019 and \u2018non-whites.\u2019\u201d
\n\u201cA lot of people,\u201d he says, are seeing politicians like Doug Ford and Maxime Bernier \u201cfollowing in the footsteps of Trump,\u201d but Mr. Solaylee argues that President Trump is following in the footsteps of Ford Nation with populism and the \u201csimplification of the message\u201d and \u201cfolksiness.\u201d
\n\u201cI would like Canadians to know we\u2019re actually kind of complicit in what\u2019s going on,\u201d he says. \u201cWe have the prototype for using race as a kind of race baiting. I want them to have a better awareness of the politics around us and they begin to engage. The idea that people don\u2019t see race is a complete fallacy to me. Even well-meaning people need to stop saying that. Of course you see race. What matters is how you act on it. My goal is to make people more political and more engaged.\u201d<\/p>\n

To become engaged and pose your questions of Kamal Al-Solaylee, come out to the Aurora Public Library on Wednesday, October 10 for Lit On Tour Aurora. Free tickets are still available from aurorapl.ca and copies of Brown will be available to purchase on site courtesy of Blue Heron Books.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Al-Solaylee set to spark conversation at Wednesday\u2019s Lit On Tour Aurora What does it mean to be \u201cbrown\u201d in Canada? Being on the \u201ccusp of whiteness and the edge of blackness\u201d is an issue Canadian journalist Kamal Al-Solaylee has considered since he was a child, and one he was able to explore in-depth in his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5FN","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-22 09:39:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}