Where Do I Belong

About the Book

Rummana’s writing is thoughtful, heartfelt and encompassing of ever-widening experiences and a deepening knowledge of the human condition. This volume, Where Do I Belong, takes the reader on a journey that involves a thematic stream stretching from the shores of the Padma to Lake Ontario. There is nostalgia and longing in such a journey, brought out in such pieces as ‘Hot Apple Fritters and Hot Roshogollas’, a prose meditation on the manner in which Canadian apple fritters evoke the earlier experienced pleasures of roshogollas from a sweet shop in Noakhali, Bangladesh, and the shores of Lake Ontario conjure up early layers of the Padma, Megna and Jamuna, while listening to jazz resonates with the earlier folk music of Bengal. The imagery in ‘Radhachura Kathalchapa and Bogainvillea’ contrasts the snow and frost of an adopted northern country (admittedly along with the compensating cherry blossoms of spring and autumn colours) with the warmth and breathtaking beauty of the radhachuras at dawn in a ‘long forgotten ethereal unbelievable bliss of my birthplace’—the only base where it is possible to have total relaxation. Themes of displacement, discrimination, oppression and the violence of war are worked out in cultural specificity in such poems as ‘Blood Road’ ‘Solitary confinement’ and ‘The darkness of the night pulled her’. Others such as ‘The rat race’, ‘From captivity to captivity’ and ‘Wrong address’ concern the universal human condition and struggles that transcends race, colour and linguistic differences.

About the Author

Poet and writer Rummana Chowdhury is the author of eighteen books comprising of poetry, short stories, columns and analytical articles. She did her Masters in Public Administration from the University of Dhaka in 1981 and was Bangladesh’s national badminton champion from 1975–1978 during which time she was also nationally acclaimed as a leading debate commentator, radio and television talk show host and recitation leader. Today, she has become a leading global commentator on issues of migration, violence against women, diaspora, cultural and historical remembrance strategies, feminist politics and culture and has received several notable awards including an award from the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) for “Meritorious Service” (1997), The Ontario Volunteer’s Award (2000), Woman of the Year (Canada 2010), Shouhardya Shommanona (India 2013) and the International Michael Modhusudan Datta Award (India 2014) for her contributions in the field of Bengali language, literature and culture. She has most recently been awarded the ‘Satyendra Nath Datta Award’ from Kolkata, India, which she will receive in January, 2015. Originally from Mirsarai, Chittagong, Rummana has been residing in Canada for the last thirty-two years where she works as an accredited interpreter/translator with the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada and The Ministry of the Attorney General. She has been designated as an Expert Witness in the field of social and cultural conditions of Bangladesh by the Supreme Court of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada since 1997.