As the 10th edition of the Goa Arts and Literature Festival gets underway at the ICG there will be a
very good representation of writers from the Goan diaspora. From countries as
diverse as Norway, Canada and Australia to name a few. This year, Goa’s
greatest literary showcase will showcase writers from acrossthe diaspora
including Ivo de Figueiredo from Norway, Derek Mascarenhas from Canada,Suneeta
Peres da Costa and Sujatha Fernandes from Australia. Goa-related exclusives by
other goan writers including those in Goa include will also be showcased. Among
them are ‘Arayaka’ by Amruta Patil, ‘The Matata Trilogy’ by Braz
Menezes,Mandalay’ by Clara Astorla, ‘A Song for Saligao’ by Clarice Vaz, and
the re-launchedParmal Magazine from Goa Heritage Action Group.
Ivo de Figueiredo is the critically-acclaimed biographer of
Norway’s treasured cultural icon, Henrik Ibsen (Yale University Press, April
2019), and his next book is the official biography of Edvard Munch,
commissioned by the Munch Foundation. In 2002, he was awarded the Brage Prize
for a biography of Johan Bernhard Hjort, the co-founder of the Norwegian
Fascist Party. A Stranger at My Table was influenced by such authors as W.G.
Sebald and Daniel Mendelsohn. The book received a member of the Norwegian
Academy.
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Responding to queries emailed by this journalist regarding his
expectations, he said “Oh, just looking at the program makes it hard to answer.
To me the GALF is a unique opportunity to learn more about Goa and India, and
also to enjoy the company of authors and scholars from all over the world. As I
am launching my own memoir on my Goan heritage, A Stranger at my Table, I’m
also curious and a little nervous about the reception. How will the story of a
Norwegian of East African Goan descent read in Goa? We will soon find out”.
Asked how he tackled the challenges being a Norwegian with Goan heritage, he
said “When my Goan father came to Norway in 1963, there were around 150 people
with an Asian or African background in the whole of Norway. The first wave of working
migrants from Pakistan came in the 1970s. So I didn’t really feel like “the
other”, immigration wasn’t really a topic during my upbringing. I was a
Norwegian with a tan, not a “third culture kid”. All this has changed now, of
course, and I think the young generations of today struggle more with their
double identities”.
Asked about the challenges in that society, he said
“Multiculturalism has come recently to Scandinavia, but I’m an optimist. The
Scandinavian countries are small, and tolerance comes with experience. Our
challenge is first and fore most to preserve the egalitarian structure of the
welfare state, and curb the tendencies towards getthofication and parallel
societies. In my view that means reversing the forces of privatisation and
economic liberalism, and at the same time adjusting the speed of immigration to
our capacity to integrate. The Scandinavian societies are difficult to enter
because of the level of automatisation and education, which means few manual
jobs and many school drop outs, especially among immigrant boys. At the same
time our welfare system is expensive and requires a high degree of productivity
from its citizens. But Norway is doing fairly well, as opposed to Sweden, which
during the last decade has seen an increasing welfare gap and emerging
ghettos”.
Derek Mascarenhas is the author of the acclaimed debut linked
short story collection, Coconut Dreams (Book*hug, 2019). A graduate of the
University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies Creative Writing Program,
Derek is a finalist and runner up for the Penguin Random House of Canada
Student Award for Fiction, and a nominee for the Marina Nemat Award. He has
works published in places such as The Dalhousie Review, Switchback, Maple Tree
Literary Supplement, Joyland, and The Antigonish Review. Derek is one of four
children born to parents who emigrated from Goa, India, and settled in
Burlington, Ontario, Canada. A backpacker who has travelled across six
continents, Derek currently resides in Toronto. His presence is interesting
because he is considered one of the stars on the horizon.
Suneeta Peres da Costa is an award-winning Australian author and
playwright, best known for her tragicomic novel, Homework, about a
dysfunctional Goan migrant family set in suburban Sydney. She continues to
explore the idea of being the other. Her 2018 novel was on the subject of
lostness, a feeling of not having a place in the world. It follows Maria, a
young girl from a Goan immigrant family, growing up in a political hierarchy of
racism and colonialism in Portuguese Angola. Peres da Costa has been awarded
grants and fellowships from the Literature Board of the Australia Council for
the Arts, the Copyright Agency Limited, Asialink Arts, the MacDowell Colony for
the Arts, the Yaddo Corporation, the Valparaiso Foundation, Varuna – The
Writers’ House, the NSW Ministry for the Arts, and, the Marten Bequest.
Sujatha Fernandes is a Professor of Political Economy and
Sociology at the University of Sydney. She taught at the City University of New
York for a decade and holds a visiting position at the Center for Place,
Culture, and Politics at the CUNY Graduate Center.Her academic, activist, and
literary work explores social and labour movements, black popular culture, and
migrant workers, with a focus on the Americas. Her book Cuba Represent! looks
at the forms of cultural expression that arose in post-Soviet Cuban society. It
should be an exciting couple of days.
Truly
our writers with Goan roots, spread across the world will make their original
homeland proud and celebrate their literary achievements at GALG 2019
