Queer Indeed

Here's my nomination for the queerest (in the old-fashioned sense of the word, meaning powerful strange) event scheduled for Toronto's Israeli Apartheid Week:

Thursday, March 4, 7pm: Coming Out Against Apartheid: Queer Solidarity Activism

Location: OISE Auditorium, 252 Bloor St. West (map)

Hosted by Students Against Israeli Apartheid – a working group of OPIRG-Toronto

Trish Salah is a Montreal-based writer, activist and teacher at Concordia’s Simone de Beauvoir Institute. She has been politically active organizing around a wide range of issues, including Palestinian solidarity, sex workers' rights, anti-racism and anti-capitalism, employment security and healthcare for transsexual and transgender people. Her first book of poetry, Wanting in Arabic, was published by TSAR Books and her recent writing appears in the journals Open Letter, No More Potlucks, and Aufgabe. Her new manuscript is titled “Lyric Sexology.”

Try taking some of that "Lyric Sexology" to the Islamic University of Gaza, Trish. See how far it gets you. (As for that bit about her teaching at Concordia's Simone de Beauvoir Institute--priceless!)

Update: Trish mentions that her poetry was published by TSAR Books. Sounds kind of Russian, no? In fact, it's fully Canadian. Fully multiculti-drank-the-purple-Kool-Aid-loony-lefty Canadian. According to its website, TSAR is "dedicated to bringing to the reading public fresh new writing from Canada and across the world that reflects the diversity of our rapidly globalizing world, particularly in Canada and the United States. Our focus is on works that can loosely be termed "multicultural" and particularly those that pertain to Asia and Africa." Aside from Trish, two of its other authors are Sheema Khan, CAIR-CAN founder and occasional opiner in the Globe and Mail (her upcoming book of essays is called, fittingly, Of Hockey and Hijabs), and Ehab Lotayef, whose book To Love a Palestinian Woman will be launced at Toronto's Beit Zatoun House in April.

The TSAR site includes this testimonial from Canadian Literature: "TSAR is changing our understanding of the Canadian literary landscape through its innovative publications."

You can say that again. And--well, whadya know?--the federal and provincial governments apparently support such, er, "change" since the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Ontario Media Development Corporation are listed as financial backers.

All I can say is Antonio Gramschi would approve. Me--not so much.

Update: TSAR author Ehab Lotayef in Gaza.