Greetings from Somayya Kasani, Edmonton

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to view the world.
~Marcel Proust


Dear Shri & Smt. Prakash Rao D S Garu,

I came back home, Edmonton after attending the 14th Triennial Conference of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies. Even though I returned home from ACLALS- Vancouver, My thoughts are still going around the place and people I came across for a week. It is really nice to recollect them. This evening we are associating some people in Sherwood Park and tomorrow we do have a nice picnic.

“Literature for our Times” has touched a nerve in the issues of concern to various communities and their histories. It has also ensured that voices of those who are not in the mainstream of society would find expression through the work of this Association.

ACLALS conferences have always offered a feast of new and challenging ideas, and our six-day program provided a most stimulating experience for the delegates. Noble laureate Derek Walcott gave the Opening Reading on August 17, 2007.

We now think of culture as a process rather than as a stable fixed structure, and of cultures as always already interacting with other cultures, their hybrid self – transforming margins as ‘ authentic’ as their centers.

Given the speed of globalization and the tensions it is generating, the need for genuine dialogue between cultures and languages on the basis of quality and mutual respect has never been greater.” - Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

More in my next e-mail,
With Regards, Somayya Kasani