At the 2024 annual general meeting, PEN Canada announced its latest Annual Report, titled The Things We Could Not Carry.
Alongside an accounting of the last year’s activities and the organization’s current priorities, the report looks at the cost of leaving one’s home, whether planned over weeks and months, or suddenly in the middle of the night.
“Canadians are good at helping people immigrate. We understand the struggle to get here, the awe of arrival, the making of a new life. But we are less aware of the cost of leaving,” says report editor Leila Marshy. “What are the fading memories, the discarded objects, the intangible monuments and milestones that we were forced to abandon? And what has this sense of abandoning done to us?”
Featured writers include Saeed Teebi, Luis Horacio Nájera, and Ésery Mondésir, all of who fled their homelands seeking refuge and safety. Read it here.
