Living Hyphen storytellers at the Healing Across Generations launch party. Photo by Cristhian Ramirez.
When I first conceived of the idea for Living Hyphen, I didn’t really expect much to come of it. I thought a few of my friends and maybe a few of their friends would share their stories and we’d put together a kickass zine to express how we felt about our hyphenated experiences. We’d share it at an art fair somewhere, and that would be that.
I did not expect that 200 submissions from storytellers all across what we now know as Canada would come pouring in, and that “I” would turn into “we” as we launched a 122-page magazine filled to the brim with stories from writers and artists hailing from over 30+ ethnic backgrounds, religions, and Indigenous nations combined.
I did not expect the hunger to tell these stories from the in-between.
When we first hit publish on our inaugural issue, I thought a few of my friends and a few of their friends would support the magazine and we’d sell a couple of hundred copies of this labour of love.
I did not expect that within one month of launch, we would sell out 500 copies of our first imprint and have to quickly reprint more to meet the demand across the country and that bookstores and libraries alike would want to stock our pages on their shelves.
I did not expect the hunger to read and celebrate these stories from the in-between.
Fast forward four years later and Living Hyphen has become so much more than a magazine. We are a cultural force, a multimedia platform, and a flourishing community made up of thousands of people from all across the nation and beyond!
Photo by Cristhian Ramirez.
As I’ve done every year, I want to share all the incredible wins that we’ve had as a community. In a world that moves so fast and that is constantly on the go, I appreciate the opportunity to pause and reflect, to lavish in all that we have accomplished, and to remind myself and each one of us of the impact that we are making each and every day.
A Physical Space to Call Our Home
We are so grateful to our friends at LOOP: Design for Social Good for generously sharing their beautiful space with us in the heart of downtown Toronto. It feels so rejuvenating to share space with people again, especially with those in our creative community.
All throughout the year, we’ve spent our time in this light-filled studio working on designing and editing the pages of our latest issue, as well as hosting in-person writing workshops for the first time in over two years.
Check out LOOP, a creative agency that uses design to help social impact organizations address the world’s most pressing challenges.
Sharing Newcomer Stories, Working with Multilingual Canadians
For those of us from across the diaspora, the preservation of our mother tongue is so important in staying true to ourselves and holding on to our heritage. But we also need to adapt to the language of our adopted homeland for our survival and success. How do we do both?
For the last year, Living Hyphen has been working closely with the Department of Imaginary Affairs — a national nonprofit organization focused on understanding the evolving definition of what it means to be Canadian — to develop and publish The Stories of Us to solve for this question. This publication is the first-ever English as a Second Language collection of stories written and told by newcomers, for newcomers.
Photo by Trevor Haldenby.
The Stories of Us is a 150+ page collection that captures 60 stories in 15 different languages from newcomers hailing from all across the globe and who have settled across various parts of Canada. It is a multilingual collection that strives to honour and preserve the first languages of newcomers to this country, while also serving as a tool to learn English. By sharing stories by newcomers in their own language side-by-side with English, we hope that this can serve as a radical new way of language learning.
Learn more about the intention, vision, and necessity for The Stories of Us.
Resisting Islamophobia Through Oral Storytelling
In June 2021, a man rammed a pickup truck into an intersection in London, Ontario murdering Muslim Pakistani Canadian pedestrians. This act of domestic terrorism resulted in the deaths of four members across three generations of the Afzaal-Salmat family. Only one person survived: a child who was left orphaned because of this hateful act of Islamophobia.
The Living Hyphen team had the privilege of working closely with the London School of Racialized Leaders — an organization that was founded as a result of this tragic incident — to put together an audio experience to unpack Islamophobia in Canada and reflect on the ongoing racism specifically in London, Ontario.
Together, we created the pilot episode of Envisioning an Anti-Racist London, a podcast series to exercise narrative power through storytelling. In this pilot episode, the LSRL team reflected on why the team came together, their experiences with racism growing up in London, the need for collective healing, and redefining leadership in a post-9/11 world. It is yet another example of the intimacy and power of sound to move people into action.
Sharing Stories from Refugee Youth, Learning from Disrupted Learners
On March 30, 2022, the Refugee Education Council launched Learning from Disrupted Learners, an anthology of stories and reflections from refugee and displaced youth, which our team designed and published.
Hosted by World Vision Canada in partnership with the Canadian International Education Policy Working Group (CIEPWG), the Refugee Education Council was created to advise the Government of Canada’s Together for Learning campaign — an international campaign to ensure that all refugee and displaced children have access to the education they need and deserve, and that is a part of their fundamental human rights. The creation of this council marks a remarkable shift in finding the solutions to the growing gaps in global education as refugee and internally displaced youth voices have historically been excluded from the conversation.
Made up of youth, teachers, parents, and community leaders with experience in forcible displacement, the council is fiercely advocating that solutions and approaches are shaped by their own lived experience and knowledge.
Recognizing the significance of their own lived experiences, these youth have created Learning from Disrupted Learners, a collection of their stories to amplify their manifesto and vision for the future. We are humbled and honoured to have been trusted with their stories and to share this powerful collection with you.
Living Hyphen as Retro Video Game? Playing with Digital Storytelling
You heard that right! Our stories just keep on taking on new forms in such unexpected ways. Our stories have been remixed into a podcast, a stage play, and most recently, a retro video game for a digital storytelling carnival! We are so proud to have partnered up with Talk Media, a Toronto-based local journalism start-up, who brought our stories to life in a way we’ve never seen before.
Toronto Rewind was an interactive digital festival that took place in November 2021 bringing attendees into the heart of local stories. The event featured writing and narrations from a diverse group of local writers and storytellers all over what we now know as Toronto, including storytellers from our inaugural issue: Lance Morrison, Taha Tabish, and Asad Chishti.
Inviting Guest Facilitators Into Our Cultural Programming
Our mission at Living Hyphen has always been to amplify the voices of diverse artists and writers across this country. We do that, of course, through our magazine and our podcast, and this year, we also began to do that by inviting guest facilitators to lead our writing workshops. Drawing from our talented pool of storytellers, we’ve had Andrea Thompson, Sheniz Janmohamed, and Nastasha Alli lead workshops focusing on their specific craft. From spoken word to nature art and poetry to food writing, these storytellers have shared their craft with many budding writers from across Turtle Island. We hope to continue bringing in more guests to support our work in cultivating diverse artists and writers!
Andrea Thompson for our Soul Speak spoken word writing workshop
Reaching Our Youth: Working with School Boards Across Ontario
In an unexpected but very welcome turn, we’ve been invited to a number of high schools across Ontario to facilitate writing workshops and speak about anti-racism and equity. We’ve had the privilege of working with both educators and students alike at the Halton District School Board, the York Catholic District School Board, the Toronto Catholic District School Board, and the Toronto District School Board.
Students at Loretto Abbey Catholic Secondary School.
Working with young students to nurture their confidence in telling their stories about identity and guiding educators on how to create these supportive and nurturing spaces has been some of the most important work we’ve done this year.
Continuing to Work Towards Racial Justice with Partners
Underpinning all our endeavours this year is the current of cultivating partnerships with other like-minded organizations and growing our community to reach even more Canadians.
We’ve had the privilege of being invited into the intimate circles of many arts and culture organizations, government agencies, and businesses to share our work and all the lessons we’ve learned along the way.
Some of these partners include Paramount (yes, Paramount as in the entertainment and media giant!!), Atlas Obscura, Employment and Social Development Canada, The Walrus, Platform, the Brampton Arts Organization, and so many more.
If you work for an organization or business that’s looking for speakers around your diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, please consider inviting us!
Launching Issue 2.2: Healing Across Generations
To be displaced — whether voluntarily or forced, violently or subtly, from abroad or right here on this land — that is, to be removed or to remove oneself from one’s home invariably comes with loss. The trauma of that loss seeps across time. The violence of that pain bleeds across generations.
Issue 2.2: Healing Across Generations is an invitation to confront this pain, to touch the centre of our trauma, and to begin healing these tender wounds. It is an invitation to create the space to grow and blossom.
Photo by Cristhian Ramirez.
We publish this issue in the wake of a global pandemic that has taken the lives of millions of people around the world, and upended the lives of so many more. We publish this issue as environmental disasters disrupt, displace, and outright destroy lives and livelihoods more and more each day. We publish this issue as global inequities continue to deepen, to compound, and to intensify. We publish this issue in the wake of so much collective trauma.
The need to heal — ourselves and our earth — has never been more critical.
We hope that the telling and tenderness of our stories can mark the beginning in this long, but necessary journey.
What’s Next?
For the first time in four years, I actually have an answer (or at least an intention) to this question.
So much of the growth that Living Hyphen has experienced throughout the years has felt largely fortuitous. People come to us with ideas and opportunities, and we simply roll with it and make magic happen together. This year, I’d like to be more strategic and intentional with all that we have created and all the relationships we’ve cultivated. How do we take this foundation and build upon it? How do we ensure that we invest our time and energy in the initiatives that have the greatest impact?
Photo by Cristhian Ramirez.
In our fifth year, our aim at Living Hyphen is to continue to forge deeper relationships with cultural institutions, arts organizations, and school boards across Ontario to deliver writing workshops and share the stories found in our podcast and magazine.
Finding a way to work more closely with school boards especially is a priority for us because cultivating this culture of storytelling among racialized youth is so essential in creating a society where everyone feels represented and valued. It is so essential in creating a society where everyone feels like they belong. I, along with so many others in the Living Hyphen community today, grew up thinking we needed to hide, quiet, or outright erase parts of ourselves to belong in this country. But no more.
Working with racialized youth means that they will grow up feeling supported and confident in sharing their stories and bringing their authentic selves everywhere they go. It means they will proudly bring their rich cultural traditions, languages, and customs to create a more nuanced, complex, and ultimately beautiful definition of what it means to be a “hyphenated Canadian”.
We look forward to being a part of that.
