On June 20, 2018, International Refugee Day, CBC’s The Current aired So They Can Rest A Little. This is a moving documentary on the fate of Yazidi women tortured, persecuted and sold into slavery by their ISIS captors following a genocide in Iraq in August 2014. Following this … [Read more...]
When a Given Name No Longer Fits the Person You Have Become: Thoughts on a Recent Episode of Out in the Open with Piya Chattopadhyay
As I have written in previous blogs, there are people who choose to change their name for a variety of reasons. Some people select a new name for entertainment and commercial purposes, such as pennames, pseudonyms or even mononyms; some for political purposes in response to … [Read more...]
When a Culture is No Longer Inclusive: Name-Changing and the Unfortunate Compulsion to Lie About Who We Are
Our name is like an elongated shadow attached at our heels. A tenacious sign of identification, it is intimately connected with our identification. While our first name is given to us lovingly and tenderly by our parents (or parent surrogates), our surname connects us to our … [Read more...]