São Paulo – Authors from countries including Lebanon, Tunisia and Palestine will join an online event created by a Brazilian. The Migra project will last from April to October 2021, featuring discussions with 80-plus artists, filmmakers, playwrights, illustrators, researchers, and members of civil society. Pictured above are Myriam Soufy of Tunisia and Nadine Ltaif of Lebanon, who will both be featured.
In addition to debates, the event will include readings, academic forums, meetings with students, and book launches. The content will be available free of charge on the project’s YouTube and Facebook.
The goal is to enable transnational, transdisciplinary dialogue regarding the experiences of migrancy in our time. “The term ‘migrancy’ was coined by a Canadian author. It bears weight in addressing a social situation, of a subject who enters a country and finds themselves in a situation of transit. As for the poetical issue, we are looking to go beyond that. Migrancy is a notion of movement and eternal displacement. Right now, amid the pandemic, we are also experiencing migration towards our own homes. It’s the same mechanism,” explained the project’s creator Leonardo Tonus, a Brazilian Literature professor at Sorbonne and an immigration specialist.
More than just a cultural festival, the Migra project is intended as a space in which to discuss displacement in the world today. “We try to invite people who have done work on migration. We are also mindful of men-women parity, regional and cultural diversity, and of course, we try to give a voice to those who have lived through the experience,” said Tonus.
A native of São Bernardo do Campo, in the São Paulo metro area, the Italian-Brazilian professor lives and works in Paris. An immigrant himself, Tonus has studied the phenomenon in several research projects. He also organized the anthology “La littérature brésilienne contemporaine,” featuring work by 12 Brazilian authors, and released under the title ‘From the Diaspora to the Motherland” in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
The Migra project is organized by a commission comprising researchers, professors and players from the world of culture in Brazil, Europe, the United States, and Canada. The debates will be streamed live, and they will remain available after-the-fact.
The event opens on Saturday (10), featuring the Chilean writer of Palestinian descent Lina Meruane, the author of ‘Becoming Palestinian.’ The moderators will be Eleonora Frenkel, a writer and a professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, and Julian Fuks, the author of ‘Resistance,’ which has been translated into five different languages and won the Jabuti Award for Fiction Book of the Year and Best Novel (2016), the José Saramago Prize (2017), and the Anna Seghers Prize (2018).
The event ‘Between East(s) and West(s),’ airing April 17 at 1 pm (Brasília time) will feature other Arab authors: Nadine Ltaif, a Canadian resident who was born in Lebanon, and Tunisia’s Myriam Soufy, the author of the anthology of poems ‘Re… Belle!’ and a jurist, fine artist, photographer, and actress. They will be joined by the Brazilian writer of Lebanese descent Marcelo Maluf.
- Here’s more on this: Brazilian book anthology to be published in Arabic
Viewership is free. “[We want] people to get a breather and to get some time to think. This is meant for everyone,” said Tonus. According to him, the project’s schedule will be updated each month, and the event may even get extended if new content comes up.
Quick facts
Migra Project
April 10-October 2021
Facebook & Instagram: @projetomigra
Find out more: www.projetomigra.com
Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
