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Book Cover for: What the Oceans Remember: Searching for Belonging and Home, Sonja Boon

What the Oceans Remember: Searching for Belonging and Home

Sonja Boon

Sonja Boon's heritage is complicated. Although she has lived in Canada for more than 30 years, she was born in the UK to a Surinamese mother and a Dutch father. An invitation to join a family tree project inspired a journey to the heart of the histories that have shaped her identity, as she sought to answer two questions that have dogged her over the years: Where does she belong? And who does she belong to?

Boon's archival research--in Suriname, the Netherlands, the UK, and Canada--brings her opportunities to reflect on the possibilities and limitations of the archives themselves, the tangliness of oceanic migration, histories, the meaning of legacy, music, love, freedom, memory, ruin, and imagination. Ultimately, she reflected on the relevance of our past to understanding our present.

Deeply informed by archival research and current scholarship, but written as a reflective and intimate memoir, What the Oceans Remember addresses current issues in migration, identity, belonging, and history through an interrogation of race, ethnicity, gender, archives and memory. More importantly, it addresses the relevance of our past to understanding our present. It shows the multiplicity of identities and origins that can shape the way we understand our histories and our own selves.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
  • Publish Date: Mar 1st, 2022
  • Pages: 336
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 7.90in - 5.10in - 1.00in - 0.85lb
  • EAN: 9781771125536
  • Categories: African American & BlackEmigration & ImmigrationWomen's Studies

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About the Author

Boon, Sonja: -

Sonja Boon is Professor of Gender Studies at Memorial University. An award-winning researcher, writer, teacher, and flutist, she is passionate abut life writing, archives, and identity. For six years, she was principal flutist of the Portland Baroque Orchestra (Oregon). In 2020, she was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Ursula Franklin Award in Gender Studies. What the Oceans Remember is her fourth book.

More books by Sonja Boon

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Praise for this book

"What the Oceans Remember is breathtaking in scope. Reaching across continents, oceans and histories, it shows us what it means to live in the shadow of freedom while unfree; how the colour of a person's skin can determine if they are seen or invisible; how the word home can exclude; how the beauty of music can be a balm; how the invaluable quiet of an archive can quake with unearthed voices. Unrelentingly honest, sometimes harrowing, steeped in rich and startling insight, and conveyed in transparent prose - elegant as silk, tough as steel. - Lisa Moore, author of the story collection Something for Everyone