Bestselling author Esi Edugyan expands long marginalized stories
Alma Lee Opening Night Event: Esi Edugyan in Conversation with Chantal Gibson
When: Oct. 19, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Granville Island Stage
Info and tickets: writersfest.bc.ca
The daughter of Ghanaian parents, Edugyan’s choice of stories takes the reader around the globe and even just next door to Alberta where, early in the 20th century, close to 1,000 freed American slaves left the Jim Crow South to try to build new lives on the Prairies. This bit of history never made into any of Edugyan’s schoolbooks when she was a kid in Calgary.
“This is something I hadn’t learned about in school. I was astonished to learn there were Black settlements in Alberta,” said Edugyan, adding she didn’t hear about this story until she was an adult. “That is something that really should probably be on the curriculum as well as the things that have always been in the curriculum.
“I think it is an enlargement of our sense of things. It’s not erasing or taking away from the record to add this to the record,” added Edugyan from her home in Victoria that she shares with her husband, writer Steven Price, and their two kids.
