The Circle Unfolds

Summary

How do we go about dismantling systems that have plunged humanity into crisis? How can we mobilize marginality to enact alternative, imaginative and social-justice oriented possibilities. As a rich metaphor of connectivity, The Circle Unfolds, suggests a pathway for a better world. Stories, memories, sacred traditions and graphics, emanating from social margins, advances social justice from the ground up. This graphic storied text calls on the readers, researchers, educators, and activists to reflect on the impact of structural exclusion with the question: could it have been otherwise? If so, how can we capture these moments of “otherwise” to build a world where we co-exist with the life worlds of human-nature family? The visual language of ethno-graphic stories fosters spaces of intervention for exploring alternative ways of being and becoming. Existentially, we are bound to each other. Praxis-oriented focus of our work lends itself to alternative readings based on affect and imagination inspired by Muslim and non-Muslim women, transnationally.     

Dr. Parin Dossa, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Simon Fraser University, received her education on three continents: Africa, Europe, and North America. Her long-standing interest on displacement and critical feminist ethnography has led her to focus on the interface between social inequality, health, gender, and social palliation.

Charlotte Corden is an illustrator and fine artist whose work often centers around what it is to be human. Her other works Light in Dark Times and La Maison Verte are similarly beautiful, illustrated works that demonstrate our need to collectively look after our humanity and the natural world.