Migration

NAV NAGRA

I have never migrated. Not in the traditional sense anyway. My feet have more or less stayed on the same ground. I do, however, come from those who have migrated. From my grandfather who left India to find new life in England. From my mother who left that life in England to come to Canada to meet my father who had migrated from India to see what the other side of the world could offer. These movements inevitably shaped the person I would become. The person I would migrate into.

In Arielle Spence’s interview with Ann Y.K. Choi, we get to explore the complicated relationship of gender roles, family dynamics, and racism that forms the character Mary in Choi’s acclaimed novel Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety, and the ways in which migration forms our movements as individuals.

Migration is much more than people moving from place to place. It can be the movement of our society into a world where population decay and longer life spans change the way society behaves (page 68). It can be the migration from youth to an older age (page 22) and the need to move, as we all have come to see in recent history, in order to survive (page 28).

Thus, we all experience migration differently and I wanted to be sure to represent as many instances as possible of the complexity that is migration. So, it is with this thought process that this issue was created. I hope you enjoy it.