Ghada shares how she was born in Beijing, raised in Syria, and moved to the USA and then Canada when she was a teenager. She conveys her love of poetry as poetry is the language of resistance and resilience. She voices the many racist experiences she encountered when she ran for office in 2019 and the courage it took to do so. She shares stories of her son and niece’s encounters with racism and states, “let’s be the killjoys and call out racist moments.
Dr. Ghada Alatrash, is an Assistant Professor in the School of Critical and Creative Studies at Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary, Canada. She holds her PhD in Educational Research: Languages and Diversity from the Werklund School of Education, the University of Calgary, and a Master’s Degree in English Literature from the University of Oklahoma. Her doctoral work spoke to the lived experience of the Syrian Diaspora in Canada. Her current research speaks to Syrian art and creative expression as resistance to oppression and dictatorship. She taught at MRU before AUArts and was a recipient of the Distinguished Faculty Award in 2021. She was also the Liberal MP Candidate for Calgary Signal Hill in the 2019 elections. She is the author of Stripped to the Bone: Portraits of Syrian Women. She has been invited to share her experience and her stories as a TEDx speaker.
