Mootoo biography
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Gaëtan Mootoo
Mauritian human rights activist (–)
Gaëtan Mootoo (29 September – 25 May ) was a Mauritian human rights activist, researcher responsible for West Africa in the Amnesty International organization.[1]
Biography
[edit]Coming from a poor family of Curepipe, he became a teacher and engagerad in social organizations in his country: Institute for Development and Progress, Fiat movement, Christian Movement for Socialism. In , he studied at the University of Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, the subject being French literature and completed his degree in Science education. He then promoted science in Mauritius.[2]
Work at Amnesty International
[edit]Having married Martyne Perrot (), anthropologist at the CNRS, he was hired by Amnesty International in and became a researcher for this organization, in charge of West Africa. Until his death, he investigated abuses, injustices, state crimes and human rights abuses (torture, slavery, forced marriages, et
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“Cultural bastards, Janet, cultural bastards. Dat is what we is.” Out on Main Street
Biography
Shani Mootoo was born in Ireland in and raised in Trinidad. She moved to Canada at the age of 19, where she began a career as a visual artist. A skilled multimedia artist and video maker, she has had exhibitions in the U.S and Canada, and her videos have been shown at a number of film festivals. Mootoo has said that she has gravitated to the visual most of her life, because as a child, when she told her grandmother of the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of an uncle, she was told never to say those words again. She found it safer not to use words and started making pictures. Finally acknowledging and naming her experience of abuse prompted Mootoo to return to words, and write her first collection of short stories (Ghosh).
Major Themes
Mootoo’s migrant and immigrant experiences emerge as central themes in her work. In Out on Main Street, Mootoo exposes the complexity and shi
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Shani Mootoo was born in Ireland, raised in Trinidad and arrived in Canada at the age of nineteen. She graduated from the University of Western Ontario in and began a career as a painter and video producer. Her painting, photographic and film work reveals deep suffering, and has been the subject of exhibitions worldwide. She turned her personal experience as a child victim of sexual abuse into a creative strength. Recurring themes in her work are identity – generally multiple – gender issues, ethnic origins, and overcoming trauma. Her transition from the visual to the literary world came as a result of her process of acceptance and ability to write about her experiences. Her first collection of short stories, Out on Main Street, was published in , and her first novel, Cereus Blooms at Night, came out three years later and was nominated for the Giller Prize. She became a writer in residence at the University of Alberta and published her second novel, He Drown She