Tubman Talks with Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike: (un)Belonging in Djamila Ibrahim’s Things Are Good Now

Date: Thursday, March 19

Time: 2:30 to 4 p.m.

Location: Zoom

Zoom Registration

Moderated by: Damilola Adebayo

This presentation focuses on the short story collection Things Are Good Now by the African Canadian writer, Djamila Ibrahim, by examining how African immigrants and refugees attempt to rebuild home in Canada.

It asks: How do African writers (re)imagine home in Canada? What do these imaginings reveal about the struggles of Africans in Canada? In considering these questions, I draw on the theoretical insights of Esi Edugyan and Sara Ahmed on home, belonging, and estrangement to analyze Ibrahim’s Things Are Good Now. In analyzing this text, I trace how the stories Djamila writes about African immigrants and refugees complicate understandings of home and belonging in Canada. I aim to provide a more nuanced understanding of how African Canadian writers navigate the complexities of home and belonging in their fiction. In doing so, I underscore how literature intervenes in anti-immigrant discourses that demonize immigrants and refugees and heighten their suffering in society.

Bio: Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike is an assistant professor in the Department of English and the 2025-2026 Wayne O. McCready Emerging Fellow at the Calgary Institute for the Humanities, University of Calgary, Canada. His critical works have been published in the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Journal of African Literature Association, Metacritic, Men and Masculinities, among others. The winner of the 2025 African Literature Association’s Best Book Award (Creative Writing), Umezurike is the author of literary works, such as there’s more, Double Wahala, Double Trouble, Wish Maker, and a co-editor of Wreaths for a Wayfarer. His academic monograph, Masculinity in Nigerian Fiction: Receptivity and Gender, is scheduled for release by Edinburgh University Press in November 2025.