Celebrating Asian Heritage Month

During Asian Heritage Month, people from across the world celebrate the achievements and contributions of people of Asian descent. This year, the library invites the University of Guelph community to explore the rich array of works in the library’s collections that highlight Asian cultures, heritage, and identities.  

The collection Celebrating Asian Heritage Month features literary works available at the University of Guelph library, highlighting Asian stories and authors, covering topics such as food sovereignty, cookbooks, theatre, architecture, art, and literature.  

Items featured in the collection: 

• Home of the Floating Lily by Silmy Abdullah: This title features a collection of short stories set in a Bengali neighbourhood in Toronto, exploring themes of identity, displacement, migration, relationships, family, conflict, and home.  
• Dining With Dragons by Carol Selva Rajah and Abel Arumugam: This memoir follows the fascinating and humorous story of leading Asian food writer and chef, Carol Selva Rajah, and her journey from war-torn Malaysia to Guelph and back to Southeast Asia and Australia. After Carol moved to Canada with her husband who was pursuing a PhD in Poultry Science at U of G, she became the first to introduce Malaysian cooking to Guelph.
• George Tanaka fonds: This archival collection contains the personal and professional papers of one of Canada’s premier landscape architects who also played an integral role in human rights advocacy for the Japanese Canadian community after Canada’s internment of Japanese Canadian citizens during the Second World War. 
• The Subtweet: A Novel by Vivek Shraya: This novel presents a compelling portrayal of the development and implosion of a friendship between two women on the Canadian arts and music scene in Toronto and the role of social media in both enabling and destroying true communication. 
• Proceedings of a Teach-in on Southeast Asia, With Emphasis on Malaysia and Singapore, Held at the University of Guelph on May 10, 1969: This publication demonstrates the university’s Southeast Asian connections dating back almost to its founding as a singular institution from the amalgamation of the founding colleges. Included among the speakers was Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations.