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Lamees Al Ethari

Lamees Al Ethari is an Iraqi born writer and author who immigrated to Canada in 2008. Al Ethari holds two MA degrees, one from the University of Baghdad (2002) and one from the Kansas State University (2008). She earned a PhD in English Language and Literature from the University of Waterloo in 2014. Her dissertation is entitled Defragmenting Identity in the Life Narratives of Iraqi North American Women. Al Ethari lives in Kitchener, Ontario and teaches creative and academic writing at the University of Waterloo.

Poetry (Chapbook)

From the Wounded Banks of the Tigris

London, Ont.: Baseline Press, 2018.

Non-fiction (Memoir)

Waiting for the Rain: An Iraqi Memoir

Toronto: Mawenzi House, 2019.
DS79.66.E84 A3 2019

Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)

Ma misses the sun, warmth and colors of their faraway homeland, but her daughter sees magic in everything — the clouds in the winter sky, the “firework” display when she throws an armful of snow into the air, making snow angels, tasting snowflakes. And in the end, her joy is contagious. Home is where family is, after all.

In this memoir, Lamees Al Ethari traces her transition from an idyllic childhood in a large extended Iraqi family to the relative stability of an exilic family life in Canada. Through memory fragments, flights of poetry, diary entries, and her own art, the author reveals the trauma suffered by Iraqis, caused by three senseless wars, dehumanizing sanctions, a brutal dictatorship, and a foreign occupation. Finely observed, highly personal, and intensely moving, this account also gives testimony to the Iraqi people’s resilience and the humanity they manage to preserve in the face of adversity. It is the other voice, behind the news flashes.

Links

Lamees Al Ethari faculty page at the University of Waterloo

Publisher Baseline Press

Publisher Mawenzi House