Tariq Malik was born in Pakistani Punjab. He lived in Kuwait for two decades prior to immigrating to Canada in 1995. He lives in Vancouver and works as an industrial chemist.
Fiction
Chanting Denied Shores: The Komagata Maru Narratives: A Novel
Calgary: Bayeux, 2010.
PS8626 .A44 C43 2010
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
With Vancouver’s waterfront ringing to the verses of ‘White Canada Forever’, hundreds of Punjabi East Indians have quietly sailed into the harbour clamouring for their right as equal subjects of the British Empire to relocate in Canada, their chartered ship ‘Komagata Maru’ now rusting at anchor inside the Burrard Inlet. The hopeful would-be-immigrants find the city distracted by exuberant Victoria Day celebrations, not to mention Buffalo Bill’s final visit and circus billed as ‘The Best Show On Earth’.
Fiction (Short stories)
Rainsongs of Kotli
Toronto: TSAR, 2004.
Publisher’s Synopsis
Set in the plains of Punjab, amidst the breathtaking mountain snowmelts and the monsoon rainstorms, these beautifully told and haunting stories explore the lives and the longings and memories of the Lohar people of Kotli.
For centuries the Lohars have worked as iron-, silver- and goldsmiths. We meet this place and this people a decade after the tumultuous Partition of India, when millions fled their homes to live elsewhere. …
Poetry
Exit Wounds: Poems
Qualicum Beach, BC: Caitlin Press, 2022.
On order
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
What does it mean to feel at home? In his groundbreaking debut collection Exit Wounds, Indo-Canadian poet Tariq Malik weaves together history and myth with his own family’s experiences of immigration to uncover what it truly means to belong. Whether he is recalling his childhood memories of the death of his father, imaging himself as a dead soldier lost in the sands of the Kuwaiti desert, or drawing upon his family’s experience of ‘three wars and migrations,’ Malik’s moving search for home will resonate with anyone who has ever felt at odds with a dominant monoculture.
Malik’s poetry combines traditional Punjabi mythology and First Nations’ symbolism with contemporary events that have shaped the lives of immigrants: 9/11, RCMP violence, war. The result is a defiant triumph of the plurality of minority experiences—a poetic chorus of immigrants and their descendants coming home to the truth and power of their many worlds.
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