CBC Radio will air the first drama by York Professor Rishma Dunlop, The Raj Kumari’s Lullaby, on its "Sunday Showcase" and "Monday Night Playhouse" broadcasts on Feb. 13/14. Dunlop is professor of literary studies in the Faculty of Education and founder of a group of women artists and researchers called The Red Shoes Collective.
The play charts a woman’s coming of age through a dramatic journey that takes her family from India to Beaconsfield, Quebec. It’s an enchanting autobiographical account of generational and cultural conflict, as the young daughter of liberal parents spreads her wings on a journey to becoming a poet. Along the way, the meaning of identity and home is explored, along with the more arcane rituals of Brownies and teen dating in Beaconsfield.
Left: Rishma Dunlop
Dunlop’s current research projects include The Language of Her Bones, an exploration of the engagement with literature and the arts for human rights and humanist education. Her ongoing collaborations with visual artists include exhibitions of literary texts and art, collaborative publications and performances.
An award-winning poet and fiction writer whose work has has appeared in numerous books and journals, Dunlop has written several books including Reading Like a Girl (Black Moss Press, 2004), The Body of My Garden (Mansfield Press, 2002) and Boundary Bay, (Staccato/Turnstone Press, 1999). She is co-editor, with York Humanities Professor Priscila Uppal, of Red Silk: An Anthology of Canadian South Asian Women Poets (Mansfield Press, 2004). Dunlop is also an active member of PEN Canada and organizes a speaker series at York titled Writers and Artists Without Borders.
"The Raj Kumari’s Lullaby", which airs Sunday on CBC Radio One at 10pm and Monday on CBC Radio Two at 9pm, was produced in Toronto by Damiano Pietropaolo and stars Rahnuma Panthaky as the narrator, Malika Mendez as the mother and Ishwar Mooljee as the father. The music is composed and performed by Suba Sankaran.