2024 PEI BOOK AWARD WINNER: Nonfiction

Ije: An Immigrant’s Voyage into Prince Edward Island Life takes its meaning from the Igbo word for journey, and spotlights the narratives of immigrants to Prince Edward Island, shining light on their individual experiences. This collection of personal reflections, interviews, photo essays, and works of art explores the concepts of belonging, imposed and realized identities, cultural traditions, culinary symbols, and living the contradictions of social norms. From chefs to hairdressers, academics to entrepreneurs, Ije encompasses the resilience of a people inspired to innovate their own community-driven solutions.

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• Winner, PEI BOOK AWARD WINNER: Nonfiction

Essays and Contributors:

The Weight of Love - Elizabeth Iwunwa

Stomach Infrastructure - Tolulope Adesoye

A Celebration of Our Inner Light - Nindiya Sharma

A Taste of Home - Elizabeth Iwunwa

Akos - Chester Hewlett

Our Daily Bread - Rachael Sonola

My Immigration Story - Debbie Langston

Black Lives Matter: Resistance in Black and White - Oniel Kuku & Ugochukwu Nwafor

Silence is My Voice - Charles Ruth

Fleeing Home, Finding Refuge - Elizabeth Iwunwa

Good Hair - Malak Usman

The Power of Community - Mary-Ann Lamai

The Bridge from One Present to Another - John Shabaan

Ancestors - Martins Madumere

Chicken Paprikash - Chef Ilona Daniel

Home and Abroad: Contradictory Social Locations - Dr. Charles Adeyanju

Food: My Tether to Home - Via Reyes

Children of the Diaspora - Shaka Joshua Tarichia

News from Mali - Mamadou Sanogo

Tomorrow Comes Today - Daniel Ohaegbu & Jonah Chininga

“Immigration is so much more than simply moving to a new place. Ije is a brilliant anthology that captures stories rarely considered from the citizen’s perspective yet experienced so rawly and felt so deeply from the immigrant’s perspective. Ije is the book that PEI needs in this very moment.”

Tamara Steele, Director of the Black Cultural Society of PEI

“Elizabeth Iwunwa is the right-on-time curator of this righteous assembly of views, interviews, art, and photos, all depicting the Come-From-Far-Away Islanders who have found anchorage in the harbour of Confederation and a new homeland on soil as red and promising as the dawn. Charming and charismatic, personable and penetrating, Iwunwa maps a community of Islanders whose odysseys have taught them that all of Earth is an island, one where we all must find refuge, amid the endless, bone-chilling ocean of space.”

George Elliott Clarke, Author of Where Beauty Survived: An Africadian Memoir (Knopf Canada)