Sign-In
Cart
Writing in the Wound: Acculturation, Trauma, and Music
Paperback
Publisher Price: $35.99
ISBN13: 9781069786128
Publisher: Shumaila Hemani
Published: Oct 11 2025
Pages: 378
Weight: 1.50
Height: 1.03 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
What happens when her scars begin to speak? Born in Pakistan and cast adrift in Canada's immigration system after seventeen years of building a life there, Dr. Shumaila Hemani embarks on an odyssey of wounds-through music, memory, and the enduring search for belonging. As she moves through institutions that promise recognition yet often demand silence, she confronts the fragility of artistic recognition and the realities of structural erasure, struggling to preserve her voice in systems that leave her visible but uncounted.
Blending lyrical storytelling, memoir, and autoethnographic reflection, Writing in the Wound traces Hemani's journey from her ethnomusicological training under Professor Regula Burckhardt Qureshi at the University of Alberta to her apprenticeship with master Sufi musicians in Pakistan. Along the way, Sufi music becomes more than a spiritual calling-it becomes a form of resistance and a language for expressing what might otherwise remain unspoken.
At once personal and political, lyrical and scholarly, Writing in the Wound is a feminist memoir that invites readers to listen deeply-to the land, to longing, and to the courage of a Pakistani woman who subverts the silences of Canada's immigration system, transforming her wounds into voice, music, and wisdom.
Writing in the Wound is not only about survival. It is the song of a woman reclaiming her power.
Hemani writes as if sound were breath, shelter, lineage, prayer, argument, and last defense all at once-deeply moving. - Literary Titan
A fascinating memoir. Shumaila Hemani 's work is multifaceted, beautifully lyrical, and crystal clear. - Barb Howard, author of Happy Sands, University of Calgary Press.
Writing in the Wound contributes to collective human strength to heal the planet- in such a loving, powerful way. - Norine Braun, award-winning Indigenous singer-songwriter
Also in
Artists
Trudeau & Doonesbury: A Biography: The Cartoonist Who Turned the News Into Art
Kendall, Joshua
Hardcover
Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the World
Johnson, Victoria
Hardcover
The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers
McKissack Daniel, Cheryl
Hardcover
Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis
Egan, Timothy
Paperback
The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki: The Influences and Inspiration Behind the Iconic Films
Rapold, Nicolas
Hardcover
Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway's Masterpiece the Sun Also Rises
Blume, Lesley M. M.
Paperback
Men at Work: The Empire State Building and the Untold Story of the Craftsmen Who Built It
Kurtz, Glenn
Hardcover
The Genius in the Design: Bernini, Borromini, and the Rivalry That Transformed Rome
Morrissey, Jake
Paperback
Autopsy of My Former Self: A journey through grief, transformation, addiction, personal triumph, and purpose
Burse, Jermaine Danté
Paperback
Everybody Thought We Were Crazy: Dennis Hopper, Brooke Hayward, and 1960s Los Angeles
Rozzo, Mark
Paperback
Impossible: The Love Affair Between Marcel Duchamp and Maria Martins, and the Artwork It Inspired
Naumann, Francis M.
Hardcover
Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination
Jones, Brian Jay
Paperback
Modigliani: Man and Myth - Biography and Works of Italian Painter and Sculptor Amedeo Modigliani
Modigliani, Jeanne
Paperback
Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal: The Life and Times of a Female Impersonator
Roy, Sandip
Hardcover
Daniel Burnham and Louis Sullivan: Personal Histories of Two Icons of American Architecture
Thoreson, Trygve
Paperback
Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: Over Thirty Years of Conversations with Robert Irwin
Weschler, Lawrence
Paperback
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol [50th Anniversary Edition]: From A to B and Back Again
Warhol, Andy
Paperback
William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love: Art, Poetry, and the Imagining of a New World
Hoare, Philip
Hardcover
Composing Olana: A Journey on Foot Through Frederic Church's Greatest Work of Art
LaFarge, Annik
Paperback
Utterly Lazy and Inattentive: Martin Parr: My Words, My Photographs
Jones, Wendy
Parr, Martin
Hardcover
The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle: Vol. 1: A True and Exact Accounting of the History of Turtle Island
Monkman, Kent
Gordon, Gisele
Paperback
The Artist and His Museum: Charles Willson Peale and the First Public Museum in the United States
Webber, Diane
Paperback
Art Above Everything: One Woman's Global Exploration of the Joys and Torments of a Creative Life
Griest, Stephanie Elizondo
Hardcover
House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed
Forden, Sara Gay
Paperback