![]() This book will make two kinds of people very uncomfortable: those who intentionally disrespect names and those who can't be bothered to look up the pronunciations of names because "they're too hard." If you've read my first book, you may realize how much I revere the power of names. The picture book is an homage to names and to the cultures these names honour. When I read YOUR NAME IS A SONG, I thought of 17 year old Nafiza who grimaced her way through that first class. So I allowed them to make fun of my name. ![]() No language in which to express the hurt I felt. I'm ashamed to say that at that moment I laughed because what else could I do? I had no confidence to assert myself. He grinned as if he had told a marvellously funny joke and looked at me as if expecting me to partake in the hilarity. Unsurprisingly, everyone in the class laughed at my name. ![]() I was in grade twelve, completely out of my depth in a new country among strange people, thousands of kilometres away from everyone and everything familiar to me. On my first day in school in Canada, the teacher told the kids in class that my name was "Napija" despite me telling him my name very carefully before class started. ![]()
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