In this collection of personal essays, twenty-six writers from across North America share journeys back to their motherlands as visitors. Set against mountainous terrain, tropical beaches, bustling cities, and remote villages, these narratives weave socio-political commentary with writers’ reflections on who they are, where they belong, and what “home” means to them.

The result is a vulnerable, humorous, and insightful exploration of meanings and contradictions, beginning a conversation waiting to be had by the growing population of first- and second-generation Canadians and Americans, who will find themselves within these pages. Navigating the intricacies of hyphenated identities with nuanced stories of heritage and a redefined sense of home, the essays in Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity, and Home open a door to places around the globe—and within ourselves.

With contributions by Omar El Akkad, Nadine Araksi, Ofelia Brooks, Esmeralda Cabral, June Chua, Seema Dhawan, Krista Eide, Eufemia Fantetti, Ayesha Habib, Christina Hoag, Mariam Ibrahim, Taslim Jaffer, Vesna Jaksic Lowe, Kathryn Gwun-Yeen Lennon, Omar Mouallem, Dimitri Nasrallah, Lishai Peel, Omar Reyes, Mahta Riazi, Steven Sandor, Angelo Santos, Alison Tedford Seaweed, Makda Teshome, Nhung N. Tran-Davies, Alexandra C. Yeboah, and Hannah Zalaa-Uul.

TASLIM JAFFER is a writer, editor, and writing instructor with an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of King’s College. Her bylines include Maclean’s, Asparagus, WestCoast Families, CBC British Columbia, Peace Arch News, Unearth Women, and more. She is the winner of the 2022 Creative Nonfiction Contest from the Creative Nonfiction Collective Society and Humber Literary Review, and recipient of a 2021 Silver Canadian Online Publishing Award. Jaffer has been a keynote speaker on diversity and interfaith topics on a variety of stages and teaches creative nonfiction and expressive writing in community and rehabilitative settings. She is working on a debut collection of literary essays and lives in Surrey, B.C. with her husband and three children.

Taslim Jaffer's profile page

Omar Mouallem is an author, filmmaker, and educator. His journalism has appeared in The Guardian, WIRED, and The New Yorker, and his latest book, Praying to the West, was named one of The Globe and Mail’s 100 best books of 2021 and nominated for two Alberta Literary Awards in the categories of Memoir and Nonfiction. His short documentary The Last Baron, about the unlikely link between a Canadian fast-food institution and the Lebanese civil war, is currently being expanded into a feature film to be released later this year. Omar is also the “fake dean” of Pandemic University, a virtual school he founded in support of writers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. He lives in Edmonton, Alberta, with his family.

Omar Mouallem's profile page

“Reading through Jaffer and Mouallem’s collection, I felt profoundly witnessed and experienced a certain kinship with each writer, despite the specifics of our diasporic experiences.” –Paloma Pacheco, The Tyee