Featured in Alberta’s 2025 Favourite Reads (Westword Magazine)
Praise for Writing in the Wound
“This fascinating memoir covers Hemani’s journey through three continents, her studies as an ethnomusicologist (way more interesting than you might think!), her growth and multiple awards as a Sufi poet and musician, and 17 years of being denied permanent residency by the Canadian government.”
— Barb Howard, author of Happy Sands
“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
“I found Writing in the Wound arresting, thought-provoking, and fiercely alive.”
— Literary Titan
“Shumaila Hemani’s work is multifaceted, beautifully lyrical, and crystal clear. She’s a gem in the Canadian arts community.”
— Barb Howard, author of Happy Sands
“What stayed with me most was the book’s insistence that the ‘wound’ is not just a private sorrow but a structural fact, something lived in the body and sharpened by institutions, and that song can become not a cure exactly, but a way of bearing truth without surrendering to it.”
— Literary Titan
“What I admired most was the book’s emotional candor and the seriousness with which it treats art. Hemani writes as if sound were breath, shelter, lineage, prayer, argument, and last defense all at once.”
— Literary Titan
“Its ideas are forceful and, at their best, unsettling. Hemani’s central claim that exclusion is often discussed in abstract policy language while its damage is absorbed by actual bodies felt painfully persuasive.”
— Literary Titan
Selected Table of Contents
Below are 10 chapter titles curated from Writing in the Wound. The full book includes 58 chapters in total.
- Chapter 1: The Voice and the Wound
- Chapter 4: Listening Across Thresholds
- Chapter 8: Take the Sunken Eyes and Learn to See
- Chapter 11: A Surgical Erasure
- Chapter 12: Bridging Worlds
- Chapter 32: The Ache of Visibility
- Chapter 35: The Wound as a Guide
- Chapter 43: The Wind in my Sail
- Chapter 45: Parting With Ustād-e-Kāmil
- Chapter 52: Once More, the Cranes Shall Return
Book Excerpt
“Some wounds don’t go away. They resurface and spiral through different points in life—silent reminders of lessons still waiting to be understood. They twist into the body like questions without answers, returning not to punish but to reveal what is still alive inside.
And when forgotten wounds haunt your nightmares—waking you in the middle of the night, not only as pain but as messengers—they demand attention. They are not just echoes of suffering. They are warnings. Invitations. Scarred whispers urging you to pause, to listen, to take them seriously.
Because sometimes the wound that reopens isn’t punishing you—it’s protecting you from walking into fire again.
Even as I reclaimed my voice and began to recognize the wound as teacher, another layer surfaced—one I hadn’t named. It didn’t speak in migraines. It arrived in recurring dreams.
Night after night, I was trapped in violent dreamscapes—visions of being chased, violated, overpowered. They weren’t literal memories. But they carried the emotional truth of a lifetime of precarity: moving through the world as a woman with no institutional protection, no safety net, no permanent belonging.
The dreams terrified me. But they whispered what my waking mind wasn’t ready to admit: the field—the place where I had once gone to listen and document—no longer felt safe. Not for my body. Not for my soul.
That was when I started really listening—unconventionally—to the intelligence within me that said: Your scars are speaking. Something is off.
Listening to those scars would change everything—how I moved, how I chose, and how I began to draw the boundaries that would save me.”
“Spiraling Wounds” from Writing in the Wound: Acculturation, Trauma, and Music
Claim your Copy of the Book
Read on Amazon/Kobo
Read on Apple Books
“I found Writing in the Wound arresting, thought-provoking, and fiercely alive. It’s a memoir that believes art can carry knowledge that institutions cannot properly hear, and that belief gives the whole book its tensile strength. It keeps faith with fracture while still making room for beauty, devotion, and survival. I’d recommend it especially to readers drawn to memoirs of migration, music, trauma, and intellectual becoming, and to anyone interested in how a life in art can be both exalted and terribly precarious.” Literary Titan
Book Readings
Action Dignity’s Labor Day Event: Echoes of Equity
Artist Speak, Mount Royal University
Community Reading & Dialogue at Echoes of Equity Event facilitated by Action Dignity
Action Dignity invited Dr. Hemani to read an excerpt from her memoir, Writing in the Wound, as part of their community-based arts and equity programming for Labour Day, titled: Echoes of Equity. The session combined spoken word, reflective dialogue, and opening space for conversations on migration, trauma, and creative resilience within racialized and newcomer communities.
Format: Live reading + discussion (Sept 24th 2025)
Focus: Collective healing, belonging, storytelling as resistance
Community Reviews
“This fascinating memoir covers Hemani’s journey through three continents, her studies as an ethnomusicologist (way more interesting than you might think!), her growth and multiple awards as a Sufi poet and musician, and 17 years of being denied permanent residency by the Canadian government.” Barb Howard, author of Happy Sands (University of Calgary Press)
Published in the Westword Magazine‘s Winter Issue: Alberta’s 2025 Favourite Reads.
“Dr. Shumaila Hemani has made significant contributions to the community, yet remains in a state of immigration precarity due to systemic exclusion. Her memoir was featured in ActionDignity’s Echoes of Equity storytelling initiative, a platform that centres the voices of racialized workers and their lived experiences in the workplace.”
Action Dignity
Book Reading at Echoes of Equity (Sept 2025)
Podcasts & Interviews
The Artsy Raven Podcast
Published January 2026
Interview with JF Garrard, President, Canadian Authors Association (Toronto Chapter)
CDLI Storytelling Project (Forthcoming)
“I found Writing in the Wound arresting, thought-provoking, and fiercely alive.”
— Literary Titan
