Artist Zena el Khalil doesn’t have the family home she remembers from childhood. Her mother’s house in Lebanon was destroyed in a U.S. bomb attack in 1983, while her father’s house was occupied by the Israeli army for 22 years, until its withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. “Every home my grandfathers built was destroyed, bombed or occupied,” […]
“How can I come from a nation? How can a human being come from a concept?” With these questions the majestic Taiye Selasi, author of Ghana Must Go, closes talks for Day 1 of TEDGlobal 2014. Having just come back from a tour, Selasi is irked and perplexed by the consistently inconsistent way she was […]
In the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, 350,000 people were presented with the heart-rending decision: to stay in their homes and risk exposure to radiation, or to uproot their lives and move away. The overwhelming majority left. But in today’s powerful talk, Holly Morris introduces us to a group of elderly women who returned to […]
In today’s talk, Pico Iyer looks at the complexity of the question, “Where do you come from?” If the question is code for, “Where are your family’s roots?” his answer is India — although he has never lived there. If the question means, “Where were you born?” his answer is England — though he left […]
In today’s thought-provoking talk, author Pico Iyer looks at the complex nature of the simple question: “Where are you from?” Because while his family comes from India, he grew up in the United Kingdom. As soon as he left school, however, he moved to the United States — where he was required to carry a […]