The Taxi Project

Based on the lives and writings of four members of PEN Canada’s writers-in-exile program, The TAXI Project provides a glimpse into what it means to be forced to leave your homeland to start your life anew.After years of incarceration by the Red Terror in Ethiopia, Seeyyee Seera struggles to become a mother to her children again. Alejandra Pineda remains haunted by memories of torture at the hands of the Mexican authorities for her role in a student uprising. Xiao Hong, amongst the protesters at the Tiananmen Square uprising in China, cannot return to see her dying mother. And finally, Exyou Peric-a Bosnian photo journalist who drives a taxi, the interior covered in Polaroid photos of of his passengers.We follow the characters on their journeys: attempting to be heard by a society that doesn’t speak their language, searching for employment, surviving the loneliness of a harsh Toronto winter, and struggling to find the energy necessary to keep on writing.

Emma Beltran is a poet. She was kidnapped and tortured by the Mexican National Army for her part in the student strike at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1999.