Early life and education
Shani Mootoo was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1957 to Trinidadian parents. Mootoo’s father, Ramesh Mootoo, was a medical family doctor and politician. Mootoo’s mother, Indra Mootoo (née Samaroo), had grown ill after giving birth to her; Mootoo’s maternal grandmother acted as her primary caretaker for the first five years of her life, raising her in Trinidad. Mootoo's parents retained custody of her upon their return to Trinidad. This abrupt separation from the life she had known before caused pressure on Mootoo to fit into a new environment and to gain the respect of her mother. Mootoo has expressed feeling like an outsider, stating that she, "was from the very beginning - starting in her own family that had grown without her being part of it for her first five years of life – on the outside. She saw that they were a close-knit family, and side-by-side with the trauma of the separation from her grandparents and being thrown in with these people who were strangers to her, she wanted, too, to be part of that closeness. It was perhaps the beginning of a pattern of lifelong contradictions related to the insider/outsider status”. [1] Mootoo’s belief that she has always “felt like a migrant” stems from this childhood struggle. [1]
Mootoo showed interest in wanting to be a painter from a young age, and discovered a passion for writing later on. [2] Many of Mootoo's earliest poems described the love between two men or two women. While Mootoo's mother supported her daughter's painting aspirations, Mootoo's parents were upset by her poetry as they worried about the potential negative implications that writing about queerness could have for her future.
Mootoo has discussed her sexual abuse by a friend of her grandfathers. After her grandmother told her to "never say such words again" after Mootoo informed her, Mootoo began to fear that her words were getting her into trouble. This, coupled with the reaction from her parents about the themes she tackled in her writing, caused Mootoo to redirect her full attention to painting, feeling that it had more potential for ambiguity and equivocalness. [3] Mootoo did not begin to grasp the abuse she had endured until her late twenties and found the support she received from others to factor into her decision to "use the most correct words, phrases, sentences, analogies, and stories" to communicate her trauma, the manifestation of it, and how it impacted the person she became. [3] This realization inspired Mootoo to get back into writing. Mootoo has expressed insecurity about being a painter before being a writer, saying that she eventually came back to writing "accidentally". [4]
Mootoo earned a Fine Arts BFA Degree at the University of Western Ontario in 1980 and an MA in English and Theatre from the University of Guelph, 2010. As a multimedia visual artist in Vancouver and New York City, where she lived from 1994 to 1999, she explored in her paintings, photographs and videos themes of gender, sexuality, and race. The themes of her work resonated with her experiences as an adolescent in Trinidad and as an immigrant adult in Canada. Her visual art and video work have traveled and been acclaimed internationally. She is now teaching the Creative Writing Program at the University of Toronto. [5]
Mootoo cites Trinidad's "disregard for equal rights and justice" for her decision to reside in Canada. [1]
Writing and Literary Career
Mootoo aims to spotlight and give voices to marginalized communities through her writing. [1] Her painting and writing have always informed one another; she became published when Persimmon Blackbridge took one of her paintings when writing to a publisher, where it was suggested that Mootoo write a novel or book of short stories. [10]
Mootoo's first literary publication, Out on Main Street, a collection of short stories, was solicited by the Vancouver-based feminist publishing house Press Gang in 1993 and was the beginning of her literary career. The collection's title story centers a narrator who feels "ethnic inferiority" as a "watered-down Indian". She struggles with not being able to go out onto Main Vancouver's Main Street with her girlfriend because of issues with her identity, sexuality, and gender expression. [11] It explores the realities of both forced conformity and attempts to fit nuanced humans into boxes, as well as analyzes the effects of homophobia, heterosexism, and notions of cultural authenticity. [11]
Mootoo's first full-length novel, Cereus Blooms at Night, published by Press Gang in 1996, was shortlisted for the Scotia Bank Giller Prize in 1997, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the Chapters Books in Canada First Novel Award. It has been published in 15 countries and won the New England Book Sellers Award in 1998. [5] Set on a tropical island, the novel is narrated by a male nurse and caretaker, and explores trauma, madness and redemption, the legacies of sexual abuse, and the boundaries between heterosexual and homosexual desire. [12] Mootoo has said that Cereus Bloom was her way of introducing herself to her readers. [13]
In 2002, Mootoo followed her first novel with a collection of poetry, The Predicament of Or. The collection conveys "the language of longing", specifically, the want to live outside of binary oppositions. Other forms of longing that the collection explores include the home and the dichotomy of living and writing between languages. Mootoo's own multicultural background served as the basis for the collection. [14]
Her second full-length novel, He Drown She in the Sea, was published in 2005. Taking place on the fictional Caribbean island of Guanagaspar both in World War II and in the present day, the story centers around Harry and Rose, two childhood friends who are divided by class hierarchy. Harry is banished from Rose's home, and the two reunite in Canada again years later, where they begin a "life-affirming affair". The novel tackles themes of social difference, desire, and daring to go against the life that one has been born into. [15] It made the long list for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2007. [16]
Her 2008 novel, Valmiki's Daughter , is set in San Fernando, Trinidad, and depicts a father and daughter who struggle to come to terms with secrets. Mootoo has said that the story is about a father trying to help his daughter from leading the same kind of closeted life that he has led. [17] Viveka and her father's lives are each underpinned by the constraints of class and race, and most importantly by the sexual conventions of their society. Set against its strongly evoked backdrop of place, the novel charts Viveka's coming to terms with the hard understanding that love faces society's obstacles, and her knowledge of her certain survival. Valmiki's Daughter was long-listed for 2009's Scotiabank Giller Prize. [18] In an interview, Mootoo explained her realization that she had written about food on almost every page of Valmiki's Daughter without realizing it. She discusses the importance of food and entertaining people in Trinidadian culture, as well as in her life and her other work. [17]
Mootoo's two subsequent novels, Moving Forward Sideways like a Crab (2014) and Polar Vortex (2020), were also shortlisted for the Giller Prize. [19] Moving Sideways Like a Crab was a finalist in the category "Transgender Fiction" for the 27th Annual Lambda Literary Awards. [13] The novel follows the character Jonathan, a writer, as he looks for one of his parents, whom he has not seen since they divorced. Jonathan then finds out that this parent is now a transgender man. [20] Mootoo read and spoke heavily with others to create this story of transition. [20] Polar Vortex , Mootoo's follow-up, centers around Priya, a lesbian Indo-Trinidadian art historian who is visited by Prakash, an Indo-Ugandan man who is Priya's old college friend. Priya refuses to disclose information about Prakash to her wife, Alex, thus setting up the narrative's central conflict. The novel examines how a woman's desire to belong in a society full of racist and sexist manipulation results in alienation. Priya attempts to cement herself as an "appropriate" lesbian under Western parameters and does not receive unconditional acceptance from Alex or Prakash because they "cannot situate Priya in her context". [21]
Mootoo wrote two volumes of poetry, Cane Fire and Oh Witness Dey!, in 2022 and 2024, respectively. [22] The former follows a narrator moving from Ireland to San Fernando, while the latter serves as a tribute to indentured Indian ancestors and their descendants. [23]
Miller's most recent novel, Starry Starry Night was released on September 23rd, 2025. A work of autofiction, the story follows the life of Anju, a young Trinidadian girl. Through her eyes, readers see the familial strife she experiences, as well as get glimpses of supporters of Trinidadian independence. [24] Mootoo based Starry Starry Night heavily on her own childhood, and had begun jotting down ideas that she would implement in the book almost forty years prior to its publication. [25] She had written personal, raw, unfiltered thoughts about her life, which Mootoo's friend had passed along to a publisher's office, who gave her an offer. Mootoo declined, believing that the material she had written was too personal and lacking in polish, calling it "pre-writing". [25] Mootoo began to recognize the richness of her youth and became drawn to her old material. She cites the death of both her parents as a reason why she decided to go back to working on the material, stating that she did not want them to know the scars they had left on her while they were alive. [25]
Mootoo's novels are found on course lists in the Departments of English, Liberal Arts, Women's Studies, and Cultural Studies at universities in the Caribbean, Canada, the United States, England, Europe, India, and Australia. Her literary papers are held at Simon Fraser University Special Collections and Rare Books. The collection contains "printed typescripts of published works with drafts and related working papers, published reviews, drafts of unpublished works, lecture notes, professional correspondence, notebooks and sketchbooks, video productions in VHS format, audio materials and works of visual art". [26]
In 2022 the Writers' Trust of Canada awarded Mootoo its Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award for her body of work. [27]
