Mootoo's visual art and video work have been exhibited internationally, including at the New York Museum of Modern Art. She is now teaching the Creative Writing Program at the University of Toronto. Her visual art and video work have traveled and been acclaimed internationally. The themes of her work resonated with Mootoo's experiences as an adolescent in Trinidad and as an immigrant adult in Canada. 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. 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 an adult, Mootoo has discussed being sexually *aulted by one of her grandfather's friends. She claims that she came back to writing accidentally and expressed a worry that she was not a writer but a painter first. She has also said that her parents worried for what those themes might mean for her future, which is why she put her words away and chose to paint instead. According to Mootoo, her parents were upset by some of her earliest poems because they described love between two men or love between two women. Much of Shani Mootoo's personal and literary life has been focused on political activism. Mootoo's father, Ramesh Mootoo, was a medical family doctor and Trinidadian politician. Her early efforts were encouraged by her mother Indra ( née Samaroo). Biography Early life and educationĪt an early age Mootoo showed a talent for drawing, painting, and writing, and expressed interest in becoming an artist at the age of 10. She currently lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

She grew up in Trinidad and relocated at the age of 19 to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Shani Mootoo, writer, visual artist and video maker, was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1957 to Trinidadian parents.

Valmiki's Daughter by Shani Mootoo