Embedded: The Irreconcilable Nature of War, Loss and Consequence

When Catherine Lang’s niece Michelle Lang was killed while embedded with Canadian troops near Kandahar City, Afghanistan, in 2009, her world shifted. As she pieced together fragments from Michelle’s last days, Lang connected with the loved ones of soldiers who died alongside Michelle. She met with those injured by the roadside bomb, including the lone civilian woman talking to Michelle at the time of the blast, discovering in her and others a more intimate understanding of the meaning of sacrifice. Suddenly thrust close to this aspect of society, Lang began to question previously held black-and-white views about military engagement, and she turned to writing as a way to understand the impact on her and her family, and to ensure that Michelle lived on in memory. This process brings Lang to Saskatchewan, where she had lived as a child-- a homecoming that reveals much to Catherine about Michelle, and about herself. Brought together by a shared love of journalism, a career she left behind, and dedication to press freedom and to the rights of Afghan women and girls, Lang is led back to writing through her search for Michelle, and back to Michelle through the language of love and loss.

Catherine Lang worked as a community newspaper reporter and freelance writer at the outset of her writing career in the 1980s. In 1996, she published O-Bon in Chimunesu: A Community Remembered, a creative non-fiction work about the former Japanese-Canadian community on Vancouver Island, with Arsenal Pulp Press; O-Bon won the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize at the 1997 BC Book Prizes. She later worked as an editor of provincial legislative debates and in treaty negotiations with Indigenous nations in BC. Lang lives in Victoria, BC.