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Dear Current Occupant
Literary Nonfiction. From Vancouver-based writer Chelene Knight, DEAR CURRENT OCCUPANT is a creative nonfiction memoir about home and belonging set in the 80s and 90s of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Using a variety of forms including letters, essays and poems, Knight reflects on her childhood through a series of letters addressed to all of the current occupants now living in the twenty different houses she moved in and out of with her mother and brother. From blurry and fragmented non-chronological memories of trying to fit in with her own family as the only mixed East Indian/Black child, to crystal clear recollections of parental drug use, Knight draws a vivid portrait of memory that stil...
Junie
Longlisted for the 2023 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction A riveting exploration of the complexity within mother-daughter relationships and the dynamic vitality of Vancouver's former Hogan's Alley neighbourhood. 1930s, Hogan's Alley--a thriving Black and immigrant community located in Vancouver's East End. Junie is a creative, observant child who moves to the alley with her mother, Maddie: a jazz singer with a growing alcohol dependency. Junie quickly makes meaningful relationships with two mentors and a girl her own age, Estelle, whose resilient and entrepreneurial mother is grappling with white scrutiny and the fact that she never really wanted a child. As Junie finds adulthood, exploring her artistic talents and burgeoning sexuality, her mother sinks further into the bottle while the thriving neighbourhood--once gushing with potential--begins to change. As her world opens, Junie intuits the opposite for the community she loves. Told through the fascinating lens of a bright woman in an oft-disquieting world, this book is intimate and urgent--not just an unflinching look at the destruction of a vibrant community, but a celebration of the Black lives within.
Breaking the Ocean
In Breaking the Ocean, diversity and inclusion specialist Annahid Dashtgard addresses the long-term impacts of exile, immigration, and racism by offering a vulnerable, deeply personal account of her life and work. Annahid Dashtgard was born into a supportive mixed-race family in 1970s Iran. Then came the 1979 Revolution, which ushered in a powerful and orthodox religious regime. Her family was forced to flee their homeland, immigrating to a small town in Alberta, Canada. As a young girl, Dashtgard was bullied, shunned, and ostracized both by her peers at school and adults in the community. Home offered little respite, with her parents embroiled in their own struggles, exposing the sharp cont...
A Match Made for Murder
Winner of the 2021 Bony Blithe Light Mystery Award “An intriguing mix of character, plot, time, and place. Highly recommended.” —Ian Hamilton, author of the bestselling Ava Lee novels Lane and Darling's Arizona honeymoon is interrupted by gunshots in the newest instalment in a series Kirkus Reviews calls "relentlessly exciting." It’s November, and Lane and Darling have escaped the chilly autumn in the Kootenays for a honeymoon at the posh and romantic Santa Cruz Inn in sunny Tucson, Arizona. But despite her very best intentions to relax, soon after their arrival Lane’s plans to spend the holiday poolside with a good mystery are interrupted by gunfire. One of the hotel’s wealthy g...
Black Writers Matter
"Black Writers? African, Bluesy, Classical, Disrespectful, Erudite, Fiery, Groovy, Haunting, Inspiring, Jazzy, Knowing, Liberating, Militant, Nervy, Optimistic, Pugnacious, Quixotic, Rambunctious, Seductive, Truculent, Urgent, Vivacious, Wicked, X-ray sharp, Yearning, Zesty. And so, they matter!" --George Elliott Clarke An anthology of African-Canadian writing, Black Writers Matter offers a cross-section of established writers and newcomers to the literary world who tackle contemporary and pressing issues with beautiful, sometimes raw, prose. As editor Whitney French says in her introduction, Black Writers Matter "injects new meaning into the word diversity [and] harbours a sacredness and an everydayness that offers Black people dignity. " An "invitation to read, share, and tell stories of Black narratives that are close to the bone," this collection feels particular to the Black Canadian experience.
Bodymap
Bodymap continues Leah's meditation on survival and what it means to be a queer woman of colour in North America, while also striving to document small moments of the body's resistance, and legacy. Bodymap is divided into five sections. Evidence opens with poems that document transformative love and desire through a queer partnership's evolution and dissolution. Crip World contains poems exploring sick and disabled queer experience through body stories. Hard Girls is a mapping of tough femininity in the bodies of the poet's lovers and comrades. Wrong Is Not Yours contains the political, from the struggles of friends crossing the border to the choice made in claiming a Sri Lankan name. What kind of ancestor do you want to be? The final section, explores ancestry and queer parenting.
Policing Black Lives
Delving behind Canada’s veneer of multiculturalism and tolerance, Policing Black Lives traces the violent realities of anti-blackness from the slave ships to prisons, classrooms and beyond. Robyn Maynard provides readers with the first comprehensive account of nearly four hundred years of state-sanctioned surveillance, criminalization and punishment of Black lives in Canada. While highlighting the ubiquity of Black resistance, Policing Black Lives traces the still-living legacy of slavery across multiple institutions, shedding light on the state’s role in perpetuating contemporary Black poverty and unemployment, racial profiling, law enforcement violence, incarceration, immigration deten...
Burning Sugar
The latest from Vivek Shraya's VS. Books: a poetic exploration of Black identity, history, and lived experience influenced by the constant search for liberation.
Gold Pours
In this debut collection by emerging poet Aurore Gatwenzi, a stunning new voice emerges as she shares the experience of being young and Black in northern Ontario. Gold Pours is a collection of poems that talk about God, identity, heartbreak and passion. Gatwenzi's honest approach to writing exposes readers to humility, surrender and lessons learned from courageous acts of vulnerability.
In]appropriate
In - Appropriate is a collection of interviews conducted by Kim Davids Mandar with Canadian authors, exploring how they work through questions of difference, identity, and appropriation in their writing. The interviews address a definition of appropriation that goes beyond race and culture, extending also to gender, sexuality, ability, age, and other categories of difference. They ask how writers work to represent an increasingly diverse and complex culture in ways that avoid falling into appropriation. The interviews intend, not to court controversy, but to encourage thoughtful conversation about how to write difference in ways that are respectful.
