“We are all hinged to some definition of a community, be it as simple as where we live, complex as the beliefs we share, or as intentional as those we call family. In an episodic personal essay, Casey Plett draws on a range of firsthand experiences to start a conversation about the larger implications of community as a word, an idea, and a symbol. With each thread a cumulative definition of community, and what it has come to mean to Plett, emerges.”
I raised my hand (electronically) when the opportunity arose to read and review Casey Plett’s On Community. In fact, I’d recently sketched out a plan to create my own manuscript to tackle this topic. But as soon as I realized it was already done, and done well, I felt, for the most part, relieved. And believed I could ride along, in a manner, a passenger calling out shotgun, to get a lift to wherever it leads.
Then I realized the ride I’d accepted came with a particularly well-read, impassioned, articulate driver. And the conversation that was forthcoming was in no way small talk, but rather deeply researched and personal opinion. The topic, of course, being community.
How exactly do we define this seemingly straightforward concept? From the perspective of the writer, a transsexual author, community is not a word to use lightly. And as a member myself of what I believed to be select, simultaneous communities, I realized I was one of those individuals falling into that trap. I hadn’t much considered the word – truly thought about it – until I was a full-time artist. Thinking back to first being welcomed into a creative amalgam of individuals: musicians and writers, mixed-media and visual artists. We met to perform, share a laugh, eat and drink, and discuss our respective genres. Through the encompassing nets of Skype, Teams, and Zoom, we continued to cement our own tribes. One get-together in particular struck a resonate chord. Attendees from across North America, antipodean features from Australia, the UK and Europe. It seemed to me well-formed ad copy for community. Only now I suspect that’s not necessarily so.
Plett’s On Community is an essay. A tightly woven, academic and literary brain dump of concepts and notions, posits and prompts, with a flight of challenging questions. It is not a light read, but a thorough examination of a highly complex subject. One all too easily clumped into compact sound bites by media members discussing “this or that community.” Quoting the makeup or positions of a given community, when one is in fact not only on the outside looking in, but incapable of intimately knowing what it’s like on the inside, and thereby unable to accurately reference or label said grouping. Making the word community too often judgmental, trite, and invariably inaccurate.
This rich, concise book is an invaluable reminder to think, empathize, analyze, and always to question before casting labels. Even those we believe are inclusive. Remember we are all still observers, observing through varying versions of glass, shingled windows that won’t always reflect all the light.
Bill Arnott is the bestselling author of A Season on Vancouver Island, theGone Viking travelogues, andA Perfect Day for a Walk: The History, Cultures, and Communities of Vancouver, on Foot(Arsenal Pulp Press, Fall 2024). Recipient of a Fellowship at London’s Royal Geographical Society for his expeditions, Bill’s a frequent presenter and contributor to magazines, universities, podcasts, TV and radio. When not trekking with a small pack and journal, Bill can be found on Canada’s west coast, where he lives near the sea on Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh land.
- Bill Arnotthttps://miramichireader.ca/author/billya/
- Bill Arnotthttps://miramichireader.ca/author/billya/
- Bill Arnotthttps://miramichireader.ca/author/billya/
- Bill Arnotthttps://miramichireader.ca/author/billya/
- Bill Arnotthttps://miramichireader.ca/author/billya/
- Bill Arnotthttps://miramichireader.ca/author/billya/
Casey Plett is the author of A Dream of a Woman, Little Fish, and A Safe Girl to Love, the co-editor of Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy From Transgender Writers, and the publisher at LittlePuss Press. She has written for the New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, the Guardian, Globe and Mail, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, the Winnipeg Free Press, and other publications. A winner of the Amazon First Novel Award and the Firecracker Award for Fiction, and a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award, her work has also been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
- Title: On Community
- Author: Casey Plett
- Publisher: Biblioasis, 2023
- ISBN: 9781771965774
- Pages: 184
