Two recent collections, You Were Made for This World: Celebrated Indigenous Voices Speak to Young People and A Steady Brightness of Being: Truths, Wisdom, and Love from Celebrated Indigenous Voices, offer something rare in conversations about Indigenous experiences: a shift away from narratives that confine us to trauma, and toward stories that illuminate healing, agency, and responsibility to one another.
A collection of authentic tales celebrating Helen C. Escott’s life as a frazzled mother, a doting daughter, a loving wife and a writer of crime.
A Steady Brightness of Being is a moving collection of letters by celebrated Indigenous Voices from across Turtle Island (North America) with titles like “Dear Relative,” “Letter to Clouds,” and “Dreaming, Listening, Belonging.”
Go-Between Girl, by Andrea Gunraj, is a memoir told across a collection of essays that examines what it means to be the descendent of the racialized indentured class.
Niko Stratis’s The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman is a book for this moment when we’re re-evaluating algorithmic curation and rediscovering the human connections in our playlists.
Beaulieu asks, why are we writing?
I was very intrigued by Vessel, Dani Netherclift’s work on the drowning deaths of her father and brother.
Nothing at All, Olivia Tapiero’s collection of vignettes exploring loss, illness, desire, and pain was translated from French by Kit Schluter for this edition.
Through letters to his firstborn daughter, Jaya, Dhillon shares his experiences as a brown-skinned Canadian breaking through an industry that still cries for more diversity and inclusion.
Ken Wilson’s Walking the Bypass is a redemptive journey through some of the least redeeming landscapes an urban walker might visit. Part of what makes the book compelling is how well its style matches its subject.
What I wasn’t expecting about In the Field was just how much I love it. It is a remarkable book: thoughtful, nuanced, beautifully written, and thoroughly researched.
As the world nervously watches the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas (one where the killing of Palestinians is still happening, albeit at a much slower rate), we have to begin examining how “never again” became hollowed out and meaningless.
You may know Dennis Lee by the lyrically nonsensical poem and book, Alligator Pie, which came out in 1974.
Canada’s annual Freedom to Read Week takes place during the last week of February. With this year marking the 40th anniversary of this important observance, it seems most appropriate that this book, part of Biblioasis’ “Field Notes” series, should be published midway through the week when we pay closer attention to the banning of books.
The personas writers invent (often subconsciously) for their non-fiction usually attempt or pretend to show more or less of the private self. In Because Somebody Asked Me To, bemedaled and oft-rewarded Guy Vanderhaeghe favours a straight speaking tone, whether reviewing Richard Ford or talking to historians.
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