Why I Wrote This Book: Issue #63
Featuring Elamin Abdelmahmoud, Jo-Ann Roberts, Jacqueline Halsey, and Marjorie Simmins
memoir
Thumbin’ the Rock: A Newfoundland Hitchhiking Odyssey by Bernadette Shea
It is the story of two sisters, Dolly, age 72, and Bernadette, age 60, who spent 14 days hitchhiking across Newfoundland.
From Ragged Ass Road to Rideau Hall: Stories of Canada by Whit Fraser
How fortunate we are to have a Canadian like Whit who experiences such adventures and dares to tell about them.
Still Laughing by Helen C. Escott
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.
Louis J. Robichaud: A Man for the Moment by Donald J. Savoie
Even less so did anyone expect that Robichaud would drag the province, in the face of often virulent and bigoted opposition, into a series of reforms that would eventually make New Brunswick a fairer, better-governed, more modern, and more economically sustainable place.
Family Secrets: A Daughter’s Search for Her Parents’ Hidden War by Alice Switocz Goldbloom
This book is three memoirs, daughter, mother, and father, all wrapped together in the often-untold story of the Polish experience in WWII. Alice Switocz Goldbloom is both the daughter and the author.
A Current Through the Flesh by Richard-Yves Sitoski
As this suggests, for the author, family came with considerable pain, both psychological and physical.
Walking into Healing: A Review of Colleen O’Toole’s Restoring Joy
The walk parallels O’Toole’s inner journey of healing from wounds caused by a family estrangement.
Excavating Identity from a Near-forgotten History: Go-Between Girl by Andrea Gunraj
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.
Sincerely Katherine: Life, Gender, Inclusivity and Leadership for the Future by Katherine Dudtschak
Sincerely Katherine: Life, Gender, Inclusivity and Leadership for the Future by Katherine Dudtschak is a memoir that is synthesizing the past in order to better live the future. As the subtitle indicates, through Katherine’s story she frames a way forward for a better society. Personally, I like what I don’t know anything about, so Katherine’s …
Unshaming: A Memoir of Recovery, Relapse, and What Comes After By Jowita Bydlowska
As if arriving fresh from the fever dream of her sensational memoir Drunk Mom Jowita Bydlowska sways toward us with a new tale, a different one, and on the first page she is as drunk as ever, but just as surefooted in her prose.
Vessel: The Shape of Absent Bodies by Dani Netherclift
I was very intrigued by Vessel, Dani Netherclift’s work on the drowning deaths of her father and brother.
Why I Wrote This Book: Issue #58
Featuring Marie-Josée Poisson, Alison Gadsby, Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho, Natalie Southworth
Nothing at All by Olivia Tapiero, translated by Kit Schluter
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.
Hide and Sikh: Letters from a Life in Brown Skin by Sunny Dhillon
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.
