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The migrant rain falls in reverse: A memoir
By Vinh Nguyen. 2025
DAISY audio (Direct to player), DAISY audio (Zip)
Journals and memoirs, Biography, Canadian authors (Non-fiction)
Human-narrated audio
NATIONAL BESTSELLER An inventive memoir about one family's escape from Vietnam and the father's mysterious disappearance along the way. This…
book is an intricate exploration of a searching mind, shedding light on the psyche of a grieving son, as he chases certainty and seeks elusive resolution. With the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, the U.S. war in Vietnam ended, but the refugee crisis was only beginning. Among the millions of people who fled Vietnam by boat was Vinh Nguyen, along with his mother and siblings, and his father, who left separately and then mysteriously vanished. Decades later, Nguyen goes looking for answers. What he discovers is a sea of questions drifting above sunken truths. To find his father—and anchor himself in the present—Nguyen must piece together the debris of history with family stories that have been scattered across generations and continents, kept for years in broken hearts and guarded silences. As the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War approaches, The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse takes readers on a poignant tour of disappeared refugee camps, abandoned family homes, and reimagined lives. Part fractured reminiscence, part invented history, and part fictional fabulation, Nguyen's story is about learning to live with what's already lost and the memories of what might have been
Searching for serafim: The life and legacy of serafim "joe" fortes
By Ruby Smith Díaz. 2025
DAISY audio (Direct to player), DAISY audio (Zip)
Biography, Customs and cultures, Social issues, Canadian authors (Non-fiction)
Human-narrated audio
The life and legacy of Serafim "Joe" Fortes, a trailblazing Black lifeguard, who became a cultural icon in a racist…
society Searching for Serafim is a layered exploration of the life of Vancouver's first lifeguard, Serafim "Joe" Fortes. A Trinidad native who arrived on the shores of Canada in 1885, Fortes was heralded as a hero in Vancouver for saving dozens of people from drowning, and his funeral drew the largest crowd ever recorded in the city's history. Since his passing, Fortes has been commemorated with a Canada Post-issued stamp and local buildings named in his honour. Yet, little has been discussed about how he navigated an openly white supremacist society as an Afro Latino man. In Searching for Serafim , author Ruby Smith Díaz seeks to unravel the complicated legacy of a local legend to learn more about who Fortes was as a person. She draws from historical documents to form an insightful critique of the role that settler colonialism and anti-Black racism played in Fortes's publicized story and reconstructs his life, from over a century later, through a contemporary Black perspective, weaving poetry and personal reflections alongside archival research. The result is a moving and thought-provoking book about displacement, identity, and dignity. Searching for Serafim conjures a new side to one of Vancouver's most beloved — and misunderstood — public figures