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A mind spread out on the ground
By Alicia Elliott. 2019
In an urgent and visceral work that asks essential questions about Native people in North America while drawing on intimate…
details of her own life and experience with intergenerational trauma, Alicia Elliott offers indispensable insight and understanding to the ongoing legacy of colonialism. What are the links between depression, colonialism and loss of language--both figurative and literal? How does white privilege operate in different contexts? How do we navigate the painful contours of mental illness in loved ones without turning them into their sickness? How does colonialism operate on the level of literary criticism? A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is Alicia Elliott's attempt to answer these questions and more. In the process, she engages with such wide-ranging topics as race, parenthood, sexuality, love, mental illness, poverty, sexual assault, gentrification, writing and representation. Elliott makes connections both large and small between the past and present, the personal and political--from overcoming a years-long history with head lice to the way Native writers are treated within the Canadian literary industry; her unplanned teenage pregnancy to the history of dark matter and how it relates to racism in the court system; her childhood diet of Kraft dinner to how systematic oppression is linked to depression in Native communities. With deep consideration and searing prose, Elliott extends far beyond her own experiences to provide a candid look at our past, an illuminating portrait of our present and a powerful tool for a better future. Bestseller. Winner of the 2020 Evergreen Award. 2019.What my mother and I don't talk about: fifteen writers break the silence /
By Michele Filgate. 2019
As an undergraduate, Michele Filgate started writing an essay about being abused by her stepfather. It took her more than…
a decade to realize what she was actually trying to write: how this affected her relationship with her mother. When it was finally published, the essay went viral, shared on social media by Anne Lamott, Rebecca Solnit, and many others. The outpouring of responses gave Filgate an idea, and the resulting anthology offers a candid look at our relationships with our mothers. While some of the writers in this book are estranged from their mothers, others are extremely close. Leslie Jamison writes about trying to discover who her seemingly perfect mother was before ever becoming a mom. In Cathi Hanauer's hilarious piece, she finally gets a chance to have a conversation with her mother that isn't interrupted by her domineering (but lovable) father. André Aciman writes about what it was like to have a deaf mother. Melissa Febos uses mythology as a lens to look at her close-knit relationship with her psychotherapist mother. And Julianna Baggott talks about having a mom who tells her everything. As Filgate writes, 'Our mothers are our first homes, and that's why we're always trying to return to them.' There's relief in breaking the silence. Acknowledging what we couldn't say for so long is one way to heal our relationships with others and, perhaps most important, with ourselves. 2019.Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related.: A Memoir
By Jenny Heijun Wills. 2019
Winner of the 2019 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for NonfictionA beautiful and haunting memoir of kinship and culture rediscovered.Jenny…
Heijun Wills was born in Korea and adopted as an infant into a white family in small-town Canada. In her late twenties, she reconnected with her first family and returned to Seoul where she spent four months getting to know other adoptees, as well as her Korean mother, father, siblings, and extended family. At the guesthouse for transnational adoptees where she lived, alliances were troubled by violence and fraught with the trauma of separation and of cultural illiteracy. Unsurprisingly, heartbreakingly, Wills found that her nascent relationships with her family were similarly fraught. Ten years later, Wills sustains close ties with her Korean family. Her Korean parents and her younger sister attended her wedding in Montreal, and that same sister now lives in Canada. Remarkably, meeting Jenny caused her birth parents to reunite after having been estranged since her adoption. Little by little, Jenny Heijun Wills is learning and relearning her stories and those of her biological kin, piecing together a fragmented life into something resembling a whole.Delving into gender, class, racial, and ethnic complexities, as well as into the complex relationships between Korean women--sisters, mothers and daughters, grandmothers and grandchildren, aunts and nieces--Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related. describes in visceral, lyrical prose the painful ripple effects that follow a child's removal from a family, and the rewards that can flow from both struggle and forgiveness.The ghost garden: inside the lives of schizophrenia's feared and forgotten /
By Susan Doherty. 2019
For the past ten years, some of the people who cycle in and out of the severely ill wards of…
the Douglas Institute in Montreal, have found a friend in Susan, who volunteers on the ward, and then follows her friends out into the world as they struggle to get through their days. With their full cooperation, she brings us their stories, which challenge the ways we think about people with mental illness on every page. The spine of the book is the life of Caroline Evans (not her real name), a woman in her early sixties whom Susan has known since she was a bright and sunny school girl. Caroline has given Susan complete access to her medical files and her court records; through her, we experience what living with schizophrenia over time is really like. She has been through it all, including the way the justice system treats the severely mentally ill: at one point, she believed that she could save her roommate from the devil by pouring boiling water into her ear ... Susan interleaves Caroline's story with vignettes about her other friends, human stories that reveal their hopes, their circumstances, their personalities, their humanity. She's found that if she can hang in through the first ten to fifteen minutes of every coffee date with someone in the grip of psychosis, then true communication results. Their "madness" is not otherworldly: instead it tells us something about how they're surviving their lives and what they've been through. Winner of the 2019 Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction (QWF). 2019.How to Die: A Book About Being Alive
By Ray Robertson. 2020
“He who would teach men to die would teach them to live,” writes Montaigne in Essais, and in How to…
Die: A Book on Being Alive, Ray Robertson takes up the challenge. Though contemporary society avoids the subject and often values the mere continuation of existence over its quality, Robertson argues that the active and intentional consideration of death is neither morbid nor frivolous, but instead essential to our ability to fully value life. How to Die is both an absorbing excursion through some of Western literature’s most compelling works on the subject of death as well as an anecdote-driven argument for cultivating a better understanding of death in the belief that, if we do, we’ll know more about what it means to live a meaningful life.Magical Beings of Haida Gwaii
By Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson, Sara Florence Davidson. 2019
Based on ancient Haida narratives, this vibrantly illustrated children's book empowers young people and teaches them to live in harmony…
with nature.Haida Gwaii is home to a rich and vibrant culture whose origins date back thousands of years. Today, the Haida People are known throughout Canada and the world for their artistic achievements, their commitment to social justice and environmental protection, and their deep connection to the natural world. Embedded in Haida culture and drawn from ancient oral narratives are a number of Supernatural Beings, many of them female, who embody these connections to the land, the sea, and the sky. Magical Beings of Haida Gwaii features ten of these ancient figures and presents them to children as visually engaging, empowering, and meaningful examples of living in balance with nature. Developed by renowned Haida activist, lawyer, performer, and artist Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson and Haida educator Sara Florence Davidson, this book challenges stereotypes, helps advance reconciliation, and celebrates Indigenous identity and culture.The Answer Is . . .: Reflections on My Life
By Alex Trebek. 2020
A RECOMMENDED SUMMER READ BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, TIME, AND NEWSWEEK Longtime Jeopardy! host and television icon…
Alex Trebek reflects on his life and career.Since debuting as the host of Jeopardy! in 1984, Alex Trebek has been something like a family member to millions of television viewers, bringing entertainment and education into their homes five nights a week. Last year, he made the stunning announcement that he had been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. What followed was an incredible outpouring of love and kindness. Social media was flooded with messages of support, and the Jeopardy! studio received boxes of cards and letters offering guidance, encouragement, and prayers. For over three decades, Trebek had resisted countless appeals to write a book about his life. Yet he was moved so much by all the goodwill, he felt compelled to finally share his story. “I want people to know a little more about the person they have been cheering on for the past year,” he writes in The Answer Is…: Reflections on My Life. The book combines illuminating personal anecdotes with Trebek’s thoughts on a range of topics, including marriage, parenthood, education, success, spirituality, and philanthropy. Trebek also addresses the questions he gets asked most often by Jeopardy! fans, such as what prompted him to shave his signature mustache, his insights on legendary players like Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer, and his opinion of Will Ferrell’s Saturday Night Live impersonation. The book uses a novel structure inspired by Jeopardy!, with each chapter title in the form of a question, and features dozens of never-before-seen photos that candidly capture Trebek over the years. This wise, charming, and inspiring book is further evidence why Trebek has long been considered one of the most beloved and respected figures in entertainment. Bestseller.Acting Wild: How We Behave Like Birds, Bugs, and Beasts
By Maria Birmingham. 2019
How are humans different from other animals? This is a question scientists have long tried to answer. As it turns…
out, some of the very things researchers once though distinguished humans—our creativity, our problem-solving ability, our capacity for planning or abstract thought—actually make us very similar to other animals! This nonfiction book introduces several different behaviors that humans and other animals share, including farming, teaching, laughing, building, mourning, communicating, grooming, playing, traveling, using tools, and working together. Narrated by a funny and friendly ant, this book is packed with humor and playful phrasing to bring lightness to the exploration of animal behavior. Brought to life by bright and wacky cartoon-style illustrations, Acting Wild will leave kids with the understanding that acting like an animal is simply in their nature.Alone: A Love Story
By Michelle Parise. 2020
A memoir of falling in love, the fallout of infidelity, and everything messy in between — and the inspiration behind…
the hit CBC podcast. “Beautifully and powerfully written, Alone: A Love Story left me heartbroken and inspired at the same time.” — Terry Fallis “A lyrical tribute to the intoxicating, dramatic, destructive and ultimately empowering nature of love.” — Anna Maria Tremonti “Michelle Parise is the best company. Her passion and humour leap off the page.” — Camilla Gibb The church wedding, the new house, a beautiful baby … Michelle was sold a dream and bought into it. But one day, nine years in, she wakes up in an empty bed, and The Husband isn't there. Then, he drops The Bomb — he was having an affair with a woman at work. Adrift and on the edge of forty — fuelled by grief, booze, and one-night stands — Michelle battles the monster she calls Loneliness, juggling being a part-time parent and part-time partier. Though dangerously close to rock bottom, Michelle takes a chance on love again with a dashing but complicated man — The Man with the White Shirt. Michelle, an expert in "emotional forensics," dives into the wreckage with candour and humour, uncovering a story about falling in and out of love, divorce, single parenthood, and the messy world of dating. What she finds, beneath it all, is life and the courage to face it alone. “Michelle Parise knows how to shape and deliver a story that will keep you coming back for more.” — The AtlanticThey Said This Would Be Fun: Race, Campus Life, and Growing Up
By Eternity Martis. 2020
NATIONAL BESTSELLERA powerful, moving memoir about what it's like to be a student of colour on a predominantly white campus.A…
booksmart kid from Toronto, Eternity Martis was excited to move away to Western University for her undergraduate degree. But as one of the few Black students there, she soon discovered that the campus experiences she'd seen in movies were far more complex in reality. Over the next four years, Eternity learned more about what someone like her brought out in other people than she did about herself. She was confronted by white students in blackface at parties, dealt with being the only person of colour in class and was tokenized by her romantic partners. She heard racial slurs in bars, on the street, and during lectures. And she gathered labels she never asked for: Abuse survivor. Token. Bad feminist. But, by graduation, she found an unshakeable sense of self--and a support network of other women of colour.Using her award-winning reporting skills, Eternity connects her own experience to the systemic issues plaguing students today. It's a memoir of pain, but also resilience.Follow Your Breath!: A First Book of Mindfulness (Exploring Our Community)
By Scot Ritchie. 2020
Part of the popular Exploring Our Community series, here's the perfect child-friendly introduction to mindfulness. Friends Yulee, Nick, Martin and…
Sally are at Pedro's house for a sleepover. Pedro is moving in a few days, and he's been feeling both sad about leaving his old house and worried he won't be happy in his new one. To try to help Pedro feel better, his mom decides to teach the five friends about mindfulness, which is, as she describes it, “being aware of what is happening right now.” As the children practice focusing on their bodies, using their senses, paying attention to their feelings and accepting life as it happens, Pedro learns there are many ways to manage the stress of his upcoming move. As with all the titles in the popular Exploring Our Community series, award-winning author Scot Ritchie tells an engaging story about five culturally diverse friends while also providing comprehensive factual information on each spread. Fun mindfulness activities follow the story. Studies have shown the many benefits of mindfulness for young children --- from increased attention and self-control to decreased stress and disruptive behavior --- and teachers are using it more and more in the classroom. By learning how to incorporate mindfulness into their lives, children gain lifelong coping skills they can use to stay physically and mentally healthy. All the facts in the book have been reviewed by a mindfulness expert.Fired Up about Consent (Fired up series)
By Sarah Ratchford. 2021
According to the World Health Organization, one in three women will be sexually or physically assaulted in her lifetime. These…
rates are very similar for non-binary people and other feminized people, too. This is rape culture, and young adults are living through it here and now. Fired Up about Consent is a practical, survivor-informed primer for young people who want to learn how to build joyful, mutually satisfying sex lives and relationships. In these pages, author Sarah Ratchford defines rape and sexual assault, busts the myths behind toothless messaging and outdated advice, and provides sex-positive scripts on how to ask for and offer a clear, enthusiastic, and freely given “Yes!” Along the way, Ratchford touches on topics such as #MeToo, gender identity, masturbation, virginity, porn, sex work, reporting assault, and more, all through a radically inclusive and intersectional lens. The message is loud and clear: not only is consent sexy, it’s mandatory—and everyone deserves frank and empowering literacy around it. Only with empathy, compassion, and resistance can we move forward into a new culture of consent.Cures for Hunger
By Deni Béchard. 2012
Almost unbelievable. You'll swear it's fiction."You haven't read a story like this one, even if your father was the kind…
of magnificent scoundrel you only find in Russian novels. Béchard is the rare writer who knows the secret to telling the true story." — Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven KillingsGrowing up in rural British Columbia, Deni Béchard worships his father, believing that he can do no wrong. Although his charismatic father is prone to racing trains and brawling, Deni has no idea how unusual his family is.But when Deni discovers his father's true identity (and his other life as a bank robber), his imagination is set on fire. Before long, he begins to see himself as a character in one of his father's stories. He can't escape the sense that his father's life holds the key to understanding his own passions, aversions, and motivations.Eventually Deni finds himself ensnared in the controlling impulses of his mysterious father and increasingly obsessed by his father's own muted recollections: the impoverished childhood in the Gaspé he'd fled long ago, the hunger for excitement and a better life, and a trail of crimes leading from Québec to the American west.At once an extraordinary family story and an unconventional portrait of the artist as a young man, Cures for Hunger is a singular, deeply affecting memoir by an acclaimed writer.Overdose: Heartbreak and Hope in Canada's Opioid Crisis
By Benjamin Perrin. 2020
NATIONAL BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED for the 2021 BC Book Awards' George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in LiteratureSHORTLISTED for the BC and…
Yukon Book Prizes, for both the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize and Jim Deva Prize for Writing That ProvokesSHORTLISTED for the 2021 J. W. Dafoe Book Prize“Overdose is a necessary and searching investigation into a devastating epidemic that should never have happened. Benjamin Perrin painstakingly shows that it need not continue if we, as a society, heed the evidence.”—Gabor Maté M.D., author of In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With AddictionAn astonishing and powerful look at the ongoing opioid crisis North America is in the middle of a health emergency. Life expectancies are declining. Someone is dying every two hours in Canada from illicit drug overdose. Fentanyl has become a looming presence—an opioid more powerful, pervasive, and deadly than any previous street drug. The victims are many—and often not whom we might expect. They include the poor and forgotten but also our neighbours: professionals, students, and parents. Despite the thousands of deaths, these victims have remained largely invisible. But not anymore. Benjamin Perrin, a law and policy expert, shines a light in this darkest of corners—and his findings challenge many assumptions about the crisis. Why do people use drugs despite the risk of overdosing? Can we crack down on the fentanyl supply? Do supervised consumption sites and providing “safe drugs” enable the problem? Which treatments work? Would decriminalizing all drugs help or do further harm? In this urgent and humane look at a devastating epidemic, Perrin draws on behind-the-scenes interviews with those on the frontlines, including undercover police officers, intelligence analysts, border agents, prosecutors, healthcare professionals, Indigenous organizations, activists, and people who use drugs. Not only does he unveil the many complexities of this situation, but he also offers a new way forward—one that may save thousands of lives.In Praise of Retreat: Finding Sanctuary in the Modern World
By Kirsteen MacLeod. 2021
My Mother, My Translator
By Jaspreet Singh. 2021
In 2008, Jaspreet Singh made a pact with his mother. He would gladly give her the go-ahead to publish her…
significantly altered translation of a story from his collection, Seventeen Tomatoes, if she promised to write her memoirs. After she died in 2012, he decided to take up the memoir she had started. My Mother, My Translator is a deeply personal exploration of a complex relationship. It is a family history, a work of mourning, a meditation on storytelling and silences, and a reckoning with trauma--the inherited trauma of the 1947 Partition of India and the direct trauma of the November 1984 anti-Sikh violence Singh experienced as a teenager.Tracing the men and especially the women of his family from the 1918 pandemic through the calamitous events of Partition, My Mother, My Translator takes us through Singh's childhood in Kashmir and with his grandparents in Indian Punjab to his arrival in Canada in 1990 to study the sciences, up to the closing moments of 2020, as he tries to locate new forms of stories for living in a present marked by COVID-19 and climate crisis.Richard Wagamese Selected: What Comes from Spirit
By Drew Hayden Taylor, Richard Wagamese. 2021
On Foot to Canterbury: A Son’s Pilgrimage (Wayfarer)
By Ken Haigh. 2021
Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory
By Sarah Polley. 2022
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER “Fascinating, harrowing, courageous, and deeply felt, these explorations of ‘dangerous stories,’ harmful past events, and trials of…
the soul speak to all who’ve encountered dark waters and have had to navigate them.” —Margaret Atwood via Twitter “Sarah Polley tells us the truth, even when it feels razor sharp—even when it feels dangerous. These brilliant essays urge us, by example, towards the examined life, the life worth living, and give us a jolt of energy to muster the courage and compassion needed to live it.” —Miriam Toews, bestselling author of Women TalkingNamed a Most-Anticipated Book of 2022 by Entertainment Weekly, Lit Hub, and AV ClubOscar-nominated screenwriter, director, and actor Sarah Polley’s Run Towards the Danger explores memory and the dialogue between her past and her present.These are the most dangerous stories of my life. The ones I have avoided, the ones I haven’t told, the ones that have kept me awake on countless nights. As these stories found echoes in my adult life, and then went another, better way than they did in childhood, they became lighter and easier to carry. Sarah Polley’s work as an actor, screenwriter, and director is celebrated for its honesty, complexity, and deep humanity. She brings all of those qualities along with her exquisite storytelling chops to these six essays. Each one captures a piece of Polley’s life as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory, the mutability of reality in the mind, and the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person you are now but were not then. As Polley writes, the past and present are in a “reciprocal pressure dance.” Polley contemplates stories from her own life ranging from stage fright to high risk childbirth to endangerment and more. After struggling with the aftermath of a concussion, Polley met a specialist who gave her wholly new advice: to recover from a traumatic injury, she had to retrain her mind to strength by charging towards the very activities that triggered her symptoms. With riveting clarity, she shows the power of applying that same advice to other areas of her life in order to find a path forward, a way through. Rather than live in a protective crouch, she had to run towards the danger. In this extraordinary book, Sarah Polley explores what it is to live in one’s body, in a constant state of becoming, learning, and changing.