Service Alert
Delay in delivery of Direct to Player materials
You may experience a delay in delivery of Direct to Player materials. All requests for materials will be delivered as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.
You may experience a delay in delivery of Direct to Player materials. All requests for materials will be delivered as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.
Showing 61 - 80 of 396 items
By Chinua Achebe. 1958
Towards the end of the nineteenth century the Ibo tribes of Nigeria met Western "civilisation". The story of one village…
and its greatest man, brave and strong Okonkwo, catches the reverberating echoes of the old way of life falling apart. Followed by “No longer at ease”. 1958.By Angie Thomas. 2017
After witnessing her friend's death at the hands of a police officer, Starr Carter's life is complicated when the police…
and a local drug lord try to intimidate her in an effort to learn what happened the night Kahlil died. 2017.By Minrose Gwin. 2010
1963. Millwood's white population steers clear of "Shake Rag," the black section of town, but young Florence Forrest, daughter of…
a burial insurance salesman with dark secrets and the town's "cake lady," whose backcountry bootleg runs lead further and further away from a brutal marriage, crosses the line by attaching herself to her grandparents' longtime maid, Zenie Johnson. The more time Florence spends in Shake Rag, the more she recognizes how completely race divides her town, and her story, far from ordinary, bears witness to the truth and brutality of her times - a truth brought to a shattering conclusion when Zenie's vibrant college-student niece, Eva Greene, arrives that fateful Mississippi summer. Some strong language, some descriptions of violence, and some descriptions of sex. c2010.By Connie Briscoe. 1997
Growing up in Washington DC in the 1960s, Naomi Jefferson, sheltered by her solid, middle-class black community, is untouched by…
racism until her adored older brother, Joshua, is involved in a tragic accident on his way to a civil rights demonstration. Then, despite her success at work, the promotions keep going to the white guys. But Naomi is determined to win where other black women have failed.By Meera Syal. 1996
Meena Kumar is a nine-year-old girl whose family has settled in a British mining village in the 1960s. Desperate to…
fit in with her schoolmates, Meena develops a friendship with Anita, an older girl. The pair's mischievous exploits and Meena's rejection of her Punjabi roots worry her family as they, too, struggle for acceptance. Some strong language.By Téa Mutonji. 2019
In this story collection, a woman contemplates her Congolese traditions during a family wedding, a teenage girl looks for happiness…
inside a pack of cigarettes, a mother reconnects with her daughter through their shared interest in fish, and a young woman decides to shave her head in the waiting room of an abortion clinic. These punchy, sharply observed stories blur the lines between longing and choosing, exploring the narrator's experience as an involuntary one. Tinged with pathos and humour, they interrogate the moments in which femininity, womanness, and identity are not only questioned but also imposed. 2019.By Jūkhah Ḥārithī. 2018
In the village of al-Awafi in Oman live three sisters. Mayya Marries after a heartbreak. Asma marries from a sense…
of duty. Khawla rejects all offers while waiting for her beloved, who has emigrated to Canada. Celestial Bodies is the story of the history and people of modern Oman told through one family's losses and loves. 2019.By Tina Athaide. 2019
In alternating voices, friends Asha and Yesofu, one Indian and one African, find their world turned upside-down when Idi Amin…
decides to expel Asian Indians from Uganda in 1972. Winner of the 2020 Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People. Grades 3-6. 2019.By Derek Mascarenhas. 2019
Explores the lives of the Pinto family through seventeen linked short stories. Starting with a ghost story set in Goa,…
India in the 1950s, the collection shifts to the unique perspectives of two adolescents, Aiden and Ally Pinto. Both first generation Canadians, these siblings tackle their adventures in a predominantly white suburb with innocence, intelligence and a timid foot in two distinct cultures. Derek Mascarenhas takes a fresh look at the world of the new immigrant and the South Asian experience in Canada. In these stories, a daughter questions her father's love at an Ikea grand opening; an aunt remembers a safari-gone-wrong in Kenya; an uncle's unrequited love is confronted at a Goan Association picnic; a boy tests his faith amidst a school-yard brawl; and a childhood love letter is exchanged during the building of a backyard deck. 2019.By Sheena Kamal. 2020
The Beauty of the Moment meets Exit, Pursued by a Bear. Award-winning thriller writer Sheena Kamal delivers a kick-ass debut…
YA novel that will have fans crying out for more.Love and violence. In some families they're bound up together, dysfunctional and poisonous, passed from generation to generation like eye color or a quirk of smile. Trisha's trying to break the chain, channeling her violent impulses into Muay Thai kickboxing, an unlikely sport for a slightly built girl of Trinidadian descent. Her father comes and goes as he pleases, his presence adding a layer of tension to the Toronto east-end townhouse that Trisha and her mom call home, every punch he lands on her mother carving itself indelibly into Trisha's mind. Until the night he wanders out drunk in front of the car Trisha is driving, practicing on her learner's permit, her mother in the passenger seat. Her father is killed, and her mother seems strangely at peace. Lighter, somehow. Trisha doesn't know exactly what happened that night, but she's afraid it's going to happen again. Her mom has a new man in her life and the patterns, they are repeating.By Gary Freeman, Douglas Gary Freeman. 2019
When Preston Downs, Jr., alias Prez, slides down the emergency chute onto the frozen tarmac at the Montreal airport, little…
does he know that returning home to Washington D.C. or to his adopted city, Chicago, would now be impossible. Events had sped by after a dust-up with the Chicago police. With a new name and papers, he finds himself in a foreign city where people speak French and life is douce compared to the one he fled. Son of a World War II vet, Prez grows up in the 50s in D.C., a segregated Southern city, and learns early that black lives don’t much matter. As a leader in the streets, his journey from boyhood to manhood means acquiring fighting skills to lead and unify long before losing his virginity. Smart and skeptical, but with a code of ethics, he, like every black kid, wants to be Malcolm, Martin or at least a “soul brother,” which inspires fear among the powers that be. Spotted while an A student at Howard University in 1964, Prez is invited to do an interdisciplinary course with field work on Civil Rights in Chicago, a city as divided as Gettysburg was a hundred years earlier. Faced with police-state conditions, dubious armed gangs, spies and provocateurs, Prez and the young women and men he works with are propelled into a head-on fight with police. James Baldwin wrote that the blues began "on the auction block," others say it started with their kidnapping from Africa. Prez was born in exile, with the blues. Only someone who has lived through that period can write an enthralling and passionate story like Exile Blues. Gary Freeman has done so with insight and sensitivity.By Francesca Ekwuyasi. 2020
Longlisted for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize. An intergenerational saga about three Nigerian women: a novel about food, family, and…
forgiveness.Butter Honey Pig Bread is a story of choices and their consequences, of motherhood, of the malleable line between the spirit and the mind, of finding new homes and mending old ones, of voracious appetites, of queer love, of friendship, faith, and above all, family. Francesca Ekwuyasi's debut novel tells the interwoven stories of twin sisters, Kehinde and Taiye, and their mother, Kambirinachi. Kambirinachi feels she was born an Ogbanje, a spirit that plagues families with misfortune by dying in childhood to cause its mother misery. She believes that she has made the unnatural choice of staying alive to love her human family and now lives in fear of the consequences of that decision. Some of Kambirinachi's worst fears come true when her daughter, Kehinde, experiences a devasting childhood trauma that causes the family to fracture in seemingly irreversible ways. As soon as she's of age, Kehinde moves away and cuts contact with her twin sister and mother. Alone in Montreal, she struggles to find ways to heal while building a life of her own. Meanwhile, Taiye, plagued by guilt for what happened to her sister, flees to London and attempts to numb the loss of the relationship with her twin through reckless hedonism. Now, after more than a decade of living apart, Taiye and Kehinde have returned home to Lagos to visit their mother. It is here that the three women must face each other and address the wounds of the past if they are to reconcile and move forward. Canada Reads 2021.By Tawhida Tanya Evanson. 2021
In this sweeping, allusive novel, the celebrated poet, dervish, and oral storyteller Tawhida Tanya Evanson comes to terms with what…
it means to stand on one's own two feet in an uncertain world. The acclaimed Antiguan-Canadian artist traces a global journey from Vancouver to the United States, Caribbean, Paris, and Morocco as a relationship with her lover and travel partner disintegrates and she finds herself on a path toward personal discovery and spiritual fulfillment that leads her deep into the North African landscape.By Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia. 2021
Pulsing with vitality and intense human drama, Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia’s debut is set against four decades of vibrant Nigeria and celebrates…
the resilience of women as they navigate and transform what remains a man’s world.By Rhea Tregebov. 2019
Shortlisted for the Wilson Fiction Prize (BC and Yukon Book Prizes) Shortlisted for the Nancy Richler Memorial Prize for Fiction…
(Western Canada Jewish Book Awards) Sarah is the youngest of the three Levine sisters. At twenty-five, she is rudderless, caught in a paralysis that keeps her from seizing her own life. When Sarah is fired from her Toronto job, a chance stay in Paris opens her up to new direction and purpose. But when she reads the writing on the wall above her local Metro subway station, death to the Jews, shadows from childhood rise again. And as her path crosses that of Laila, a young woman living in an exile remote from the luxuries of 1980s Paris, Sarah stumbles towards to an act of terrorism that may realize her childhood fears. In this new novel by the author of The Knife Sharpener's Bell, writing that is both sensual and taut creates a tightly woven, compelling narrative.By Leah Ranada. 2021
Philippine-born Vancouverite Sophia is most grateful for two things: her modest hair salon and Adrian, her mild-mannered fiancé. She is…
eager to get married, move away from her highly educated but career-frustrated parents, who believe that their daughter can be so much more than a beautician.Then Sophia's estranged friend reaches out from Manila, desperate for help. After a dubious accident, her fiery Auntie Rosy is on the verge of losing the Cine Star Salon--the place where Sophia first felt the call to become a hairstylist and salon owner. Coming to her auntie's aid is not so easy though. Sophia worries helping might reopen old wounds and threaten the bright future she has planned.Leah Ranada's debut novel is a graphic and engaging depiction of the importance of women's work and the loyalties that connect friends across oceans. The Cine Star Salon marks the entry of a vital new voice in Canadian literature.By Lori M Carlson. 1994
By Mildred D Taylor. 1981
Four black children growing up in rural Mississippi during the Depression experience racial antagonisms and hard times, but learn from…
their parents the pride and self-respect they need to survive. Sequel to "Roll of thunder, hear my cry". Junior and senior high and older. 1981.By Toni Morrison. 1992
The story of Violet and Joe Trace, married for over 20 years, residents of Harlem in 1926. When Joe shoots…
his 18-year-old lover, Violet disfigures the girl's body at her funeral. As Joe mourns, Violet becomes obsessed with the lovers' relationship. Past and present voices, like jazz, quietly sing the blues. Some strong language.By Sheila Murray. 2022
Cyril Rowntree migrates to Toronto from Jamaica in 2012. Managing a precarious balance of work and university he begins to…
navigate his way through the implications of being racialized in his challenging new land. A chance encounter with a panhandler named Patricia leads Cyril to a suitcase full of photographs and letters dating back to the early 1920s. Cyril is drawn into the letters and their story of a white mother’s struggle with the need to give up her mixed race baby, Edward. Abandoned by his own white father as a small child, Cyril’s keen intuition triggers a strong connection and he begins to look for the rest of Edward’s story. As he searches, Cyril unearths fragments of Edward’s itinerant life as he crisscrossed the country. Along the way, he discovers hidden pieces of Canada’s Black history and gains the confidence to take on his new world.