Title search results
Showing 1 - 20 of 57 items
Flying free: Corey's Underground Railroad diary (My America Ser.My America)
By Sharon Dennis Wyeth. 2002
June 1858 to March 1859. Nine-year-old Corey Birdsong and his family, fugitive slaves from Kentucky, settle into their new life…
of freedom in Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada. Corey makes friends, goes to school for the first time, and rescues Mingo--an old friend. For grades 2-4. 2002Come back to Afghanistan: a California teenager's story
By Said Hyder Akbar, Susan Burton, Said Akbar. 2005
Provides an insider's view of the post-Taliban Afghanistan government. The author describes his father's return to Afghanistan in December 2001,…
as President Hamid Karzai's spokesman and later governor of Kunar province, and his own experiences while spending summers there beginning in 2002. For senior high and older readers. 2005A group of one
By Rachna Gilmore. 2001
Fifteen-year-old Tara Mehta's life is turned upside down when her grandmother visits from India. Naniji disapproves of the family's Canadian…
lifestyle and feminist mother. But Tara also learns of her heritage and Naniji's involvement in Gandhi's peace movement. Some strong language. For junior and senior high readers. 2001Yankees in the land of the gods: Commodore Perry and the opening of Japan
By Peter Booth Wiley. 1990
Before Perry's 1853 expedition, contact between the United States and Japan occurred mainly through shipwrecked sailors, including Americans who stranded…
themselves on Japan's shore to try to enter the self-isolated country. Using newly translated Japanese documents as well as reports from Perry and his crew, Wiley provides both countries' perspectives on the historic encounterTalking to the enemy: stories
By Avner Mandelman. 2005
Nine stories about the Israeli experience. In "Terror" a father beats the son who fails to stand up for his…
five-year-old brother, thus instilling the precept that, right or wrong, family comes first, even before justice or fear. Strong language and some violence. Sophie Brody Medal. 2005Is It Just?
By Lori Chambers, Jenny Roth, Minnie Smith. 2011
Minnie Smith's (ca. 1874-1933) feminist domestic novel, Is It Just?, is a harsh critique of the injustices perpetuated by male-dominated…
society and law. Published in 1911, it tells the tragic story of Mary Pierce, who, through the actions of her selfish and lazy husband, loses her land, her social standing, and ultimately her life.In Is It Just?, the conventions of the domestic novel - episodic presentation, stock characters, contrived plots, and romantic conclusions - illustrate the superiority of female values and argue for expanded social, political, and legal rights for women. A critical introduction by Jenny Roth and Lori Chambers frames Smith's specific references to the laws and social geography of British Columbia, situating the novel in relation to its historic and literary importance. This unique work of domestic literature adds to our limited library of Canadian feminist writings of the first wave.The Writing on the Wall
By Hilda Glynn-Ward, Patricia Roy. 1974
With tales of a gruesome murder, a typhoid epidemic, corrupt politicians, and a Japanese invasion, The Writing on the Wall…
was intended to shock its readers when it was published in 1921. Thinly disguised as a novel, it is a propaganda tract exhorting white British Columbians to greater vigilance to prevent greedy politicians from selling out to the Chinese and Japanese. It was also designed to convince eastern Canada of British Columbia's need for protections against an onslaught of the 'yellow peril.'This novel is not exceptional in its extreme racism; it reiterates almost every anti-oriental cliché circulating in British Columbia at the time of its publication. While modern readers will find the story horrifying and unbelievable, it is in fact based on real incidents. Many of the views expressed were only exaggerated versions of ideas held throughout the country about non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants. The Writing on the Wall is a vivid illustration of the fear and prejudice with which immigrants were regarded in the early twentieth century.Losing Kei
By Suzanne Kamata. 2007
A young mother fights impossible odds to be reunited with her child in this acutely insightful first novel about an…
intercultural marriage gone terribly wrong.Jill Parker is an American painter living in Japan. Far from the trendy gaijin neighborhoods of downtown Tokyo, she's settled in a remote seaside village where she makes ends meet as a bar hostess. Her world appears to open when she meets Yusuke, a savvy and sensitive art gallery owner who believes in her talent. But their love affair, and subsequent marriage, is doomed to a life of domestic hell, for Yusuke is the chonan, the eldest son, who assumes the role of rigid patriarch in his traditional family while Jill's duty is that of a servile Japanese wife. A daily battle of wills ensues as Jill resists instruction in the proper womanly arts. Even the long-anticipated birth of a son, Kei, fails to unite them. Divorce is the only way out, but in Japan a foreigner has no rights to custody, and Jill must choose between freedom and abandoning her child.Told with tenderness, humor, and an insider's knowledge of contemporary Japan, Losing Kei is the debut novel of an exceptional expatriate voice. Suzanne Kamata's work has appeared in over one hundred publications. She is the editor of The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan and a forthcoming anthology from Beacon Press on parenting children with disabilities. A five-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, she has twice won the Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest.Three Generations
By Yu Young-Nan, Yom Sang-Seop. 2005
Touted as one of Korea's most important works of fiction, Three Generations (published in 1931 as a serial in Chosun…
Ilbo) charts the tensions in the Jo family in 1930s Japanese occupied Seoul. Yom's keenly observant eye reveals family tensions withprofound insight. Delving deeply into each character's history and beliefs, he illuminates the diverse pressures and impulses driving each. This Korean classic, often compared to Junichiro Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters, reveals the country's situation under Japanese rule, the traditional Korean familial structure, and the battle between the modern and the traditional. The long-awaited publication of this masterpiece is a vital addition to Korean literature in English.In the Midst of Alarms
By Robert Barr, Douglas Lochhead. 1973
The Penguin's Song
By Marilyn Booth, Hassan Daoud. 2014
"I loved this book when I read it in Arabic. The Penguin's Song is a classic novel of the Lebanese…
civil war."--Rabih Alameddine, author of An Unnecessary Woman"In The Penguin's Song, a city falls, a father dies, two women walk the same road over and over, a boy with a broken body dreams of love. Like Agota Kristof's Notebook Trilogy, this spare yet lyrical parable tells us more about exile, loss and the wearing away of hope than most us want to know. I love this beautiful book."--Rebecca Brown, author of American Romances and The End of Youth"Daoud's novel is an elegiac account of loneliness and separation. . . . This is a haunting story inhabited by the ghosts of past lives and demolished buildings, where desires are left unfulfilled and loneliness sweeps through every soul."--Publishers Weekly"Daoud's claustrophobic novel hauntingly conveys one family's isolation after being relocated during the Lebanese civil war. . . . Daoud's evocation of history as it is experienced is excellent. His characters live through momentous events, but their struggles to survive land them in a kind of purgatory. A novel that defies expectations as it summons up the displacement and dehumanization that can come with war."--Kirkus Reviews" . . . deftly explores how people cope with the aftermath of war and the tremendous struggle of rebuilding not only with bricks and concrete but with heart, hopes, and dreams."--Lisa Rohrbaugh, Leetonia Community P.L., OH, and Library Journal"Nothing about reading Hassan Daoud's novels is easy, but the effort is always rewarded. The complex but mundane beauty of his prose is skillfully rendered in Marilyn Booth's translation, The Penguin's Song, a novel as much about the dreary loneliness of daily life as it is about the Lebanese civil war and its aftermath. Slowly paced, heavy with the burden of waiting, Daoud's text unfolds painstakingly, page after page. The horror of war, the pain of isolation, the longing of unfulfilled desire, and the power of the printed word all shine through in this finely-crafted narrative."--Michelle Hartman, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill UniversityAs war wreaks havoc on the historic heart of Beirut, tenants of the old city are pushed to the margins and obliged to live on the surrounding hillsides, where it seems they will stay forever, waiting. The dream of return becomes a way of life in the unending time of war."The Penguin" is a physically deformed young man who lives with his aging mother and father in one of the "temporary" buildings. His father spends his days on the balcony of their apartment, looking at the far-off city and pining for his lost way of life. Mother and father both find their purpose each day in worrying about the future for their son, while he spends his time in an erotic fantasy world, centered on a young woman who lives in the apartment below. Poverty and family crisis go hand in hand as the young man struggles with his isolation and unfulfilled sexual longing.Voted "The Best Arabic Novel of the Year" when it was first published, The Penguin's Song is a finely wrought parable of how one can live out an entire life in the dream of returning to another.My Lady of the Snows
By Douglas Lochhead, Margaret A. Brown. 1973
This work cannot be fully understood unless the reader is aware of the writer's motives. The book has a twofold…
meaning -- that of a political novel, and that of the portrayal of a great love and a religious drama. As Disraeli in his novels portrayed the political and social conditions of certain eras of his country, in a simple way this work is intended to portray the conditions existing in Canada at an era when the country was in a state of transition, with the idealistic conception of what the government of a country should be, the conception being based upon a knowledge of the inherent principles of Divine Right and upon Plato's Republic of Justice. The scene is laid prior to the last election during Sir John A. Macdonald's administration. There are no great questions at issue, politics are seen in their lowest form; the protective tariff had been adopted, and with the advent of machinery the old order of things was passing away; the new order had not yet brought any great issues before the people, and the election, commonly called the "Old Flag" election, was run merely on a sentiment of loyalty to the motherland. "My Lady of the Snows" is a woman who has been born "great," and one who has based her life on principles rather than the emotions, or Plato's theory that the emotions should remain subservient to the will.Dot It Down
By Douglas Lochhead, Alexander Begg. 1973
Mulberry and Peach
By Sau-Ling Wong, Hualing Nieh. 1981
This extraordinary novel tells the story of two women-Mulberry and Peach-who are really one. Mulberry is a young Chinese-American woman…
who has fled the turmoil of postwar China to settle in the United States. Unable to forget the terrors she has witnessed or to resolve the conflicts between her new life and her old, she copes by developing a second personality: the fearless, tough-talking, sexually uninhibited Peach. While Mulberry clings to her cultural and ethical roots, Peach renounces her past to embrace the American way of life with a vengeance. These two women-both in flight-speak to their readers through an innovative narrative structure, combining journal entries, interior dialogue, letters, poetry, and myth. Mulberry's past-mainly her experiences during the Japanese occupation of China and the years of civil war between Communists and Nationalists-haunts the text. Separated from her family, she seeks refuge in the home of wealthy cousins, who try desperately to maintain their rigid traditions as warrign forces close in around Peking and the house is systematically looted. Mulberry escapes downriver in a boat carrying a strange assortiment of refugees. But her escape to Taiwan only brings new terrors: when her new husband is targeted by the police, Mulberry msut go into hiding with him in a tiny attic room. There her young daughterm who cannot remember life "outside", descends into a fantasy world of her own invention and unwittingly ensures her family's doom, Mulberry's journal entires alternate with a series of letters from Peach to "the man from the USA immigration service." Peach has embarked on a cross-country journey in flight from possible deportation. Pregnant and penniless, she lives by her wits while taunting her pursuers and ridiculing her alter ego Mulberry, whom she seeks, finally, to conquer. In Mulberry and Peach Hualing Nieh offers a rare perspective, through the eyes of a young refugee woman, of the upheavals of contemporary China (where the book was banned upon its first publication in 1976). Through her experimental, highly effective narrative, she also presents an unforgettable portrait of the pain of cultural dislocation and the anguish of psychological disintegration.The Yellow Briar: A Story of the Irish on the Canadian Countryside
By Michael Gnarowski, Patrick Slater. 2008
Folktale, memoir, fiction, literary hoax, The Yellow Briar is all of these. Ostensibly the charming remembrance of an Irish orphan…
who escapes the Great Famine of 1840s Ireland and comes to the New World to seek a fresh start on the streets of Toronto and in the pioneer hinterland of Canada West (Ontario), the book was actually a fictional humbug perpetrated by John Mitchell, a Toronto lawyer, who first published the tale in 1933. Patrick Slater, the protagonist of the "memoir," is said to have died in 1924 but not before setting his saga down on paper. And what an account it is! The Globe and Mail felt that the book "gives a picture of Ontario to be found in no other work of fiction we know and has won for itself a permanent place in Canadian literature." If nothing else, Slater/Mitchell captures perfectly the lilt of the Irish and the wry wisdom of an old soul to paint an affecting portrait of trials and tribulations in a long-ago time.Invaders from the North: How Canada Conquered the Comic Book Universe
By John Bell. 2006
Short-listed for the 2007 CBA Libris Awards for Book Design of the Year What do Superman, Prince Valiant, Cerebus the…
Aardvark, and Spawn have in common? Their creators Joe Shuster, Harold Foster, Dave Sim, and Todd McFarlane are Canadians. And while many of the cutting-edge talents of contemporary comix and graphic novels are also from Canada artists such as Chester Brown, Seth, Dave Cooper, and Julie Doucet far too few Canadians realize their country had a remarkable involvement with the "funnies" long before. Invaders from the North profiles past and present comic geniuses, sheds light on unjustly neglected chapters in Canadas pop history, and demonstrates how this nation has vaulted to the forefront of international comic art, successfully challenging the long-established boundaries between high and low culture. Generously illustrated with black-and-white and colour comic covers and panels, Invaders from the North serves up a cheeky, brash cavalcade of flamboyant and outrageous personalities and characters that graphically attest to Canadas verve and invention in the world of visual storytelling.Basti
By Intizar Husain, Asif Farrukhi, Frances W. Pritchett. 1979
An NYRB Classics OriginalBasti is a beautifully written reckoning with the tragic history of Pakistan. Basti means settlement, a common…
place, and Intizar Husain's extraordinary novel begins with a mythic, even mystic, vision of harmony between old and young, man and woman, Muslim and Hindu. Then Zakir, the hero, wakes to the modern world. Crowds gather. Slogans echo. Cities burn. Whether hunkered down with family or furtively meeting to exchange news with friends in cafés, Zakir is alone in a country lost to the politics of loneliness.history. The new country of Pakistan is born, separating him once and for all from the woman he loves, and in a jagged and jarring sequence of scenes we witness a nation and a psyche torn into existence only to be torn apart again and again by political, religious, economic, linguistic, personal, and sexual conflicts--in effect, a world of loneliness. Zakir, whose name means "remember," serves as the historian of this troubled place, while the ties he maintains across the years with old friends--friends who run into one another in cafés and on corners and the odd other places where history takes a time-out--suggest that the possibility of reconciliation is not simply a dream. The characters wait for a sign that minds and hearts may still meet. In the meantime, the dazzling artistry of Basti itself gives us reason to hope against hope.Through the Arc of the Rain Forest
By Karen Tei Yamashita. 1990
Through the Arc of the Rain Forest is a burlesque of comic-strip adventures and apocalyptic portents that stretches familiar truths…
to their logical extreme in a future world that is just recognizable enough to be frightening. In the Author's Note," Karen Tei Yamashita writes that her book is like a Brazilian soap opera called a novela: "the novela's story is completely changeable according to the whims of the public psyche and approval, although most likely, the unhappy find happiness; the bad are punished; true love reigns; a popular actor is saved from death ... an idyll striking innocence, boundless nostalgia and terrible ruthlessness." The stage is a vast, mysterious field of impenetrable plastic in the Brazilian rain forest set against a backdrop of rampant environmental destruction, commercialization, poverty, and religious rapture. Through the Arc of the Rainforest is narrated by a small satellite hovering permanently around the head of an innocent character named Kazumasa. Through no fault of his own, Kazumasa seems to draw strange and significant people into his orbit and to find himself at the center of cataclysmic events that involve carrier pigeons, religious pilgrims, industrial espionage, magic feathers, big money, miracles, epidemics, true love, and the virtual end of the world. This book is simultaneously entertaining and depressing, with all the rollicking pessimism you'd expect of a good soap opera or a good political satire."- Kirsten Backstrom, 500 Great Books by WomenFlying Free: Corey's Underground Railroad Diary, Book 2 (My America)
By Sharon Dennis Wyeth. 2002
Corey and his family have escaped from slavery and the South and are now living in Canada. They own their…
own land, have made new friends, and Corey gets to go to school. But danger still remains across the river in Ohio, where slave-catchers lurk, waiting to capture escaped slaves to bring them back to their former masters.Is It Just?
By Lori Chambers, Jenny Roth, Minnie Smith. 2011
Minnie Smith's (ca. 1874-1933) feminist domestic novel, Is It Just?, is a harsh critique of the injustices perpetuated by male-dominated…
society and law. Published in 1911, it tells the tragic story of Mary Pierce, who, through the actions of her selfish and lazy husband, loses her land, her social standing, and ultimately her life.In Is It Just?, the conventions of the domestic novel - episodic presentation, stock characters, contrived plots, and romantic conclusions - illustrate the superiority of female values and argue for expanded social, political, and legal rights for women. A critical introduction by Jenny Roth and Lori Chambers frames Smith's specific references to the laws and social geography of British Columbia, situating the novel in relation to its historic and literary importance. This unique work of domestic literature adds to our limited library of Canadian feminist writings of the first wave.