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Showing 1 - 20 of 20 items
The concubine's children: portrait of a family divided
By Denise Chong. 1994
Chong traces her family's history from China to Canada. Her grandfather left his wife and emigrated to Canada, accompanied by…
the concubine he bought in 1924. In Canada, they stinted and sacrificed to support his family in China. Chong tells of her grandparents and parents, and the visits she made to China to try to unite the strands of her family's past. Winner of the 1995 CNIB Talking Book of the Year Award. 1994.Ten green bottles: the true story of one family's journey from war-torn Austria to the ghettos of Shanghai
By Vivian Jeanette Kaplan. 2002
For a brief period between 1938 and 1941, roughly 20,000 Jews found refuge from the Nazis in the one place…
not requiring visas, police certificates or proofs of financial independence: Shanghai. In 1939, the author's family made a month-long, 7,000-mile journey to Shanghai, struggling with heat, disease, poverty, and fear. With the war's end came the shock of learning what became of family and friends left behind in Europe. Descriptions of violence. 2002.Sophia Tolstoy: a biography
By Alexandra Popoff. 2010
As Leo Tolstoy's wife, Sophia Tolstoy experienced both glory and condemnation during their forty-eight-year marriage. Drawing on newly available archival…
material, including Sophia's unpublished memoir, Alexandra Popoff presents a dramatically different and accurate portrait of the woman and the marriage. Some descriptions of sex. c2010.Shingwauk's vision: native residential schools in Canada
By J. R Miller. 1996
A comprehensive study of residential schools, the institutions where attendance by Native children was compulsory as recently as the 1960s.…
Former students have come forward in increasing numbers to describe the psychological and physical abuse they suffered in these schools, and many view the system as an experiment in cultural genocide. Miller explores all three players in the story: the government officials who authorized the schools, the missionaries who taught in them, and the students who attended them. Co-winner of the 1996 Saskatchewan Book Award for nonfiction. Some descriptions of sex and violence, some strong language. 1996.Native peoples and cultures of Canada: an anthropological overview
By Alan D McMillan. 1988
A comprehensive overview of all the native groups of Canada -- Indian, Metis and Inuit. Describes their traditional ways of…
life from prehistoric times to the present issues of land claims and self-government. 1988.Minerva's stepchild (Autobiography ; #3)
By Helen Forrester. 1979
The Forrester family are slowly winning their fight for survival, but for 14 year old Helen, the battle is with…
her parents: to be allowed to lead her own life, after the years of neglect and inadequate schooling while she cared for her six younger siblings. She struggles against illness, caused by severe malnutrition and dirt, and the selfish demands of her parents, with amazing courage and perseverance. Sequel to "By the waters of Liverpool" (DC29720), followed by "Lime Street at two" (DC29719). 1979. (Autobiography ; 3)Land to light on
By Dionne Brand. 1997
Brand writes about Canada as it is seen by an outsider and about the outsiders who have come here over…
and settled over the years, uncomfortable with the land and its people, uncomfortable sometimes with themselves. Winner of the 1997 Governor General's Award for English poetry.Lake of the prairies: a story of belonging
By Warren Cariou. 2002
Cariou's memoir on growing up in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, where he witnessed the discrimination, anger and fear directed at the…
town's Cree and Métis populations by the European settlers. While he has absorbed these prejudices as his own, he is forced to confront the politics of race as an adult. Then, he discovers secrets that his family had kept hidden for generations, secrets that would alter forever his sense of identity and belonging in Meadow Lake. Winner of the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize of the 2003 Writers' Trust of Canada Awards. 2002.Child soldier: when boys and girls are used in war (CitizenKid)
By Jessica Dee Humphreys, Michel Chikwanine. 2015
It's 1993, and the Democratic Republic of Congo is going through major political changes. Five-year-old Michel is playing with friends…
one day when, without warning, a group of rebel soldiers pulls up to the school grounds. Forced onto trucks, the frightened boys are taken to a camp in the hills. There they are thrust into a terrifying and violent world. Grades 5-8. Winner of the 2017 Red Maple Non-Fiction Award. 2015.Bobbi Lee, Indian rebel: Indian Rebel
By Lee Maracle. 1990
The majority of this book, originally published in the 1970s, is an account of the author's early years as a…
native woman in Vancouver, California and Toronto. Filled with anger, pain and apathy, she found the strength to turn her life around.As long as the rivers flow
By Oskiniko Larry Loyie, Connie Brissenden. 2005
It is Larry Loyie's last summer before entering residential school, a time of learning and adventure. He cares for an…
abandoned baby owl, watches his grandmother make winter moccasins, helps the family prepare for a hunting and gathering trip. But soon, a truck comes to forcibly take Lawrence and his siblings away to their new school, which would try to erase their traditional language and culture. Grades 3-6. 2002.Another winter, another spring: a love remembered
By Louise de Kiriline Lawrence. 1987
Louise de Kiriline Lawrence describes her aristocratic Swedish childhood during the 1890s, her gruelling experiences as a Red Cross nurse,…
her passionate marriage to a Russian army officer, and her heartbreak during the Russian Revolution. 1987.An accidental Canadian: reflections on my home and (not) native land
By Margaret Wente. 2004
Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente traces her true-life coming-of-age as an expatriate American in suburban Toronto. She also comments,…
often comically, on such topics as Google, day spas, obesity, building your own home, and so-called Canadian royalty, chiefly Adrienne Clarkson and John Ralston Saul and Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel. 2004.A war bride's story: risking it all for love after World War II (Amazing stories)
By Cynthia J Faryon. 2004
Gwendolyn Cramer was one of 48,000 war brides transported to Canada between 1942 and 1947. Many of them were escorted…
across the ocean and handed over to their husbands with nothing more than a handshake and a cookbook. Following her heart to rural Saskatchewan, Gwen felt like a fish out of water, unable to milk a cow or cook on a wood stove, and then she had her in-laws to contend with. Some descriptions of violence. 2004.A place within: rediscovering India
By M. G Vassanji. 2008
Author M. G. Vassanji was born in Africa, where his Indian grandparents had settled, and his relationship to India had…
been complex and contradictory. Vassanji describes his many visits to India, encompassing bustling cities, quiet landscapes, fantastic stories and fascinating characters, in this his part travelogue and description, part history and meditation, and above all a quest for a lost homeland. Some descriptions of violence. Winner of the 2009 Governor General's Literary Award for non-fiction. Canada Reads 2012. 2008.A good place to come from
By Morley Torgov. 1974
An account of life in a small town community in Sault Ste. Marie in the late 1930's and early 1940's.…
Winner of the 1975 Stephen Leacock Award for humour. Strong language. 1974.Transient dancing
By Gale Garnett. 2003
Johnny Reed is a gifted black actor who leaves America for Greece, where he now has a job and a…
family. Theddo Daniels is an African-American civil rights activist and a closeted homosexual in the early stages of AIDS, in Greece to write his memoirs. The two men meet and become friends, while they and Johnny's wife must deal with the secrets and horrors of their pasts. Some strong language. Some descriptions of sex and violence. 2003.Too close to the falls
By Catherine Gildiner. 1999
A coming of age memoir about growing up in Lewiston, New York, in the 1950's. Though told with humour, the…
author underscores the dark side of what at first seems a Norman Rockwell existence. Her reminiscences include stories about her mother - with her intellectual preoccupations and aversion to housework and visiting neighbours, she is an emblem of prefeminist frustration, and Hollywood - Gildiner delivered sleeping pills to Marilyn Monroe on the set of Niagara. Strong language. Canada Reads 2012. 1999.The Russian album
By Michael Ignatieff. 1987
Through the use of his grandparents' diaries, the author recreates his family history. The Ignatieffs, firmly entrenched in the Russian…
nobility, served in the tsarist government. In late 1917, the events of the Revolution overtook the family and they chose exile in the West. 1987 Governor General's Award winner. 1987.In search of pure lust: a memoir
By Lise Weil. 2018
When Lise Weil came out in 1976, lesbian desire was the pulsing center of an entire way of life, a…
culture, a movement. The air throbbed with possibility. But after fifteen years of torrid but ultimately failed relationships, Weil had to admit that desire was also a conduit for childhood wounds--and it tended to trump love, over and over again. When a friend invited her to attend a Zen retreat in the mid-'80s, she was desperate enough to say yes. Her first day of sitting zazen was mostly hell--but, smitten with the (female) roshi, she stuck with it. Ultimately, the dive into Zen practice became a turning point in her quest for love. 2018.