<\/p>\n
Imagination\u2019s Many Rooms<\/em> This edited collection of creative-cum-literary nonfiction essays previously published in the Maple Tree Literary Supplement<\/em> website gives insight into many of the cultural concerns of the writer Amatoritsero Ede. He is the editor of the journal and an award-winning poet, and while originally from Nigeria, Ede is now a professor at Mount Alison University.<\/p>\n The book has four sections: \u201cReminiscences\u201d; \u201cCultural Critique\u201d; \u201cOh, Canada!\u201d; and \u201cLiterary Essays.\u201d The first piece titled, \u201cGoing to Meet \u2018The Man\u2019\u201d is an utterly charming personal essay about the eighteen-year-old Ede\u2019s trek to meet poet and professor Wole Soyinka at the University of Ife in 1982. Ede\u2019s devotion to poetry and chutzpah are wrapped up in a youthful innocence that I don\u2019t think has ever left him as the rest of the volume testifies. (Plus, I\u2019ve read some of Ede\u2019s poetry.) In the second piece, Ede adopts the perspective of Harry Oludare Garuba, who died in 2020, to carry on a posthumous conversation: \u201cMy regard to the boys wherever they have all scattered to; it seems to be a season of migrations. I am very much alive here, waiting for all of you to come home, have a drink with me here and talk celestial poetry.\u201d Poetry for Ede is like oxygen.<\/p>\n The cultural critiques dip into various topics, such as the mess of American politics (Trump), the horror of the African slave trade and its effects, the Arab Spring, and Nelson Mandela. In \u201cCharlie Hebdo\u2019s Ghost,\u201d Ede argues for a different use of language when talking about terrorism. Jim Jones and David Koresh are not labelled \u201cChristian terrorists.\u201d So why should the term \u201cMuslim\u201d or \u201cFanatical Muslim\u201d be used in front of the word \u201cterrorist\u201d? Ede says, \u201cIt is the conflation of Islam with terrorism that discomfits everyone from political pundits to presidents or scholars and street-side philosophers when they try to approach the subject. That aporia immobilizes moral consensus and defeats the world of policy when it seeks to legislate against these criminals and social misfits.\u201d Ede is careful not to downplay the seriousness or the complexity of the problems.<\/p>\n As a born and raised Canadian, I found \u201cOh, Canada!\u201d to be trenchant in its criticism of Canadian immigration policies. \u201cStories abound of immigrant specialists like surgeons, teachers, accountants, and editors being forced in a desperate bid to earn a living, into occupations beneath their skill levels and outside and below their areas of expertise. A consequence is the irony that an immigration system specifically designed to attract the highly skilled into a knowledge economy inadvertently encourages an erosion of knowledge.\u201d As it seems evident that Canada needs immigrants, attention needs to be given to how they are selected and treated.<\/p>\n The literary essays section of the book offers much to ponder. I can\u2019t say I agree with everything, and I\u2019d argue that\u2019s a good thing. I am getting another perspective. Ede prefers the term high school \u201cpupils\u201d to \u201cstudents\u201d while I\u2019m fine with \u201cstudents.\u201d I think embedded in the word is the notion that students need to study. It\u2019s not a passive identity. I object to \u201clearner,\u201d a term often flung about in post-secondary circles as in odious term \u201clearner-centered.\u201d Or given the current commodification of education, \u201cclient\u201d or \u201ccustomer\u201d may be more accurate. But I digress and run the risk of lapsing into a rant.<\/p>\n Ede is deeply committed to poetry, and his background appears to lean heavily to the more traditional, such as T.S Eliot. I appreciate Ede\u2019s commentary about poetry and its precedence over prose. Ede notes:<\/p>\n I would say that poetry is the only possible engine for prose of any kind, whether the artistic prose to which Bakhtin referred\u2014that is the novel\u2014or to creative non-fiction, the biography, the essay\u2014ordinary or literary\u2014or even the common letter. Since some concepts can be abstract, the mind needs the \u2018image\u2019 in order to elucidate a point or idea or thought. The \u2018image\u2019 is the unit of poetry, and good poetry excites all kinds of images and appeals to the senses in a near palpable manner.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure I agree. However, it\u2019s an interesting way to think about it. I do like Ede\u2019s comments about the form of poetry\u2014the idea of the line as the basis, but I am not as negative as he is on experimental forms. In fact, I am happy to have been exposed to bp Nichol\u2019s \u201cCatching Frogs.\u201d<\/p>\n This book offers a wide range of topics and perspectives. I felt as if I were sitting with someone and having thoughtful conversations in which we could exchange ideas and feelings. And I learned a lot. The few inclusions of Yoruba stories within some essays make me want to go find more. They reminded me of Aesop\u2014and the wisdom that can be found in the world if we are ready to listen.<\/p>\n J\u2019Accuse . . . ! (Poem Versus Silence)<\/em> Using \u00c9mile Zola\u2019s \u201cJ\u2019Accuse\u201d to title his essay-in-poetry alerts readers to the motivation for George Elliott Clarke\u2019s latest book\u2014a cry of outrage against those in power. The Dreyfus affair was a mess of antisemitism and flawed procedure. Clarke\u2019s experience is similar in that he was accused of supporting a poet who had been convicted of murdering Pamela George, an indigenous woman, and a planned speech that he was to give at the University of Regina in 2020 became a flash point of confusion and anger. Clarke cancelled the lecture amid cries for the lecture to be stopped.<\/p>\n This book is Clarke\u2019s side of the story, an attempt to explain what happened. It\u2019s a book of frustration and fury. Clarke takes particular issue with journalists, who misunderstood or willfully mispresented the situation in order to create more volatile stories. And in doing so, they misrepresented Clarke, a Black Canadian with some indigenous heritage, a writer who has consistently explored the dangers of racism. I can only imagine how hurt he must have felt. The book gives some sense that the wounds are deep and profound. He also feels betrayed by fellow academics.<\/p>\n So what happened? Clarke is invited to give a speech. He is asked if he will include poetry from the convicted killer, with whom he has worked for many years, editing poetry and becoming friends, and it\u2019s important to note that until a few months before the planned speech he had no idea the man he was working with had been convicted of and imprisoned for a brutal crime. Clarke replies that he hasn\u2019t written the speech yet, so he doesn\u2019t know if he will include the killer\u2019s poetry. Pamela George\u2019s family and many other members of the indigenous community object to the inclusion of the killer\u2019s poetry. The lecture is to be titled \u201c\u2019Truth and Reconciliation\u2019 versus \u2018The Murdered and Missing\u2019: Examining Indigenous Experiences of (In)Justice in Four Saskatchewan Poets.\u201d<\/p>\n And the whole thing blows up in the media. Clarke cancels his speech.<\/p>\n I remember when this mess happened, and I recall thinking that there was no way Clarke would come out of it unscathed, regardless of his intentions or past actions. And that view remains valid as far fewer people will read his book than the numbers who read or listened to the news or social media at the time.<\/p>\n The issue is complicated. First of all, the trauma that First Nations people have endured and are still enduring is real and incredibly harmful. Not wanting to hear the words of a vicious (and it was a vicious crime) killer is completely understandable. Pamela George did not get to live her life. The killer does get to have his life. No amount of prison time can redress that inequity. Secondly, judgements were made about Clarke without all the facts or even some of them. Such a problem appears to be an epidemic these days. Thirdly, Clarke is a university professor working within a specific intellectual framework (one that I understand; I am an instructor at a college) that research is good, that knowledge needs to be sought, and that the process can be uncomfortable, but that the process is the essential task. Clarke took exception at the idea that he could answer the question of whether or not he would include the killer\u2019s poetry before he had researched his lecture:<\/p>\n Soon, my unsaid lecture got impeached in speech whitey-white! <\/p>\n As an academic, I get Clarke\u2019s point. Discussions about the personal life of artists and writers frequently take place in the classroom. And it can be hard to reconcile the amazing creative work of some people with their other actions. Clarke mentions those \u201csupreme in Art<\/em>, yet defective in heart,\u201d such as Pound, Caravaggio, and Villon. I haven\u2019t read any of the killer\u2019s poetry, nor do I plan to. I doubt that it reaches the heights of Pound\u2019s or Villon\u2019s poetry or Caravaggio\u2019s pictures. And none of those three lived in pleasant circumstances the way Pamela George\u2019s killer is.<\/p>\n Clarke\u2019s essay-in-poetry displays his customary erudition and facility with language. But it\u2019s hard to read as it\u2019s so angry. And I guess I understand that as well, as Clarke sees himself as a victim of cancel culture, in effect a verbal lynching. Defending one\u2019s right to speak what others may find objectionable (excluding vile speech such as hate speech) is important. But being protected from harmful speech is also important. And the lines are not clear.<\/p>\n Overall, it\u2019s impossible to read this book and not be disturbed. It\u2019s loaded with challenging images. Clarke uses his platform to explain his experience. He continues his goal of educating his readers by including examples of the brutal treatment of numerous victims of racism. The first poem in the collection is called \u201cFor the Murdered & the Missing: A Spiritual,\u201d and it uses the rhythms of a spiritual to cry out about the loss of so many women and the lack of justice; for example:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Why she gotta go missing? And he wants justice for himself:<\/p>\n Lookit! To suggest that either Poetry (Rhetoric)<\/em> or Civil Rights<\/em> The style of the poems with italics, exclamation marks, and capitals mirrors Clarke\u2019s fury, and it\u2019s exhausting. What happened to him is wrong. If people cannot take the time to have conversations about their differences, to find out the situation, and to have some sense of understanding and empathy, then nothing much will improve without force and probably violence. Did Clarke make a mistake by not immediately saying he would not use the killer\u2019s poetry in his speech? Perhaps\u2014but not by the academic standards of his profession (professor and poet) and his personal convictions about poetry and search for truth. The final poem asks readers to \u201cRemember Ms. George\u201d and goes on to state Clarke\u2019s essential position:<\/p>\n But I\u2019s a poet who values Poetry<\/em> more than Silence . . . <\/em><\/p>\n *<\/p>\n This paper curls as it burns, As always Gaspereau has published a beautiful object with After the Harvest<\/em>, by New Brunswick poet, Keagan Hawthorne, but the contents are as lovely as the book itself. In simple but arresting diction, Hawthorne explores the cycle of life as it\u2019s found on a farm and within a family. The poems look backward in time to when farming was less big business and more what families did to survive and provide food for others.<\/p>\n One of the key symbols is the seed, necessary for plants and people to grow. Farming is and was hard work, and Hawthorne captures the farmscapes of the past with an exquisite eye for detail and a splendid ear for sound. For example, in \u201cPeacock Feather,\u201d the use of alliteration helps build the picture of a man feeding peacocks:<\/p>\n My grandfather, up before the others, It\u2019s easy to see the scene, and then the poem intensifies as the speaker, who is dreaming, hears his grandfather call the birds and later is \u201ccussing out the cows.\u201d<\/p>\n Alliteration and rhythm are key tools for Hawthorne, and he often adopts the meter and language of prayer. In \u201cAgricola Noster,\u201d which begins, \u201cOur Farmer, who art come upon thy quad, \/ hallowed be thy sacks of sweet crushed grain,\u201d the cadence and movement of the \u201cOur Father\u201d continues and exemplifies another world that is changing, that of the religious one.<\/p>\n Hawthorne plays with various forms, including a kind of puzzle in poetry. Five poems title \u201cCreature\u201d numbered from I to V, the speaker asks the reader to hazard a guess. The poem starts with a nod to Wordsworth: \u201cIn reaping and sowing, men lay waste their powers \/ and that, my dear friend, is a game \/ <\/em>that you will never be able to win \/ unless you can guess me my name<\/em>.\u201d Each of the five poems reiterates the call to guess while developing images of the land and the people in it. The third poem notes, \u201cI crank the armature of the cell, \/ those tiny windmills laboring \/ to unpick entropy in the fields of the sun.\u201d Hawthorne is deeply invested in what makes life, both plant and animal (including humans). And many poems refer to the various forms of light.<\/p>\n Other poets have clearly inspired Hawthorne, for example, Elizabeth Bishop, who provides a form for \u201cNine O\u2019Clock News from the Old Farmhouse Kitchen\u201d with nine stanzas describing commonly found objects, such as \u201cempty cat dish in the porch\u201d or \u201cugly painting no one actually likes.\u201d \u201cWolf Willow\u201d (after Jan Zwicky, as noted) so beautifully captures the sense of place: \u201cFollow the stretched-out evening \/ along the old cow track, through the broken gate \/ to the coulee where soft air purls through the swale.\u201d The richness of Hawthorne\u2019s imagery is enticing.<\/p>\n Overall, the poems have a sense of nostalgia for a way of life lost and a huge respect for the work of farmers and the land that provides food. There\u2019s an air of quiet contemplation, a regard for the prairie landscape, and a respect for the writers of both past and present. My favourite poem, although it\u2019s hard to choose, is \u201cThe Hedge,\u201d about a grandmother who plants a lilac hedge. The poem is reminiscent of Christopher Smart\u2019s \u201cJubilate Agno,\u201d especially the section about his cat Jeoffry. Hawthorne\u2019s poem starts \u201cFor the colour of lilac is the colour of robes and ribbons \/ which were not often worn on a farm\u201d and continues in this manner with two lines about the lilac and other aspects of the grandmother\u2019s life and death. It\u2019s truly beautiful.<\/p>\n The world now is so fast-paced that it\u2019s easy to forget or perhaps never even learn that so much of life is utterly dependent on the natural world, its cycles, and the hard work of farmers. Slowing down to appreciate this fundamental part of existence is a gift that these poems offer.<\/p>\n Best Canadian Essays 2023<\/em>, Whether a \u201cbest\u201d collection of anything is truly the best is endlessly debatable, but any collection of recently published work provides a wonderful tasting experience. The sixteen essays chosen by Mireille Silcoff for Best Canadian Essays 2023<\/em> includes a wide range of topics and styles, as usual, and readers will find much to provide them with hours of enjoyment and education.<\/p>\n I used this book in a first-year college composition course, and the first essay we discussed was the first in the book: Emma Gilchrist\u2019s \u201cGenetic Mapping.\u201d Students loved this essay, as did I, as it deals with issues of identity in a profoundly personal way that pummels the heart. Students were also thrilled (and this part is sad) to be assigned an essay that gripped them. Several said they had not expected to be reading an essay like this one in an English class. Gilchrist details her search to find her genetic parents (she was adopted), a search complicated by her birth mother\u2019s lack of clarity about the birth father. As Gilchrist says, \u201c[W]hat often starts out as an innocent interest in family history can lead to shocking results, uncovering infidelity, donor conception, adoption and, well, family secrets of all varieties. A whopping 27 percent of DNA test-takers said they learned about close relatives they didn\u2019t know about previously, according to a 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center.\u201d The genetic background of a person is one part of identity, a huge part, and when that background shifts, identity needs to be reconsidered.<\/p>\n Other essays in the book also deal with identity, and maybe that signifies prevailing concerns in our world today. Michelle Good\u2019s \u201c\u2018Play Indians\u2019 Inflict Real Harm on Indigenous People\u201d captures an important issue that has been in the news far too often as individuals claim to be part of an Indigenous community to gain advantages. As Good says, \u201cHow would a person have established themselves as Indigenous pre-DNA testing? By way of what has always been done: identifying connections through shared history, community, tradition, geography and family.\u201d Her message to Joseph Boyden, for example, is clear. She says he is adopted: \u201ca person adopted by an Indigenous community becomes welcomed and accepted as part of the community but is not magically, suddenly, Indigenous.\u201d Good believes it is time for legislation in Canada to punish \u201cfraudulent profiteering\u201d by \u2018Play Indians.\u2019<\/p>\n Kathy Page\u2019s \u201cThat Other Place\u201d examines identity through the lens of health and uses the metaphor of a grey passport: \u201cA new grey passport brings new responsibilities. When you inhabit the kingdom of the sick, it is your job to understand and explain your disease, and the medical and bureaucratic systems it has forced you to be part of.\u201d Being sick is exhausting enough, but the communication responsibilities, as Page describes them, simply ramp everything up to unbearable levels. Then throw in the pandemic when seeing doctors and getting appointments with specialists became almost impossible. And it\u2019s a toss-up what\u2019s worse: knowing what\u2019s wrong with you or not knowing and still trying to find out. Anyone who is healthy should feel very very grateful.<\/p>\n How identity is created or understood is further examined by Kunal Chaudhary\u2019s \u201cThe Sun Is Always in Your Eyes in Rexdale,\u201d which combines a personal account along with a moving criticism of how gun crime was (and is) treated in a racialized Toronto suburb. Gun violence mushroomed after a massive gang raid in 2004, which took gang leaders out of the community. That sounds good, right? But as Chaudhury notes, using research done by Amy Siciliano, the removal of leaders left a bunch of teenagers who shot up the neighbourhood. What follows is the Safe Schools Act, which has the effect of teaching children they are incipient criminals who need controlling. And the focus is on neighbourhoods that are full of immigrants of colour who are likely struggling financially. Chaudhury ends his essay noting that as the pandemic strikes, Rexdale again hits the news as its infection rates are far above the average. It\u2019s the people who are blamed, not the policies that contribute to harm.<\/p>\n In her introduction to the collection, Silcoff discusses the idea and form of the essay and how many of the essays included combine the personal with research. She notes, \u201cOur current, tumultuous age\u2014which seems to be playing out at hyperspeed\u2014is an important time for essayists, because in moments of great change, it\u2019s good to have chroniclers with the presence of mind to step back and assess.\u201d And it\u2019s good to have someone like Silcoff who has assembled such an effective collection.<\/p>\n Best Canadian Stories 2023<\/em> Mark Anthony Jarman, the editor of Best Canadian Stories 2023 <\/em>calls this book a \u201ctribute to the talent of Steven Heighton,\u201d and includes two works by Heighton, who died in 2022. Jarman notes, \u201cI hope all the other talented writers in this stellar volume are honored to be in this, a commemorative issue, a sad occasion, but also a community of scribes and friends.\u201d Anyone who met Heighton will have been touched by his kindness and generosity of spirit, so I expect the other writers included feel honoured to be in his company in these pages.<\/p>\n Heighton\u2019s works bookend the collection. The first story, \u201cInstructions for the Drowning,\u201d delves into the faltering marriage of Ray and Inge, who may be suffering from the lack of children in their lives. As a child Ray is told by his father that to save a drowning person, he would have to knock out the person. And Ray believes him: \u201cIf his father said the operation worked\u2014and he made it sound like performed routinely in the summer lakes of Canada and the northern states\u2014then it must.\u201d When Inge appears to be drowning and taking Ray with her, the couple gets into a physical battle that endangers both. Heighton\u2019s prose is crisp and clear, balancing beautifully against the chaos of physical and emotional danger.<\/p>\n Readers of Canadian fiction will likely recognize most of the fourteen writers in this volume. Caroline Adderson\u2019s \u201cAll Our Auld Acquaintances Are Gone\u201d deals with a familiar problem, one that isn\u2019t going away any time soon. Taryn and Cory are party-crashing high rises in Vancouver so they can steal money to fund a self-organized (you can learn anything on the internet) drug withdrawal and detox. Broke and homeless, Taryn has already suffered far too much in her young life, and Adderson does a great job of showing her humanity as Taryn grows concerned about a baby sleeping in a bedroom. This story is unutterably sad and moving.<\/p>\n Conflict forms the basis of fiction, and Oma El Akkad\u2019s \u201cOddsmaking\u201d deals with two: family breakdown and climate disaster in the form of forest fires. While the story is somewhat fantastical as the characters are involved in betting on forest fires, it seems less fantastical all the time: \u201cOnce there had been a fire season but now the year was the season and the migrations constant.\u201d It\u2019s less of a fantasy and more of a prediction or an observation.<\/p>\n David Huebert\u2019s \u201cOil People\u201d combines class distinctions in a town near Sarnia with sexual awakening and bullying. Jade\u2019s older sister Jackie gives her a life lesson: \u201cYou\u2019re growing up. It\u2019s not easy. It\u2019s mean. . . . Sometimes you get bitten. Sometimes you bite back.\u201d Nine-year-old Jade is traumatized by the stories of birth defects after Chernobyl. She\u2019s being intimidated by boys at school. She\u2019s called an \u201coil witch\u201d because she eats baloney. It\u2019s a world of hurt. But she gets back at the boy who is the source of innuendo.<\/p>\n Kate Cayley\u2019s \u201cA Death\u201d addresses the effect of Avery\u2019s death on her daughter Allegra with her former (and younger) partner Maura and examines how sexual politics changes. Avery has a particular view, Maura another, and fourteen-year-old Allegra yet another. \u201cMaura once told [Avery] that she was the only queer she\u2019d ever met who seemed to be genuinely regretful, even to the point of seeing herself as cheated, that it was not the late eighteenth century or perhaps the early nineteenth, who wished for the electric charge of absolute secrecy.\u201d In contrast, Allegra \u201cwas frank about sex, gender, politics, while treating all these things as not really very serious, when to Avery and Maura they were deadly serious, enough to shout at each other about.\u201d Avery lives by a number of ideals, and eventually comes to regret some of them. And despite the breakup, these women care deeply for each other and their child.<\/p>\n The stories are wide-ranging in time and place. Sadness and loss prevail as is appropriate given that the volume pays tribute to one of Canada\u2019s most respected writers. Jarman\u2019s choices will doubtlessly lead to readers seeking out more works by all of these writers. And that is a very good thing. <\/p>\n Best Canadian Poetry 2023<\/em>, The annual arrival of the Best Canadian Poetry<\/em> is always a cause for a celebration as it\u2019s a bundle of delights. Somehow the editors manage to find, maybe not the best as who knows what that is, but a wonderful and varied selection of recently published poems. Over the years, the contents have become even more varied as the editors reflect both their personal taste and readers\u2019 interest in poems written by all kinds of people.<\/p>\n And the editors\u2019 introductions are always fascinating. In her introduction to the terrific 2021 collection (there was no 2022), editor Souvankham Thammavongsa notes that she paid no attention to the name of the poet but looked only at the poem and selected accordingly: \u201cI didn\u2019t pay attention to the name of the writer, how many books they\u2019d published, what prizes they\u2019d won. It\u2019s possible to be no one, to have no book, to make work that is meaningful and valuable and beautiful without a crown or someone else\u2019s say-so.\u201d Thammavongsa encourages writers to forget about confidence: \u201cA poet doesn\u2019t need courage. You can be scared and write with that fear.\u201d And the 2021 collection includes numerous voices who captured their fear and put it on the page. And that was before the pandemic.<\/p>\n John Barton\u2019s lengthy introduction to the 2023 collection writes about his process of selection when he was an editor of Arc<\/em> and The Malahat Review<\/em> (he is now retired), and notes that he employed it for the 2023 book. He said, \u201cWhen readers said they loved everything in an issue, I\u2019d be pleased, but secretly felt that I\u2019d failed. If their experience of what they read was more mixed\u2014they liked these poems or those poems but not the rest\u2014I\u2019d feel that I\u2019d lived up to my responsibilities because if one reader was partial to one poem, a different reader would probably favour another.\u201d And for Barton, that means a more diverse collection could prompt a more diverse readership. Both Thammavongsa and Barton encourage pushing readers out of familiar comfortable patterns\u2014and that is a good thing.<\/p>\n Barton\u2019s extended introduction also, like Thammavongsa\u2019s, pays attention to the value of small magazines, whether in paper or online, and Barton is emphatic about the role of online journals as they tend to \u201cflourish outside the thrall of the official funding environment and therefore do not have to engage in the culture of appeasement that earning the support of granting agencies would have forced upon them.\u201d Those agencies, says Barton, use funding models that are \u201cburn-out inducing and sometimes soul-destroying.\u201d As a long-time editor at literary journals, Barton surely has inside knowledge of the struggle to secure funding.<\/p>\n Of the fifty poems included in the 2023 collection, several will stick in my head for a variety of reasons. Randy Lundy\u2019s \u201cA Note on the Use of the Term Genocide<\/em>\u201d questions the loss of life in the Holocaust with that in the Americas after European contact\/invasion (six million to sixty million) and even whether or not what he has written is a poem or if he has the right to write: \u201cPerhaps you have no right even \/ to write a poem in the long shadow of that \/ time\u201d given the different histories. Lundy connects his personal history with the larger public histories, and tragically the losses continue. Comparing genocides is unsettling, of course.<\/p>\n Nedda Sarshar\u2019s \u201cWhy did we bury the ashes?\u201d also unsettles in its examination of an Iranian grandfather\u2019s desire to go home from Toronto. He is aging, developing dementia, and regretting moving to Canada. Sarshar builds the poem by a series of \u201cbecause\u201d statements, answering the question posed in the title, for example, \u201cBecause no one else in the neighbourhood could make their tomatoes grow. \/ He said it was because they did not know to love their dirt.\u201d The importance of gardening is found also in Jeremy Loveday\u2019s \u201cOn Homecoming,\u201d a celebration of creating beauty, even though it may not last and even though the gardener, a ninety-year-old woman, may not see the results: \u201cToday, my neighbor is planting daylilies \/ Which will work a whole year to ready \/ Each flower to open only for a single day. \/ The fullest expression of hope. The work of joy.\u201d Creating pleasure matters.<\/p>\n Helen Han Wei Luo\u2019s \u201cConsider the Peony\u201d also looks at cultivating growth, but in a child\u2014and negatively. The speaker is thought of a less than as she is a girl. Her culture prefers boys, and she grows up in a troubled and poor immigrant family in Vancouver, but her use of language is densely rich: \u201cIt is for the lack of piety that \/ the peony pushes silken gold to the bees. Their pilfering \/ seeds thyme and marjoram, and peonies no longer. This is \/ what lack of piety does\u2014pollinate.\u201d Loss of a child is detailed in Lise Gaston\u2019s \u201cJames\u201d (won the CBC poetry prize in 2012) as a mother has a stillbirth. Loss of self is detailed in Triny Finlay\u2019s \u201cAdjusting the Psychotropics\u201d which makes use of anaphora to show what happens with medication. Finlay repeats \u201cWhen we changed my meds\u201d and the results on the speaker and those around her.<\/p>\n And because the collection has poems written during the pandemic, that experience makes its way into poems, notably \u201cThe Last Thing I\u2019ll Remember\u201d by Michael Dunwoody, another look at loss. This time it\u2019s a man who cannot attend to his hospitalized husband who has Covid. They have survived homophobia from family members and been married as soon as it was legally possible, but cannot be together and all the speaker can do is wave from the parking lot and beg to be let in. Dunwoody\u2019s details of what happens to the patient are wrenching s the doctor says, \u201c\u2018We\u2019ll take care of him,\u2019 never hinting \/ at the rising temperature; the rasping cough; \/ the struggle for breath; \/ the chest compressions; \/ the decision to intubate given his age.\u201d And the losses continue.<\/p>\n As always, the volume contains commentaries for the poets, a list of magazines consulted, and a list of notable poems not included. Barton, like the editors before him, has done a wonderful job of combing through magazines to give readers a book packed with poems worth reading and rereading, whether you like them or not. Job well done! And now to wait for the 2024 volume.<\/p>\n Nila: The Bleeding Garden<\/em> In the Preface to her debut novel, Laila Re reveals the pain she felt while writing the story of a young Afghan girl whose family leaves their home in Kabul to try to find a better life: \u201cI lost count of how many times I cried while writing this book. It was a therapeutic and cathartic experience\u2014this is what brought me into creative writing in the first place: healing through the arts.\u201d And in the following Introduction, Re morphs into Nila, the adult who recounts the family\u2019s flight and the many struggles they face.<\/p>\n The novel is organized by place and is set in four places. The first stop is Baghlan, Afghanistan, where the family moves in the spring of 1995 when Nila is five; the second move is to Islamabad, Pakistan, in the summer of 1995; the third move is to Toronto in winter, 1995. Then a short chapter set in York captures 1996-1998. Like her character, Re was born in Kabul and emigrated to Canada as a small child.<\/p>\n One of the challenges of having a first-person narrator is the risk of inconsistency, which Rd does not overcome. Nila\u2019s experiences as a child are delivered mainly in the voice of the child, a child who simply does not (and cannot) understand all the chaos around her. But the novel is written by the adult Nila, and the perspectives of child and adult don\u2019t quite mesh. For a first novel, such a structure is tricky, and then added to the complexity is the personal aspect. How much of the story is memoir and how much is fiction is hard to tell although at times it\u2019s evident that Re uses the painful experiences of her family and those of other immigrants. As she says in the Preface, \u201cThe characters represent real experiences of Afghans, including my own, which I witnessed, or heard or read about from the wars in Afghanistan.\u201d Perhaps a better choice would have been non-fiction, and in that way, Re could make her points about the traumas experienced and vary the point of view more effectively from that of a small child.<\/p>\n However, what the novel does excel at is showing the enormous difficulty for anyone emigrating, especially to a significantly different culture. Nila is constantly wondering what is going on and why the family is struggling so much. All she wants to do is go to school and to have a doll. Her two older siblings have their own problems. Abdullah, who is ten, and Ruby, who is seven, have both missed much school and suffer because of that when they finally get to Canada. Plus Abdullah appears to have some illness (he has a seizure at one point) that is never explained. Ruby has a learning disability. Nila dislikes her older siblings, in part because their anger about their situation makes them aggressive. The baby of the family, Laila, is born in Pakistan. In many ways, the most intriguing character is the mother, a woman, who comes from a wealthy family, who is educated, who had been a journalist, and who marries for love. And then civil war tears up her life. As Nila notes how pale her mother is when she comes home from the hospital with the baby, \u201cShe had just escaped a civil war, survived a car accident, and was still in recovery from it all\u2014while being pregnant. It must have been the hardest nine months of her life.\u201d Unfortunately, life continues to throw sorrows at her. I really wanted to know her thoughts.<\/p>\n Getting to Canada doesn\u2019t solve all the family\u2019s problems. It gets them out of a war zone, but in a way puts them into another kind of war zone, a financial battle and a fracturing of family. Re does a good job of showing that all the issues families deal with still exist within immigrant families, and everything is so much harder. Nila\u2019s father is a businessman in Afghanistan, but cannot find a comparable job in Toronto. It\u2019s a devastating blow to his sense of himself and his desire to take care of his family. Racism is an issue. Language is a problem although curiously Nila says little about her own difficulties in that regard, apart from commenting how the children spend their time left alone in the apartment in Toronto: \u201cSince father was not supervising us, we ended up watching whatever we wanted. . . . My English naturally improved.\u201d<\/p>\n When parents emigrate, it\u2019s generally to provide a better life for their children, one free of violence and poverty. But getting to another country such as Canada is only the beginning of immense challenges. Nila: The Bleeding Garden<\/em> does a compelling job of exposing the challenges and the emotional toll those challenges have on immigrants. And it offers glimpses into Afghan culture to help readers understand the characters and their struggles.<\/p>\n Shimmer<\/em> Alex Pugsley is a master of fiction. His debut novel, Aubrey McKee<\/em> (2020), is terrific, and he has followed up that win with a splendid collection of short fiction titled Shimmer<\/em>. The stories are wide-ranging in their characters while maintaining a wry tragi-comic view of life.<\/p>\n Some of the stories are connected by character. The first and last stories feature mostly fifteen-year-olds seemingly on the brink of drinking themselves to death while looking for some kind of meaning. The opening story, \u201cDeedee at the 7-Eleven,\u201d sets the tone of most of the stories right from the first line: \u201c\u2019So what the fuck have you been doing<\/em>, Veeper?\u2019\u201d asks Wendell who\u2019s been waiting for his friend to bring the beer. The two discuss going to a party and then run into two girls and get into an argument about Wendell\u2019s ex-girlfriend Deedee, who is throwing the party. The narrator, Veeper, delivers the conversation with a breath-taking authenticity and a clear look at teen angst.<\/p>\n The final story, \u201cShimmer,\u201d is set at the party discussed in the first, but this time the narrator is third person and focusses on the girls, in particular Celeste, who is beyond unhappy and is contemplating suicide. The fact that it\u2019s all teen drama ramped up to the sky does not make anything less real. Anyone who ever went to a party when the host\u2019s parents were out of town will recognize the chaos, both physical and emotional.<\/p>\n As far as form, Pugsley appears able to do it all. \u201cOrdinary Love Song\u201d is told in emails. It\u2019s set in 2003. Now it would be text, I suppose, but the email form works well to showcase the absolute need of two characters, Byron and Jessica, who take their time getting together via email, and then tell the story of the relationship as it plays out. These characters are in their twenties, but have many of the problems of the teens. Sex and alcohol play a huge role. Pugsley captures particular groups well, whether it\u2019s angsty drunk teens or angsty drunk twenty-something-year-olds. Jessica went to Trent and describes the students: \u201cBasically there\u2019s sort of this archetype for people from Trent\u2014the indie-rock dude at the back of the party in the plaid shirt drinking PBR who sees the truth in all the blood and spit and despair as he bumblefucks his way through a philosophy degree . . . \u201d[.] I have no idea if that\u2019s true, but it\u2019s fun to read. And what matters is that it\u2019s Jessica\u2019s reality.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s part of Pugley\u2019s genius. He takes characters, not quite likeable, gives them quite a mouth, and then even when they are being vile, manages to make them funny and ultimately human. In \u201cTwyla,\u201d for example, the title character visits her psychotherapist because she wants a change in her life. As she says, \u201cIt\u2019s just my texting personality and my real-life personality are getting farther and farther apart.\u201d She has no idea what she wants apart from not wanting what she has. Her boyfriend Justin wants to have a baby, but while they are at a resort all she wants to do is have sex. She complains and says, \u201c[H]e started behaving like a little fuck-boat and the worst dick-biscuit possible. I mean, we\u2019re at this beautiful resort for the weekend and all he wants to do is talk about the relationship?\u201d Twyla rants about everything. She wants the therapist to teach her how to live. I wonder how that turns out.<\/p>\n These stories are moving even when the characters are self-absorbed and annoying because Pugsley somehow manages to infuse them with recognizable needs even when they are being beastly or just plain stupid. Many are caught up in the surface of life, such as brand names, appearance, clothing, and competition for position and status. But the struggles are real, whether it\u2019s a teenager or a successful model or a slightly ageing actor who is trying to find a path in life. <\/p>\n The story that is the outlier is \u201cLegion,\u201d and because it\u2019s different from the others, it sticks in my head. The narrator is drinking in the Legion and thinking about his step-brother, John-Angus, who died in a Glace Bay mine. It\u2019s the shortest story in the book, and it packs a serious wallop.<\/p>\n But really, all of these stories are lodged in my head, and they throw off such sparks that Pugsley has dozens of narrative trails to follow. Some characters reappear and spur curiosity about how they got to where they are and where they are going. And if you are like me and enjoyed these stories as much as I did, you will immediately turn to the beginning of the book and read them all again.<\/p>\n Temerity & Gall<\/em> The title of John Metcalf\u2019s latest book, Temerity & Gall<\/em>, comes from a letter that W.P. Kinsella wrote to the Globe and Mail<\/em> in 1983 complaining about Metcalf\u2019s comments on Canadian literature because Metcalf was an immigrant. That\u2019s a dumb comment, but neither man is known for holding back opinions, so it\u2019s not surprising that they clashed. Almost thirty years later, Bibiloasis has decided to publish this work by its senior fiction editor, and it\u2019s doubtful that anyone else would have been given such a platform.<\/p>\n Metcalf is a respected writer garnering praise from luminaries, such as Alice Munro, who is quoted on the cover as having said that Metcalf \u201chas written some of the very best stories ever published in this country.\u201d Several writers, such as Caroline Adderson, have found Metcalf to be a gifted and generous editor. But if Metcalf thinks work falls short of his exacting and opaque standards, he can be vicious. It was weirdly amusing to read his attacks on various writers, and as I turned that pages, I wondered what fresh hell he was about to unleash.<\/p>\n The major attack is on the Canada Council, for which Metcalf\u2019s vitriol has no bounds. He objects to the categories established to award grants, categories presumably developed to mitigate sexism and other inequities. Metcalf wants grants to go to the best writers with no consideration of who those writers are in terms of gender, ethnicity, or anything else. He says, \u201cThe minute we accept public money the rules change; we are no longer operating under the essentially elitist rules of art but under the egalitarian rules of a largely compassionate democracy.\u201d There\u2019s so much to tear apart in that statement. Enjoy yourself.<\/p>\n But Metcalf goes on: \u201cAny system of state support to the arts is doomed to record mediocrity.\u201d I\u2019m sure he excludes this volume or Biblioasis in general as the press notes on the copyright page that it receives grants from the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council. I started to wonder what Metcalf has on Dan Wells, Biblioasis\u2019 editor, to get him to publish what is essentially a vanity screed. Metcalf has allowed Wells to insert footnotes in a kind of on-going discussion regarding grants, and Wells tries valiantly to defend the Canada Council while not annoying Metcalf, an impossible task as Metcalf appears impervious to contrary opinions. That\u2019s not a problem. People can have fixed views. But his crankiness and tendency to show off his erudition are off-putting. And as Wells points out, \u201cCannot the purpose of the arts councils (and art is always pluralized in such references), as is the case with publishers and other artistic organizations, be multiple? To award literary excellence, yes, but also to encourage artistic practice at different levels? To document and record and remember? Without such investments . . . culture and artistic practice becomes an exclusively (economically) elite preoccupation.\u201d These questions raise important points. Metcalf counters with the point that the Canada Council has to provide the funds because the public doesn\u2019t. I\u2019d argue that the Canada Council is the way the public provides funds, whether or not everyone in the public is interested in books. Gone are the days of private patrons or personal wealth being the only sources of support for those in the arts. Like Wells, I see value in the Canada Council, even if there are problems with categories or how decisions are made.<\/p>\n This book has an incoherent structure. It\u2019s divided into four sections of wildly varying length that are roughly arranged around readings done to celebrate Biblioasis\u2019 republication of some of the work of the Montreal Story Tellers. Forty years have passed and the group which includes Metcalf, Ray Smith, and Clark Blaise is set to do readings in Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa. Metcalf describes the get-together of the old friends while making several sideways excursions into what he seems to be thinking about at the time regarding books. One particular section is one his love of book collecting, and let\u2019s just say he is in an entirely different category from most people who may love books (and reading) but who would never spend thousands of dollars on one book even if they could afford it. But Metcalf really loves his books and he is quite sad or angry that no library in Canada wants to buy the collection. So he will have to break it up to sell it. I\u2019m having difficulty summoning the required feeling about this problem.<\/p>\n Overall, like several people with whom Metcalf has disagreed, I kept waiting to find out how he establishes that a writer is worthwhile, that a book is great. It seems to come down to you know it when you read it. And I have some sympathy for that view as there\u2019s a magic in art that does make it hard or impossible to define. So is this book great? Or even good? Maybe. I do know it\u2019s too long, unfocussed, and self-indulgent. But it does have many thoughtful and excellent points, such as the need to educate people to appreciate art. In a long section of 58 pages, Metcalf includes eight examples of fiction (pretending they are typescripts sent to him for consideration) and comments on what makes them special. He has keen eye, and the section reminds me of George Saunders\u2019 A Swim in a Pond in the Rain<\/em>, with its sensitivity to how the mind moves through a piece of fiction and how well Chekhov directs the minds of his readers. None of the eight writers included in this section is Canadian, and two are women. All are white. <\/p>\n Metcalf Is not shy when it comes to his own capabilities, and they are considerable. But so is his ability to be dismissive and rude. It\u2019s a style often found in the literary world, especially the British one. (Metcalf came to Canada from England after graduating from the University of Bristol.) Now in his eighties, Metcalf appears to be settling scores or possibly tilting at the same droopy windmills. But I have to admire his absolute dedication to the world of fiction. He really has dedicated his life to seeking excellence (however that is determined) and promoting it.<\/p>\n Her First Palestinian and Other Stories<\/em> This debut collection is one of those that when I finished reading it, I immediately started to calculate when I would have the time to read it again. These nine stories are deliriously good. The title story was shortlisted for the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize, and Saeed Teebi, a lawyer in Toronto, clearly has an abundance of talent. His surface directness and simplicity belie a richness of emotion and complexity of issues, at the centre of which is the displacement of Palestinians.<\/p>\n Teebi was born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents. The family moved to Canada in 1993, and the stories have a solid aura of authenticity regarding the struggles of Palestinians, especially those who leave the Middle East for Canada and find themselves better off in many ways but whose sense of loss is pervasive. Most of the main characters are educated, upper-middle-class people who were able to leave their residences in various countries, but the concept of home, when Palestine is caught in what seems to be a never-ending political struggle, not to mention violence, is fraught with anxiety. Should an immigrant simply move on? \u201cHer First Palestinian\u201d plays with this concept as the narrator, a Palestinian-Canadian doctor has a non-Arab girlfriend, a lawyer who becomes absorbed by the political issues and a particular case in the West Bank. The tension is played out in their sex life as Nadia uses physical force against Abed apparently as criticism of his lack of action regarding the struggles of Palestinians. But it\u2019s not that Abed has no interest. He just wants to live: \u201cIn her presence, it became difficult to live normally, or to talk about anything else.\u201d Of course, the question raised is what is normal\u2014and from whose perspective?<\/p>\n The stories also show how cultural differences can be challenging to negotiate. In \u201cDo Not Write about the King,\u201d Murad, a math professor in Toronto, makes an offhand comment in an article about the king of an unnamed kingdom in the Middle East. His father insists that he should delete the comment, arguing that the power of the kingdom is far-reaching. Who is right\u2014the man who believes in a kind of freedom in Canada that the family did not have in the kingdom (as they were only guests, allowed to stay because of the father\u2019s skill at his work) or the father who believes that the kingdom can exact revenge not only on Murad but on any family member?<\/p>\n Cultural differences also play a huge role in \u201cThe Body,\u201d in which a student named Sam (Sameer) is sent to Thunder Bay to carry out a dubious task for his law firm. Sam is basically blackmailed into the possibly illegal action to maintain employment and is perhaps selected for the job because it\u2019s thought that he is desperate enough to do what is required. And maybe even that his Arab background means he will skirt the law. Plus as he\u2019s not a fully-fledged lawyer yet, it appears that his firm is willing to throw him under a very large bus. He\u2019s supposed to get a body released from the morgue and sent to the Middle East so the family of the dead young man can save face. So it\u2019s a clash between Canadian law and connections. How can Sam carry out the assignment when he has been threatened with prosecution if he bothers the coroner\u2019s office again? <\/p>\n The quest for home and identity is a constant thread through these stories, as is a focus on making the reader see other sides of issues. Maybe the most heart-breaking story is the final one, \u201cEnjoy Your Life, Capo,\u201d in which, Salah, a computer programmer is desperate to create an app to make money. This app measures breathing, and as Salah\u2019s teenage daughter Firdaos has cystic fibrosis, the app would have huge medical benefit. He imagines headlines: \u201cPerhaps a lede with one of the many patients I helped survive. And\u2014dare I dream?\u2014even a word or two from the original inspiration for it all , my tenacious fighter, Firdaos. This is the world I want to belong to. But it is not the world I am in.\u201d This story is partially set during the pandemic and the protests about racism. Firdaos is deeply involved in online posting about issues, including the mess of the Middle East and gets into trouble at school. Meanwhile Salah\u2019s app has found a buyer, but it\u2019s complicated. A good invention can be used for other means, so what is Salah to do?<\/p>\n Saeed Teebi has a firm grasp of so many issues it\u2019s impossible to list them all. Plus he shows the utter complexity of a world in which fairness and equity don\u2019t exist. I\u2019m sure I will be reading these stories again.<\/p>\n Sisu\u2019s Winter War<\/em> Liisa Kovala\u2019s debut novel is a complex consideration of history, identity, and memory. The novel moves back and forth through time and place, beginning in 1933 in Finland and ending in 1980 in Northern Ontario. Kovala, who is Finnish Canadian and resident in Sudbury, has clearly used personal interest and experience to fashion this novel.<\/p>\n Starting with birth and death, Sisu\u2019s Winter War<\/em>, immediately demonstrates its seriousness. Thirteen-year-old Meri Saari is terrified as her mother is in labour. Her father Armas is away, and while Meri wants to help Akka, the local midwife, and take care of her ten-year-old sister, Eveliina, her fear nearly paralyzes her as her mother has lost babies before. This time the child, a daughter to be called Nadia, survives, but the mother does not. With her dying breath, Yekaterina makes Meri promise to keep the family together. <\/p>\n Family is critical to this novel, and family has already been broken before Yekaterina\u2019s death. The mother is Russian, and her marriage to Armas, who is Finnish, has estranged her from her family. Armas brings up his three daughters with Meri catapulted into responsibility and acting as mother to her little sisters. When Russia invades Finland in 1939, setting off the First Soviet-Finnish War, also known as the Winter War, the family again suffers loss as Armas goes to defend his country and contact with his daughters ceases. Reading about a Russian invasion was particularly difficult, given current events. Kovala does a good job of showing the complications of neighbours at war as the Saari girls are both Russian and Finnish.<\/p>\n \u201cSisu\u201d is the nickname given to Meri by her best friend Markus. It means a special kind of strength, which Meri certainly has even though she constantly questions herself. Kovala spins out the narrative by exploring Meri\u2019s life. In 1980, Meri is living in Canada, is widowed, and has raised her grand-daughter Katia, whose mother Linnea has her at a young age. The novel is an intricate dance through the years, and influencing everything in the present timeframe (1980) is Meri\u2019s increasing dementia, her personal winter.<\/p>\n The greatest structural challenge of the novel is that Meri is the narrator and that Kovala has decided to make her knowledge of English weak even though she has lived in Canada for decades. So the novel is in English (with many Finnish words included), and Meri is totally articulate as narrator, except when she is speaking in the 1980 Canada parts. Plus, of course, her mental decline means that she is losing words. Readers have to switch between sentences of varying levels of English, and that can be a bit destabilising\u2014what Meri herself is experiencing as she struggles with memory and her sense of herself and a secret she has kept for ages. The past and present are mingling for Meri: \u201cThe little girl dancing, the illusive figure in the woods, my mother in the kitchen. They weren\u2019t dreams; they appeared before me. The first harbingers. Remember us, they seemed to say. I feared one by one my memories would disappear.\u201d<\/p>\n This novel is full of pain and loss, but it also reveals the best efforts of human beings and their ability to love even when everything around them is falling apart or being blown up. I suspect people of any culture will recognize the importance placed on family ties, and the glimpses into Finnish culture (saunas, for example) are fascinating. And learning a bit about history never hurts except to see that it just seems to repeat.<\/p>\n Hey, Good Luck Out There<\/em> In her debut novel, Hey, Good Luck Out There<\/em>, Georgia Toews channels the writing approach of her mother, Miriam, by mining her life for fiction. The narrator, a 22-year-old woman, enters rehab for alcoholism and describes her experience. Toews herself experienced rehab and like her character, she\u2019s from Winnipeg and now lives in Toronto. Her grandfather and aunt committed suicide. It\u2019s clear from the beginning that the character suffers from loneliness, among other problems, and perhaps what is the strongest element of the novel is its exploration of what may lead people to various addictions. <\/p>\n Toews\u2019 narrator is, perhaps, lucky compared to many of the other women. She has a loving family. Her parents, while divorced and with other partners, care about their daughter. Her brother and grandmother (a Blue Jays fan like Lottie in Miriam Toews\u2019 All My Puny Sorrows) <\/em>love and support her. The stories of some of the other women are horrific, the worst being that of Steph, a 17-year-old addict who is homeless and has been raped by her father. But the narrator has also suffered sexual assault as have many of the other women.<\/p>\n The daily grind of the facility is beyond tedious. It\u2019s hard to see how numerous group therapy sessions in which the women are supposed to talk about their lives would help. Plus there\u2019s little to do apart from a few chores and talking. Several women are repeat participants. Perhaps the format signals the extreme difficulty of combatting addiction\u2014everything else must be cleared away to make space for healing. Toews does an excellent job of showing how frustrated her narrator is by the whole thing, while also delving into her need to make connections with the other women, no matter how hard that is. The women form a constantly changing core group of friends, and all the while Toews is paying attention to what constitutes friendship. Often it simply means ganging up to bully another woman.<\/p>\n The pain of addiction is no doubt compounded by all the other challenges. Most of the women don\u2019t know what to do with their lives. They are struggling to survive on all levels. Toews\u2019 narrator studied creative writing but is wary of the power of words: \u201cI didn\u2019t like to write deep shit, stuff about my<\/em> specific feelings, because I\u2019d learned it could be used against you. If you take a slab of yourself and put it on the page, there\u2019s no one guaranteeing your slab is protected.\u201d The narrator has a pink journal, a gift from her grandmother, that she uses to vent, and ultimately the novel is her slab on the page. As most people don\u2019t go to rehab, the book provides a thoughtful study of the process.<\/p>\n The book also provides glimpses into the contemporary world for older readers. One of the first shocking bits for me was the narrator\u2019s revelation about the internet and anorexia: \u201cI\u2019d never been able to throw up soberly. I\u2019d tried, I\u2019d spent a terrifying few hours scrolling through pro-ana websites when I was fifteen.\u201d Knowing what children can see on the internet is one thing, but having it presented in such a fashion is quite another. What a world. Violence is common, particularly violence against women, and Toews does a terrific job of showing how much appearance counts for both her narrator and other characters. Descriptions of crude tattoos and badly bitten fingernails are visual cues to the rampant despair.<\/p>\n Being in a 30-day program is only part of the picture. What happens when the narrator leaves is developed in the second part of the novel. She needs to find a place to live, a job, a purpose. Toronto is expensive. Again, she has help from her parents, but they are both coping with varying degrees of success in their new families. The narrator\u2019s father is an alcoholic, and her mother has attempted suicide. For that matter, so has the narrator. So the question of what causes addiction appears tied to both nature (heredity) and nurture (environment). The nurture aspect seems to be more lack of positive nurture; trauma is clearly a possible instigator of addiction as people struggle to suppress pain. This struggle may be widespread: \u201cI\u2019m just so fucking sad,\u201d I whispered. Every fucking millennial is<\/em>.\u201d It\u2019s not just millennials.<\/p>\n This book gives insight into something that affects everyone in society. You don\u2019t have to be an addict. The power of Toews\u2019 novel lies in its humanizing of people who are often misunderstood or rejected. Hey, Good Luck Out There<\/em> refuses to offer a pat ending or solutions. Instead it raises valuable questions.<\/p>\n Dreaming Home<\/em> Toronto writer Lucian Childs\u2019 debut novel could be read as a cautionary tale of what happens when a family is subjugated to the homophobic views of the father, a deeply religious Vietnam vet who fails to see the potential destruction of his decisions. Told in six chapters from different points of view and moving through time, the novel revolves around Kyle, who in 1977 is fifteen years old. <\/p>\n The opening chapter, \u201cRachel,\u201d is a first-person account by Kyle\u2019s twelve-year-old sister, Rachel. Childs employs the slang of the times for Rachel\u2019s narrative. She has been indoctrinated by her father and his religion, and when she discovers that Kyle is gay, she thinks he is going to hell. And she tells her father because the Bible says she\u2019s her \u201cbrother\u2019s keeper.\u201d As expected, the father goes berserk and beats his son. That\u2019s bad enough, but then he decides to pack him off to one of those appalling pray-the-gay-away joints, and the suffering simply intensifies. Diane, Kyle\u2019s mother, appears unable to help her son and disappears into a bottle. Rachel has to cope with her own guilt for her misguided actions, while missing her brother and trying to deal with the fact that her mother blames her for Kyle\u2019s absence, calling her a \u201ctreacherous child.\u201d She has forgotten that Rachel is a child and is behaving according to what she is taught. This is not a viable family.<\/p>\n Kyle is a sensitive boy and a good artist. His goal is to become an architect and he draws his dream home. Childs is clearly exploring the idea of what makes a home, especially when the potential inhabitants have been ravaged by contempt. Kyle and Rachel are both nearly broken by what happens when they are young. The novel jumps forward in increments of time to disclose what happens to the family members and the people close to them.<\/p>\n The second chapter, \u201cThe Boys at the Ministry,\u201d gives a devastating look at the institution where Kyle is sent. The chapter is narrated by the incarcerated boys and describes what happens, especially to Kyle. None of it is good. The boys are attacked, verbally and physically, while being made to memorize chunks of scripture. It\u2019s a nightmare. Childs does an excellent job of showing the idiocy of such treatment and the various effects on the boys. They turn on each other in most cases, simply to preserve themselves: \u201cFor scripture counsels us that if another believer sins, we must rebuke them.\u201d This religion is, as Diane says, \u201cfilled with hate.\u201d If only she had done something to understand and protect her children, but she too can be seen as a victim. It\u2019s hard to feel sympathy for her though, as Kyle and Rachel have no power at all.<\/p>\n From his initial home in Texas, Kyle makes it to San Francisco, the gay magnet. The novel details his attempts to become an architect, even though he lacks the academic training required. His struggles to support himself are heart-breaking as he is not afraid of work. Once in San Francisco, he makes friends and has lovers. But there\u2019s an enormous hole in him. Kyle is a fascinating character, but he is always at a remove, both from the other characters and the reader. He does reconnect with his mother, but Diane is such an unlikable and selfish character, that it\u2019s hard to believe he loves her except that he has a lingering childhood need for someone to take care of him. She bulldozes her way into his life, and while I think we are supposed to feel sorry for her and admire her ability to survive, I just can\u2019t.<\/p>\n The person I do have a lot of sympathy for is Rachel. It\u2019s an utter tragedy that a mistake a twelve-year-old girl makes has such a grave effect on her life. And the men Kyle gets involved with also suffer as they cannot help Kyle or manage his depression. The one friend Kyle does maintain is Rebecca, a lesbian in a relationship with two other women. She does help Kyle, and their bond is strong, if somewhat transactional.<\/p>\n The technique of slicing into life at intervals can work well in a novel, but the added complication of various narrators often means that readers simply have to guess or ignore what is going on with other characters, especially Kyle. What we get is his effect on others. And given his early trauma, he seems unable to fully communicate or connect with others. It could be argued that everyone is damaged in some way, but to be harmed because of homosexuality is avoidable. Or in the case of Rachel, to be ostracized for doing what you\u2019ve been told is what you should do\u2014and you are a child\u2014is unforgivable. What\u2019s quite scary is that the type of religion Childs describes in this novel has nothing to do with love or forgiveness. And it\u2019s a version of religion that appears to be gaining ground in some parts of the US. Maybe if people understood the deleterious effects of their homophobia, they would change their behaviour. I can hope, can\u2019t I?<\/p>\n Isolated Incident<\/em> Mariam Pirbhai is a university professor and child of immigrants, and no doubt these experiences have given her great insight into the lives of the characters in her debut novel, Isolated Incident<\/em>, which focusses on three young people trying to find their place in the world. Set in Toronto, with its huge population of immigrants, the novel sensitively explores the challenges faced by immigrants and their children as they are caught between cultures.<\/p>\n Born and raised in Toronto, specifically North York, Kashif Siddiqui ponders his future. His mother has cancer, and his father has departed the family home to live with another women. Kashif finds some solace in his volunteer work at the Islamic Cultural Centre, and he attempts to learn more about Islam, the religion neither of his parents are particularly committed to. The novel opens with a shocking event: the Centre is attacked. No one is hurt, and the incident is seen as \u201cisolated\u201d by police. But as Pirbhai shows, violence, whether verbal or physical, is an ever-present threat in varying degrees. Kashif is sweet young man who helps support his mother and who misses his father. He works at a gas station, but certainly doesn\u2019t want that to be permanent. One day when he is waiting for his mother at her cancer treatment, he meets Frank, a police officer on leave, who is also suffering from cancer, and Kashif wonders if he could join the force.<\/p>\n All the characters are connected in various ways. Kashif likes a young woman named Aruba, another volunteer at the Centre. Aruba goes to university and is friends with Marisol. The two women take a women and gender studies class, and Pirbhai uses the class to good effect to introduce the question of how Muslim are treated. The professor lectures on an a horrible real-life case: a man has killed his two daughters, and the murder is branded an \u201chonour killing.\u201d Marisol asks, \u201cI was wondering why honour killings are described as a religious practice, and not as a social or cultural phenomenon? And besides, whose Islam are we talking about\u2014I mean does this family\u2019s background make a difference?\u201d Aruba wonders why the media \u201creferred to the man as Muslim, and referred to his daughters as Canadian. Weren\u2019t they all Canadians?\u201d And she wonders why the other victim, an older woman, is largely left out of the professor\u2019s lecture. The novel shines a light on different kinds of identity, both how people see themselves and how they are seen by others.<\/p>\n The friendship between Aruba and Marisol is complicated by the fact that Aruba is quite religious. She wears a hijab and suffers the indignity of being called out by some awful teenager son the bus. And then one pulls off her hijab. Marisol is gay, and Aruba has difficulty integrating that fact into her concept of Islam. Like any religion, Islam has adherents in diverse ways. The problem is that Muslims all seem to be lumped together, especially when something negative happens. The novel deals with this fact beautifully while also educating readers about some aspects of Islam in a deeply sensitive manner.<\/p>\n The older adults have their own problems. Frank is divorced and estranged from his son. He has the corny and somewhat annoying habit of mispronouncing names and turning phrases into acronyms, but he is basically a good guy. In fact, most of the characters are simply ordinary people trying to live their lives. Aruba\u2019s father is dead, and her mother has gone back to Pakistan because of her father\u2019s ill health. Marisol\u2019s parents, a Lebanese-Canadian professor and a Guatemalan-Canadian lawyer live in Montreal, support heir daughter, and welcome her friends into their home. The religious leaders of the Muslim community struggle to know how to react to the attack on the Centre. It\u2019s all so believable.<\/p>\n Isolated Incident<\/em> both entertains and instructs. Novels which reveal the lives of immigrants should be read. One of the best lines comes from Kashif who thinks, \u201cCouldn\u2019t [the community elders] see they wore a distorted target on their backs, making them ripe for suspicion and attack? Did they have to accept prejudice as the price to pay for living here, like an undisclosed immigration fee?\u201d And added to the issues raised by Pirbhai, the novel also touches on First Nations land claims because immigration has gone on for centuries and caused all kinds of problems while giving many people opportunities for a better life. Pirbhai shows the complexity of all these concerns. And starting to deal with them requires some knowledge of what they are.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Essay, Poetry, and Fiction Reviews Imagination\u2019s Many Rooms by Amatoritsero Ede, Griots Lounge Publishing, 180 pages, $21.99, ISBN: 978-1-7776884-9-3 This edited collection of creative-cum-literary nonfiction essays previously published in the Maple Tree Literary Supplement website gives insight into many of the cultural concerns of the writer Amatoritsero Ede. He is the editor of the journal and an award-winning poet,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2217"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5111,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217\/revisions\/5111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nby Amatoritsero Ede,
\nGriots Lounge Publishing,
\n180 pages, $21.99,
\nISBN: 978-1-7776884-9-3<\/p>\n
\nby George Elliott Clarke,
\nExile Editions,
\n198 pages, $26.95
\nISBN: 978-1-55096-953-5<\/p>\n
\nThen came moseying the mint-condition, yellow newsprint\u2014
\ncozy letters as black as burnt-over land, the buried deaths,
\nso a screen could wash yellow like piss-gilded snow,
\nmy niggered narcissus self get mangled stigmatically\u2014
\ncos I couldn\u2019t say what I\u2019d quote cos I didn\u2019t yet know.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nWhy she gotta be murdered?
\nIndigenous insisting,
\nJustice<\/em> for our massacred.<\/p>\n
\nmust be cancelled<\/em> to assert sincere Solidarity<\/em>
\nwith any community of righteous Grievance<\/em>
\nis to posit a blatant Tyranny!<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nand the black ink flickers, smudged,
\nfluting skyward as smoke.
\nImmediately saying no would have avoided so much of this pain. But it may have caused another kind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nAfter the Harvest<\/em>
\nby Keagan Hawthorne,
\nGaspereau Press,
\n80 pages, $22.95
\nISBN: 9781554472529<\/p>\n
\nhas gone around back to feed the birds.
\nCooked cracked corn in a metal pail,
\nhe coos at the cocks who slip him wary looks
\nwhile they beck the mash,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nedited by Mireille Silcoff,
\nBiblioasis, 226 pages, $22.95
\nISBN: 978-1-77196-503-3<\/p>\n
\nedited by Mark Anthony Jarman
\nBiblioasis, 210 pages, $22.95
\nISBN: 978-1-77196-501-9<\/p>\n
\n <\/p>\n
\nedited by John Barton,
\nBiblioasis, 192 pages, $22.95
\nISBN: 978-1-77196-499-9<\/p>\n
\nby Laila Re,
\nMawenzi House,
\n148 pages, $22.95
\nISBN: 978-1-774150-85-6<\/p>\n
\nby Alex Pugsley,
\nBiblioasis,
\n190 pages, $22.95,
\nISBN: 978-1-77196-469-2<\/p>\n
\nby John Metcalf,
\nBiblioasis,
\n446 pages, $32.95
\nISBN: 978-1-77196-449-4<\/p>\n
\nby Saeed Teebi,
\nAnansi Press,
\n246 pages, $22.99
\nISBN: 978-1-4870-1087-4<\/p>\n
\nby Liisa Kovala,
\nLatitude 46 Publishing,
\n342 pages, $22.95
\nISBN: 9781988989471<\/p>\n
\nby Georgia Toews,
\nDoubleday Canada, 330 pages, $27.00
\nISBN: 978-0-385-69671-5<\/p>\n
\nby Lucian Childs,
\nBiblioasis,
\n224 pages, $22.95
\nISBN: 978-1-77196-549-1<\/p>\n
\nby Mariam Pirbhai,
\nMawenzi House,
\n214 pages, $22.95
\nISBN: 978-10774150-88-7<\/p>\n