“Lily: They’re all dead now,” (Act 1, Prologue, 14).
An adaption of Ann-Marie Macdonald’s novel of the same name, the play follows piano tuner James Piper and his thirteen-year-old wife Materia Mahmoud, their four daughters Kathleen, Frances, Mercedes, and Lily. Dark secrets are unearthed as each daughter tries to find their place in the world, haunted by the mistakes of the past and, somehow, finding joy hidden as well. Continue reading
I received this book from the editor in exchange for an honest review.
“Despair followed me like a lingering shadow. The passage of days and nights became a seamless blur, rendering the concept of time inconsequential…Believing death to be my sole escape, I grappled with the realization that both suicide and homosexuality were considered sins,” (“Convert” by Gemma Hickey, 155).
Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories on Conversion Therapy is a collection of accounts by queer and trans writers recalling traumatic forms of conversion practices they’ve experienced in the hopes that such practices will no longer be used to shame, demonize, and traumatize people in the LGTBQ2S+. Continue reading
“Rarely in life does one occasion upon irrevocable proof of a higher power. But sometimes a coincidence stretched not just the bounds of credulity, but possibility,” (Malla 15).
After surviving a plane crash, an unnamed narrator and another survivor, K. Sohail, find themselves stranded on an island anything but deserted. Holding a Wellness Couples retreat, our narrator and K. Sohail are mistaken for the Dhaliwals, who have probably been killed in a helicopter crash. Taking their identities, the new Dhaliwals are welcomed by a robot named Jerome, learn about the subject of Trunity by the unfamous Brad Beard, and have sessions of erotic counselling with Professor Sayer. But this seemingly idyllic paradise is not what it seems, and K. Sohail at least is determined to find out what is happening while our narrator cheers her on. Continue reading
I received this book from River Street Writing in exchange for an honest review.
“By not claiming space for my art, I am the aporia, the one feigning uncertainty, the one who pretends to others like I don’t know what it is I want to do,” (Purdham 187).
A long time advocate for people with disabilities as a mother of a daughter with Down Syndrome, Adelle Purdham discusses ableism, motherhood, nature, and more in her book of essays. Continue reading
“The basic story was far from original. But in the hands of two visionary creators like David Lynch and Mark Frost, Twin Peaks took the familiar and transformed it into a series no one could have anticipated,” (Burns 2).
In Wrapped in Plastic: Twin Peaks, Andy Burns takes a look at the early nineties show Twin Peaks and how it made a mark on the cultural zeitgeist at the time before seemingly disappearing from the mainstream, though leaving it’s mark regardless on the television shows and movies we watch today. Continue reading
“We were girls…bad girls, neurotic girls, needy girls, wayward girls, selfish girls, girls with Electra complexes, girls trying to fill a void, girls who needed attention, girls with pasts, girls from broken homes, girls who needed discipline, girls desperate to fit in, girls in trouble, girls who couldn’t say no.
But for girls like us, down there at the Home, the devil turned out to be our only friend,” (Hendrix 6).
After telling her family she’s pregnant, fifteen-year-old Fern is sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida to deliver her baby, give it up for adoption, and then return home as if nothing ever happened, a common enough though unspoken thing in the 1970s. As Fern settles in with her hippie roommate Rose, mute Holly, and aspiring musician Zinnia, the girls do chores, have their diets restricted, and have every moment of their lives controlled by the stern Miss Wellwood. But there is some respite from the bookmobile which visits the home every two weeks, and Miss Parcae, the old librarian who gives Fern a book that could change everything, for a price. Continue reading
“If someone looks out at the world…they should not be surprised if the world looks back,” (Leduc 61).
In 19th-century Scotland, Josiah MacDougal is banished to Siberia with a small Christian mission after claiming that animals can speak to him. While scrubbing the floor of the church one night, he is visited by God in animal form, two hyenas who tell him he is needed elsewhere. Once returned home, Josiah founds a religion where he believes that the hyena’s divine speech is a plan from God to heal and raised up the human race. But the hyenas, Barbara and Kendrith, are having second thoughts about Josiah and disappear and reappear throughout hundreds of years following the wind while animals around the world start to speak and free themselves, forcing humans to recognize the wildness within themselves. Continue reading
I received this book from River Street Writing in exchange for an honest review.
“Like many stories of origin, the story of peace-making takes place in the teeth of its opposite. Civil life must be carefully built against the dark threat of distrust and violence. Part of the story told in this book is that the ideal of friendship and alliance pictured in the image of linked arms, and its betrayal, is so deeply embedded in Canadians’ collective unconscious that it remains our country’s constitutional – or even better, our constitutive – relationship,” (Coleman 15).
In April 2006, Daniel Coleman went into his office at McMaster University and learned that the campus was providing lodging for police officers who had raised the site of an Indigenous land dispute near Caledonia, Ontario. From here, Coleman’s thought differently about Indigenous issues, which he’d already long supported, and began working closely with Indigenous scholars to understanding the Wampum covenants and seeing if there is a way to repair the relationship with Indigenous peoples and communities and the land itself. Continue reading
“The cells of your body are dying and growing again every day, and you are always in the process of becoming something new. You’re not sure yet who you will be, but you are ready to find out,” (Stevenson ix).
N.D. Stevenson looks back at eight years of their life (2011-2019) through mini comics and old blog posts remembering the highs and lows of various years as they discovered who they truly were.
A note before starting. The Fire Never Goes Out was published by N.D. Stevenson before he came out as transgender and therefore the book uses his deadname and N.D. also refers to himself using old pronouns. For this review I will be using N.D. Stevenson’s correct name and pronouns. Continue reading
“It’s an exquisite privilege to watch someone die, knowing you caused it. Almost worth getting dolled up for,” (Skuse).
Rhiannon Lewis lives an average life. She lives with her boyfriend Craig in a nice enough apartment, adores her chihuahua Tink, collects Sylvanian family creatures, and is trying but failing to get ahead in her job working for a small newspaper. She used to be a bit of a celebrity, being the sole survivor of a famous crime, but now her life consists of listening to her friends plans for marriage as they starr families of their own and writing lists in her diary. Kill lists, for the cashier who packs her groceries wrong, to the homeless man that looks like Ed Sheeran, to anyone Rhiannon deems worthy of a kill. And she’s got a long list. Continue reading
Sarah O'Connor 