I received this book from The Next Best Book Club in exchange for an honest review. “Language is a cross-cultural love story of chatty merchants, violated verb conjugations, insolvent loan words, and forgotten Latin declensions. Language is a giant swingers party where slang swaps partners with grammar. Language is an hourglass of human culture, a vivid ekphrasis …
CW: Sexual assault (off-page), animal death. “I will hide her small truths in this story and she will take shape among the pages, emerge like a pop-up, come face to face with the reader. Then they will know. Then, his story will be concluded,” (Parker 86). Famous Canadian author Baby Davidson is writing a memoir, or …
“I think it is critical that non-Indigenous Canadians be aware of how deeply the Indian Act penetrated, controlled, and continues to control, most aspects of the lives of First Nations. It is an instrument of oppression,” (Joseph 4). I didn’t learn about residential schools until I was in university and to this day I’m grateful for my …
“These letters, and the people who wrote them, were a lifeline for me, an antidote, a cure for the sudden stillness of the wheels under me,” (Coyote 5). During the beginning of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Ivan Coyote found themselves grounded in Ontario after years of performing and speaking around the world. During this time, …
“If it had not rained on a certain May morning Valancy Stirling’s whole life would have been entirely different,” (Montgomery 9). Twenty-nine-year-old Valancy Stirling lives a sad and lonely life with her overbearing mother and strange aunt, never having been in love and considered the “old maid” of the Stirling clan. The only solace she …
I received this book from Playwrights Canada Press in exchange for an honest review. “At some point you have to admit the truth,” (Cardinal 62). Maria and her two children, pregnant teenager Lisa and excitable preteen Jude, have just moved in to a beautiful new house. Her children can’t believe it, it’s too good to be true, …
“Shame is a way of life here. It’s stocked in the vending machines, stuck like gum under desks, spoken in the morning devotionals,” (McQuiston 288). Four years after moving with her moms from sunny California to False Beach, Alabama and attending Willowgrove Christian Academy, Chloe Green is so close to winning she can almost taste …
“We often use our belief in another person’s ‘resilience’ as an emotional shield. We protect ourselves from the discomfort, confusion, and helplessness we feel in the face of their trauma. It’s a kind of looking away; it lets our worldview go unchallenged and lets our life continue with minimal disruption,” (Perry 187). What Happened To …
“I write as though I’m writing about someone else. ‘I’ is an invention to prove we exist. ‘I’ is the line drawn through the fabric of time. ‘I’ imposes meaning on random events. ‘I’ implies significance,” (Thanh 16). Yasuko Thanh’s memoir follows her early childhood in Victoria, B.C as an honour role student and embracer …
I received this book from Playwrights Canada Press in exchange for an honest review. “Pickle veggies on the side, milky coffee on the ice Your pick of rice, friend or white, at no additional price Not only that, I got a burner stove and cans of gas So you can slurp a bowl of pho …
Sarah O'Connor 