Afleveringen
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Ellen Chang-Richardson’s breathtaking poetry collection, Blood/Belies, was released in spring 2024 by Wolsak & Wynn and was a third bestseller in nonfiction in Calgary, Alberta.
Chang-Richardson writes of race, of injury and of belonging in stunning poems that fade in and out of the page. History swirls through this collection like a summer storm, as they bring their father’s, and their own, stories to light, writing against the background of the institutional racism of Canada, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the head tax and more. From Taiwan in the early 1990s to Oakville in the late 1990s, Toronto in the 2010s, Cambodia in the mid-1970s and Ottawa in the 2020s, Blood Belies takes the reader through time, asking them what it means to look the way we do? To carry scars? To persevere? To hope?
About Ellen Chang-Richardson:
Ellen Chang-Richardson is an award-winning poet of Taiwanese and Chinese Cambodian descent whose multi-genre writing has appeared in Augur, The Ex-Puritan, The Fiddlehead, Grain, third coast magazine, Vallum Contemporary, Watch Your Head and more.
Born in Toronto, Ontario, they were raised in Oakville, Ontario and São Paulo, Brazil, and spent their most formative years growing up in Shanghai, China. A third culture kid at heart, Ellen's writing is informed by their love of contemporary art, their concern with the climate crisis, and their experience moving through the world as they are.
The co-founder of Riverbed Reading Series, an editor for Room and long con magazine, and a member of the poetry collective VII, Ellen is currently based in Ottawa, Canada, on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Nation. You can usually find them baking sourdough bread from their starter, Bubbles, or biking the riverside trails on their single-speed.
About Hollay Ghadery:
Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.
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The Donoghue Girl (Latitude 46, 2024) is heart-wrenching historical fiction from beloved Canadian author, Kim Fahner. .With her incomparable ability to create immersive worlds, Fahner tells the story of an Irish Catholic family in a Northern Ontario mining town almost a hundred years ago.
Willful, headstrong Lizzie is our relatable protagonist and we follow her through an uncertain courtship, a difficult pregnancy, an absent husband, and family expectations that threaten to undo her. The result is a riveting tale that transports us back in time, while also encouraging us to examine patriarchal systems and expectations that continue to shape and subjugate the lives of women today. With an unforgettable cast of characters and a gripping take on Canadian history, Fahner has gifted us a complex and moving tale in The Donoghue Girl.
More About The Donoghue Girl:
Longing for a life bigger than the one she inhabits, Lizzie Donoghue thinks she’s found a simple escape route in Michael Power, but soon discovers that she might have been mistaken…
The Donoghue Girl is the story of Lizzie Donoghue, the spirited daughter of Irish immigrants who desperately wants to not only escape Creighton—the Northern Ontario mining town where her family runs a general store—but also the oppressive confines of twentieth-century patriarchy.
About Kim Fahner:
Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. She has published two chapbooks, You Must Imagine the Cold Here (Scrivener, 1997) and Fault Lines and Shatter Cones (Emergency Flash Mob Press, 2023), as well as five full books of poetry, including: braille on water (Penumbra Press, 2001), The Narcoleptic Madonna (Penumbra Press, 2012), Some Other Sky (Black Moss Press, 2017), These Wings (Pedlar Press, 2019), and Emptying the Ocean (Frontenac House, 2022). Kim is the First Vice-Chair of The Writers' Union of Canada (2023-25), a full member of the League of Canadian Poets, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. She was Poet Laureate for the City of Greater Sudbury from 2016-18.
About Hollay Ghadery:
Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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PEI author Steven Mayoff's newest book, The Island Gospel According to Samson Grief (Radiant Press, 2023) masterfully disrupts the idyllic picture often painted of Prince Edward Island. This is a darkly funny and thrilling story of spiritual dissonance and cultural satire in Canada's most wholesome province.
Samson Grief, a reclusive painter from Prince Edward Island, is confronted by three red-haired figments of his imagination in the form of Judas Iscariot, Fagin, and Shylock. They claim to be messengers of “The Supreme One”, a genderless deity who has decreed PEI to be the new Promised Land, who also wants Samson to build the Island’s first synagogue. Scared, confused, and seriously doubting his sanity, Samson eventually, though grudgingly, accepts the challenge amid increasingly bizarre obstacles in a new dystopian world.
About Steven Mayoff:
Steven Mayoff (he/him) was born in Montreal and moved to Prince Edward Island in 2001. His books include the story collection Fatted Calf Blues (Turnstone Press, 2009), the novel Our Lady of Steerage (Bunim & Bannigan, 2015), the poetry chapbook Leonard’s Flat (Grey Borders Books, 2018), the poetry collection Swinging Between Water and Stone (Guernica Editions, 2019) and the novel The Island Gospel According to Samson Grief (Radiant Press, 2023). As a lyricist, he has collaborated with composer Ted Dykstra on Dion a Rock Opera, which will receive its world premiere at the Coal Mine Theatre in Toronto in February 2024. His website is www.stevenmayoff.ca
About Hollay Ghadery:
Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.
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A wolf’s howl is felt in the body. Frightening and compelling, incomprehensible or entirely knowable, it is a sound that may be heard as threat or invitation but leaves no listener unaffected.
Toothsome fiends, interfering pests, or creatures wild and free, wolves have been at the heart of Canada’s national story since long before Confederation. Villain, Vermin, Icon, Kin: Wolves and the Making of Canada (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022) by Dr. Stephanie Rutherford contends that the role in which wolves have been cast - monster or hero - has changed dramatically through time. Exploring the social history of wolves in Canada, Dr. Rutherford weaves an innovative tapestry from the varied threads of historical and contemporary texts, ideas, and practices in human-wolf relations, from provincial bounties to Farley Mowat’s iconic Never Cry Wolf. These examples reveal that Canada was made, in part, through relationships with nonhuman animals.
Wolves have always captured the human imagination. In sketching out the connections people have had with wolves at different times, Villain, Vermin, Icon, Kin offers a model for more ethical ways of interacting with animals in the face of a global biodiversity crisis.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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Justin K.H. Tse captures the voices of Cantonese Protestant Christians from the San Francisco, Vancouver, and Hong Kong metropolitan areas as they reflect on their efforts to adapt to secular communities while retaining their identity and beliefs.
In the context of the transpacific region between Asia and the Americas, the “Pacific Rim” refers to a window of time in which predominant narratives emphasized skilled migration and the rise of multicultural societies—the era before the rise of Chinese nationalism in 2012 and the Hong Kong protests. Diasporic Cantonese Protestant Christians of this time were frequently portrayed as a homogenous people bringing their Chinese culture and Christian communities from Hong Kong to cities such as Vancouver and San Francisco—sometimes contesting liberal developments like same-sex marriage but also offering new democratic awareness.
Sheets of Scattered Sand: Cantonese Protestants and the Secular Dream of the Pacific Rim (U Notre Dame Press, 2024) challenges that depiction of Cantonese Protestants with authentic voices from the community. Based on research done in the San Francisco Bay area, Vancouver, and Hong Kong, author Justin K.H. Tse finds that Cantonese Protestants consider themselves “sheets of scattered sand”—politically disparate and ideologically fragmented, but united in a sense of tension with the secular world. Tse’s work serves as an illuminating prequel to contemporary stories of the Hong Kong protests and a newly emergent Asian American politics, underscoring the importance of incorporating these voices in wider reflections on Christianity and secularity.
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Tim Bowling is the award-winning author of the poetry collection In the Capital City of Autumn (Wolsak & Wynn, April 9, 2024). Tim is the author of twenty-four works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He is the recipient of numerous honours, including two Edmonton Artists’ Trust Fund Awards, five Alberta Book Awards, a Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal, two Writers’ Trust of Canada nominations, two Governor General’s Award nominations and a Guggenheim Fellowship in recognition of his entire body of work.
In the Capital City of Autumn is an absorbing collection of poems that show Bowling’s mastery of language and imagery. Now living in Edmonton, Tim spent the first thirty years of his life in the town of Ladner, BC, at the mouth of the Fraser River, where he worked in the salmon fishing industry. His love of the natural world, along with his love of language, and his experiences as a child and as a father of three children (now young adults) all reveal themselves in his unmistakably transcendent poems that trace universal themes of love, loss, and finding home.
Bowling has yet again proven himself to be one of the prominent voices in Canadian poetry with this new collection, and cemented himself further as a must-read author.
More About In the Capital City of Autumn:
Tim Bowling is in top form in his latest collection of poetry, In the Capital City of Autumn. Threading through autumnal themes such as the loss of his mother and the demolition of his childhood home, his children growing and the inevitable passage of time, Bowling writes with rich lyricism and imagery. Sweet William and loosely woven woollen mitts for his mother, the moon as “an egg in the pocket of a running thief” for time, salmon for eternity. In the Capital City of Autumn, the characters of The Great Gatsby come to life, and three a.m. brings wisdom. These are masterful poems, lightened with a touch of whimsy, poems to sink into on a quiet evening.
About Hollay Ghadery:
Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.
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Despite all we know about the Civil War, its causes, battles, characters, issues, impacts, and legacy, few books have explored Canada’s role in the bloody conflict that claimed more than 600,000 lives. Until From Underground Railroad to Rebel Refuge: Canada and the Civil War (ECW Press, 2022) by Brian Martin.
A surprising 20,000 Canadians went south to take up arms on both sides of the conflict, while thousands of enslaved people, draft dodgers, deserters, recruiters, plotters, and spies fled northward to take shelter in the attic that is Canada. Though many escaped slavery and found safety through the Underground Railroad, they were later joined by KKK members wanted for murder. Confederate President Jefferson Davis along with several of his emissaries and generals found refuge on Canadian soil, and many plantation owners moved north of the border.
Award-winning journalist Brian Martin will open eyes in both Canada and the United States to how the two countries and their citizens interacted during the Civil War and the troubled times that surrounded it.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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Set in 1977, Johnny Delivers (Guernica Editions, 2024) tells the absorbing story of 18-year-old Johnny Wong—the son of Chinese immigrants to Canada—who calls on the spirit of Bruce Lee to help him navigate the still relevant challenges of racism and how it permeates our interiority, our institutions, our relationships, and our livelihood. Toxic masculinity, homophobia, and the struggle for belonging. With the 100th Anniversary of the Enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act in Canada barely behind us, the themes explored in this book are particularly salient. An exciting and heart-wrenching story combined with the distinctly Canadian setting and universal themes make this book a wonderful book to read.
Wayne Ng was born in downtown Toronto to Chinese immigrants who fed him a steady diet of bitter melon and kung fu movies. Ng is a social worker who lives to write, travel, eat, and play, preferably all at the same time. He is an award-winning author and traveler who continues to push his boundaries from the Arctic to the Antarctic. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and goldfish.
Ng is the author of The Family Code, shortlisted for the Guernica Prize; Letters From Johnny, winner of the Crime Writers of Canada Award for Best Crime Novella and a finalist for the Ottawa Book Award; Johnny Delivers; and Finding the Way: A Novel of Lao Tzu.
Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.
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Armand Garnet Ruffo's staggeringly powerful poetry collection, The Dialogues: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow, was published in spring 2024 by Wolsak & Wynn. This collection of poems and lyric essays brings to life not only the story of the famed WWI Indigenous sniper, but also the complexities of telling Indigenous stories.
From Wasauksing (Parry Island) to the trenches of WWI to the stage, Ruffo moves seamlessly through time in these poems, taking the reader on a captivating journey through Pegahmagabow’s story and onto the creation of Sounding Thunder, the opera based on his life. Throughout, Ruffo uses the Ojibwe concept of two-eyed seeing, which combines the strengths of western and Indigenous ways of knowing, and invites the reader to do the same, particularly through the inclusion of the Anishinaabemowin language within the collection.
These are poems that challenge western conventions of thinking, that celebrate hope and that show us a new way to see the world. The collection also just won the Betsy Garland Award for hybrid genre books.
Armand Garnet Ruffo is an Anishinaabe writer from Treaty #9 territory in northern Ontario. A recipient of an Honourary Life Membership Award from the League of Canadian Poets and the Latner Griffin Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize, he is recognized as a major contributor to both Indigenous literature and Indigenous literary scholarship in Canada. His publications Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing into Thunderbird (2014) and Treaty # (2019) were finalists for Govenor General’s Literary Awards. He teaches at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
Hollay Ghadery is a multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, is scheduled for release with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.
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A Necessary Distance: Confessions of a Scriptwriter’s Daughter (Wolsak & Wynn, 2024) by critically acclaimed author Julie Salverson braids together personal memoir, Canadian cultural history, international political history, to form an inter-generational story that is both personal and public.
A Necessary Distance is a detective story, an excavation of clues and traces, an inter-generational encounter. Starting with her father’s notebooks of an epic around-the world journey, Salverson also uncovers other information that hints at the personal, cultural and social forces that shaped her father’s journey—his childhood among poor Icelandic immigrants and the force that was his Governor General's Award-winning mother, the reality of making a living in early Canadian radio and television. As Salverson writes: “The notebooks are on delicate paper. The daughter deciphers the scratches of pencil marks. Already they tell her this is not the man she thought she knew. She hopes they will lead her to her father.”
Thoughtful in its reflections on cultural politics and family entanglements, acutely personal and unflinching in its questioning of assumptions and easy answers, A Necessary Distance is a captivating witness to the risks, and rewards, of opening the closets of family and national histories.
Julie Salverson is a nonfiction writer, playwright, editor, scholar and theatre animator. She is a fourth-generation Icelandic Canadian writer: her father, George, wrote early CBC radio and television drama and her grandmother Laura won two Governor General’s Awards (1937, 1939). Julie’s theatre, opera, books and essays embrace the relationship of imagination and foolish witness to risky stories and trauma. She works on atomic culture, community-engaged theatre and the place of the foolish witness in social, political and interpersonal generative relationships. Salverson offers resiliency and peer-support workshops to communities dealing with trauma and has many years of experience teaching and running workshops. Recent publications include When Words Sing: Seven Canadian Libretti (Playwrights Canada Press) and Lines of Flight: An Atomic Memoir (Wolsak & Wynn). Plays include Thumbelina and The Haunting of Sophie Scholl. Julie is Professor Emerita of Drama at Queen’s University’s DAN School of Drama and Music.
Hollay Ghadery is a multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, is scheduled for release with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.
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Casting an eye toward the frantic vertical urbanization of Toronto, Condoland: The Planning, Design, and Development of Toronto’s CityPlace (UBC, 2023) traces the forty-year history of the city’s largest residential megaproject. James T. White and John Punter summarize the tools used to shape Toronto’s built environment and critically explore the underlying political economy of planning and real estate development in the city.
Using detailed field studies, interviews with key actors, archival research, and with nearly two hundred illustrations, White and Punter reveal how a promise to reproduce Vancouverism, a celebrated model of Canadian urban development, unravelled under an alarmingly flexible approach to planning and design that is acquiescent to the demands of a rapacious development industry. Through a uniquely design-focused evaluation of a phenomenon increasingly known as “condo-ism,” Condoland raises key questions about the sustainability and long-term resilience of city planning.
James T. White is a professor of planning and urban design at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and deputy director of the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence. His published work focuses on how the design of the built environment is shaped by policy, regulation, and the market in both UK and Canadian contexts.
This interview was conducted by Timi Koyejo, a graduate student in urban studies at the University of Vienna. He has worked professionally as a researcher at the University of Chicago and as an urban policy advisor to the City of Chicago.
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Youcef Soufi’s Homegrown Radicals: A Story of State Violence, Islamophobia, and Jihad in the Post-9/11 World (NYU Press, 2025) tells the story of three Muslim university students who disappeared from Winnipeg, Canada. In this gripping narrative, we learn that these young men had become “radicalized”, which brought the attention of Canadian and American security agencies to this small town. What is different about the journey we go on with Soufi is the story of families, friends, and the Muslim community who are left behind grappling with loss, grief, and hyper-surveillance as the result of the disappearance of these young men. From university to the courtroom, and beyond, Soufi’s moving narrative forces us to grapple with the affective injury faced by the Winnipeg Muslim community as discourse of radicalization, Islamophobic state policies, and military response to the war on terror, reminded Muslims of the ungrievability of their lives. Soufi’s writing is poignant; he moves between his scholarly command of Islamic history, archival data, and interviews and deeply vulnerable auto-ethnography. The book is a must read for anyone interested in Muslims and Islam, especially in North America.
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Contested Spaces: A Critical History of Canadian Public Libraries As Neutral Places, 1960-2020 (Library Juice Press, 2024) is the first comprehensive and critical history of controversial events at Canadian public libraries, and an examination of the real-world impacts of neutrality policies in Canadian public library space use.
What events at public libraries in Canada have created controversies and prompted protests? What were the issues at stake? What kinds of outcry or protest occurred? Did politicians get involved? Did the events happen, or did they get cancelled, and why? What kinds of impacts or outcomes resulted? This book answers these questions and brings the Canadian historical context into the ongoing conversations that are critiquing the concept of neutrality in libraries. It considers relevant librarian perspectives alongside critical theories to interrogate the myth of library neutrality, and to seek positive and productive ways for libraries to engage with and serve their communities that honour library values and foster inclusivity, care, safety, and social justice.
Whitney Kemble is the Liaison Librarian for Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Her interests include critical librarianship, social justice in libraries, abolition, fat liberation, and privacy rights and surveillance.
Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive.
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Between 1776 and 1783, Britain hired an estimated 30,000 German soldiers to fight in its war against the Americans. Collectively known as Hessians, they actually came from six German territories within the Holy Roman Empire. Over the course of the war, members of the German corps, including women and children, spent extended periods of time in locations as dispersed and varied as Canada in the North to West Florida and Cuba in the South. They shared in every significant British military triumph and defeat. Thousands died of disease, were killed in battle, were captured by the enemy, or deserted.
Collectively, they recorded their experiences and observations of the war they fought in, the land they traversed, and the people they encountered in a large body of letters, diaries, and similar private and official records. In Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War (Oxford University Press, 2022) Dr. Friederike Baer presents a study of Britain's war against the American rebels from the perspective of the German soldiers, a people uniquely positioned both in the midst of the war and at its margins. The book offers a ground-breaking reimagining of this watershed event in world history.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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The Shawnee leader Tecumseh came to prominence in a war against the United States waged from 1811 to 1815. In 1805, Tecumseh's younger brother Lalawethika (soon to be known as "the Prophet") had a vision for an Indian revitalization movement that would restore Native culture and resist American expansion. Tecumseh organized the growing support for this movement, which came from Indigenous peoples across the Old Northwest and parts of the Great Plains, into a loose but powerful military alliance.
In late 1811, while Tecumseh was away on a recruiting mission in the South, General William Henry Harrison led an army to the center of Native resistance at Prophetstown in present-day Indiana. In the early morning hours of November 7, in what came to be known as the Battle of Tippecanoe, Harrison's men fought off an Indian attack, which marked the beginning of Tecumseh's War. Seven months later, when the United States declared war on Britain, thus initiating the War of 1812, the British and Tecumseh forged an alliance against the United States. Initially, the Anglo-Indian alliance enjoyed considerable success at Detroit, Chicago, Mackinac, and elsewhere, exposing much of the Old Northwest to border warfare, but the tide turned in 1813 when Harrison invaded Canada. On October 5 the American army defeated a much smaller Anglo-Indian force in the climactic Battle of the Thames. Tecumseh was killed in this battle, and although his confederacy disintegrated, British support ensured that the Indian war would continue for another two years with the Sauk chief Black Hawk now providing the inspiration and leadership. Tecumseh's War ended only in late 1815 after the British made peace with the United States and abandoned their native allies.
Tecumseh's War: The Epic Conflict for the Heart of America (Westholme, 2023) is the first complete story of this major conflict. Distinguished historian Donald R. Hickey detaches it from the War of 1812, moving Tecumseh's confederation to center stage to tell the sweeping and engrossing story of this last great Indian War--the last time that Indigenous Peoples had a powerful European ally to oppose United States expansion and thus the lastchance they had of shaping the future of the continent.
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Perceptions of the United States as a nation of immigrants are so commonplace that its history as a nation of emigrants is forgotten. However, once the United States came into existence, its citizens immediately asserted rights to emigrate for political allegiances elsewhere. Quitting the Nation: Emigrant Rights in North America (UNC Press, 2024) recovers this unfamiliar story by braiding the histories of citizenship and the North American borderlands to explain the evolution of emigrant rights between 1750 and 1870.
Eric R. Schlereth traces the legal and political origins of emigrant rights in contests to decide who possessed them and who did not. At the same time, it follows the thousands of people that exercised emigration right citizenship by leaving the United States for settlements elsewhere in North America. Ultimately, Schlereth shows that national allegiance was often no more powerful than the freedom to cast it aside. The advent of emigrant rights had lasting implications, for it suggested that people are free to move throughout the world and to decide for themselves the nation they belong to. This claim remains urgent in the twenty-first century as limitations on personal mobility persist inside the United States and at its borders.
This interview was conducted by Hannah Nolan, a PhD Candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her work focuses upon the intersection of memory, partisanship, and ethnic identity during the early republic to explore the construction of Irish and American identities in the United States.
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Walls profoundly shape the spaces we live in and the places we move through, impinge on our everyday lives, and entangle power relations, identity, and hierarchies. Walled-In: Arctic Housing and a Sociology of Walls (Lexington Books, 2024) explores these effects in the context of Arviat, Nunavut. Lisa-Jo Van den Scott lays out the inherent social processes, arguing that walls, in addition to concealing colonial power relations, are boundary objects, cultural objects, and technological objects. Van den Scott's ethnography of Arviammiut's (people of Arviat's) contemporary lived experiences reveals the ways in which Arviammiut are living in a foreign space, how this impacts their experiences, and how they exercise agency in navigating and reinventing these spaces in resilient and heterogenous ways.
Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is at the intersection of built-environment, experience, identity, and place. He is currently conducting research on the negotiation of identity and place for residents at the neighborhood level. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at [email protected].
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A gritty ride through Toronto's immigrant neighbourhoods, Christie Pits (Dirty Water Comics, 2019) tells the incredible true story of when young Jewish and Italian immigrants squared off against Nazi-inspired thugs on the streets of Toronto. This is the history of a gruff and unrecognizable Canada - one of 'swastika clubs' and public bigotry.A homemade swastika flag flown at a public baseball game was the spark that found tinder in these untenable and hateful conditions. What followed was the worst race riot in Canadian history. Archival research and first-hand interviews lend historical depth to an unknown story of resistance against hatred in uncertain times.
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In Black Expression and White Generosity: A Theoretical Framework of Race (Emerald Publishing, 2024), Dr. Natalie Wall takes readers on a journey through the tropes and narratives of white generosity, from the onset of the African slave trade to contemporary efforts to ridicule and undermine the “woke agenda.” She offers a theoretical framework for use by antiracist scholars, students, and activists to name and interrogate this pervasive attitude and its role in the structures of white supremacy and in the continued marginalisation of non-white people. Providing an exploration of lived experience and of the theoretical underpinnings of that lived experience, Wall offers a new vocabulary with which to speak truth to power and decentre whiteness from the work of antiracism, by looking to moments of black expression and creativity in black arts production.
Taking inspiration from the bold, powerful, and experimental work of black artists and activists, Black Expression and White Generosity forges an alternative narrative that strives for freedom and justice without relinquishing anything in return. It is your indispensable guide to remaining ungrateful.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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Underground Leviathan: Corporate Sovereignty and Mining in the Americas (U Nevada Press, 2024) explores the emergence, dynamics, and lasting impacts of a mining firm, the United States Company. Through its exercise of sovereign power across the borders of North America in the early twentieth century, the transnational US Company shaped the business, environmental, political, and scientific landscape. Between its initial incorporation in Maine in 1906 and its final demise in the 1980s, the mining company held properties in Utah, Colorado, California, Nevada, Alaska, Mexico, and Canada. The firm was a prototypical management-ruled corporation, which strategically planned and manipulated the technological, production, economic, urban, environmental, political, and cultural activities wherever it operated, all while shaping social actors internationally, including managers, engineers, workers, neighbours, and farmers.
In this study, he aims to unearth the hidden relationships between communities that transcend national states. Throughout the book, the author points out how modern corporations are run by a kaleidoscope of interests and groups, and many of the issues they face are relevant today.
Israel García Solares was born and raised in the Xochimilco neighbourhood of Mexico City. I studied for an undergraduate and master's in economics at Mexico's National University (UNAM) and a PhD in History at El Colegio de México. García Solares is currently an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Research in Applied Mathematics and Systems at UNAM, and his research focuses on the global history of technological actors in the 20th century.
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