Another reader’s passion can be contagious.
Unhook your mask and breathe in deeply.
Naomi’s dedication to reading writers from Atlantic Canada ignited my curiosity.
(Check out her project here, along with pages dedicated to the Halifax Explosion and regional literary awards on Consumed by Ink.)
When I checked my reading log for 2019, I realized that only 10% of the Canadian writers I read were Atlantic Canadian writers. Let’s say you’re just thinking in terms of north, south, east and west—to divvy things up roughly, you’d think that a quarter of one’s CanLit reading would come from the east. (In other years, my math might have been different; I’ve been trying to explore Québécois writers.)
Here are some of my recent Atlantic Canadian reads:
Borrowed Beauty is the first collection of poetry by Maxine Tynes, published by Pottersfield Press in 1987.
Often writing in response to people and events which moved her, poems like “Speaking Our Peace” (inspired by the film of the same name) directly acknowledge the debt she feels to other women who have challenged the status quo.
Women like “Marian Dewar / Muriel Duckworth / Bonnie Klein / Terri Nash / Dr. Ursula Franklin / Rosalie Bertell / Kathleen Wallace-Deering / Darlene Keju / Solanges Vincent / Margaret Laurence”. And, also, “all of us / women / and, men and women / and children / speaking our peace”.
Tynes asks hard questions (like “Does one Bob Dylan revival / equal one bowl of infested rice and protein supplement?”) and observes painful truths (like “in the ratings war, terrorism is 10 Neilson points / above world aid for hunger”).
There are a couple of short stories here, too, including “In Service”, which I especially enjoyed, always on the lookout for creative work about our daily work: “With little girl ears where they shouldn’t be, bent to lady-talk. That scary, hushed, exciting lady-talk between my mother and women who came to see her. Tea and talk. Lady-talk.”
The Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children by Wanda Lauren Taylor (2015) landed on my reading list thanks to a novel by Andrea Gunraj’s The Lost Sister (2019), which I reviewed for The Temz Review earlier this year. Two sisters in that story spent time in the orphanage and I wanted to learn more about the institution. (There’s also an episode of W5, which Canadians can likely access via their public library, called “Forgotten Children” about some of the survivors.)
In under 200 pages, Taylor does a fine job of summarizing, first, the great need for an institution to address the needs of black children who were not protected by the existing child welfare system, and, next, how that need remained unaddressed as many of the residents were vulnerable—economically, physically and psychologically—to exploitative staff members and systemic injustice.
Individual chapters are devoted to specific survivors’ stories and these, in concert with the many photographs, remind readers that these are not simply histories but also memories, still haunting many of the survivors today.
All of this is complicated by the fact that not everyone had the same experiences while housed there—some residents fared better than others and the need for adequate social services still remains. (Naomi writes about Taylor’s and Gunraj’s books as a pair here.)
Jaime Burnet’s Crocuses Hatch from Snow (2020) is an ambitious debut novel which grew out of the author’s personal experience coming-of-age in Halifax and her desire to educate privileged readers about issues of injustice.
If you’ve got a T-shirt in your closet that says “Love is Love”, if you’ve signed a petition about gentrification concerns, if you’ve donated to a bail fund available to anti-racist activists, if you’ve spent time reading the testimony of residential school survivors, you’ll find your passion reflected here.
There’s a lot of heart in this first novel. Burnet’s not short on ambition, and with greater attention paid to supplementary character development and narrative arc structure, her stories will wield more power. (I reviewed this for Herizons in more detail.)
Laura Trethewey’s The Imperilled Ocean (2020) is an accessible and engaging exploration of a wide-ranging topic. She approaches individual experiences that expand into matters of global importance with care and analysis.
One refugee’s experience is fascinating: current statistics about asylum seekers are shocking. A cruise-ship worker’s suicide is a family tragedy: the fact that the increasing rate of these incidents of this goes unreported in an industry because the deaths of their country’s citizens are the only ones tabulated is mind-boggling (particularly because the industry depends upon global citizens).
Tretheway starts so many good conversations here. (This is discussed in more detail, here, as one of my #ReadTheChange books for 2020.)
You wouldn’t want to divide Australia in quarters like that, you’d run the risk of having quarters with zero people. I thought Atlantic Canada would be like Pacific Australia and contain a fair whack of the population, but Naomi set me right.
My project relates to periods in Australian Lit, rather than to regions or states, though I have an unfulfilled ambition to keep up with the literature of my adopted home state Western Australia.
That’s true, and it’s a completely meaningless way of looking at it really. Still, your idea isn’t far off, because Nova Scotia is one of the most densely populated provinces, whereas Labrador (which always gets lumped in with Newfoundland: it’s “Newfoundland and Labrador”, together) is more sparsely occupied. Most of my reading projects belong under the heading of Unfulfilled Ambitions, even the ones that I’m actively reading towards in every single year. LOL
I admire readers who can create a project that they are passionate about and continue to work toward a goal (whether planned or just because they are on that reading path and don’t want to veer off in another direction quite yet). I hope to get back to a place like that with my reading. I think you do a fine job of reading varied Canadian authors! But I know what you mean by sometimes the reading being heavy in a particular area or topic!
I didn’t always live in Toronto even though I do consider it home, and I still have that fangirl love of reading stories set in this city, so I know my reading skews in this direction. But every time I choose another Toronto-set-story, I am simultaneously choosing to not read a book set in a different part of Canada, and I can’t call myself an explorer if I regularly avoid exploring! LOL But sometimes a book in a familiar setting can stretch you in other ways, whereas a story set in an unfamiliar place can be predictable and formulaic otherwise: it’s not simple, is it.
I so know what you mean about other readers habits/interests being contagious. Naomi is such a thoughtful reader, and she always pulls the best quotes, in fact, it was her that gave me the courage to contact Biblioasis and inquire about reviewing their books-they had been a blank spot on my reviewing list for so long, and they publish such wonderful stuff 🙂
Have you ever thought about doing a focus on western writers? Or, do you still see yourself as an Ontario-gal at heart? I love pull-quotes. Sometimes they make the difference between wondering if I want to read a book and knowing that I do (or, don’t LOL). It’s great to be able to encourage each other to expand our reading possibilities.
I try to review Alberta books as much as possible, but for my CBC reading it doesn’t always make sense. I’m doing a review of Candas Jane Dorsey’s new mystery novel from ECW press for ALberta Views Magazine, and! I’ve just discovered a horror writer living in Calgary but published internationally…it’s amazing what your own province can offer.
That’s cool — I’ve read her sci-fi and admire her work, so I’m curious what she does with a new genre. It’s true: all about how we direct our attention, I think!
Hah Buried … the area I’ve mostly been exploring has been the review copy section of my TBR pile! I wish I have the time to be a bit structured in my reading and thought that this year I might start doing that but unforeseen family circumstances completely overtook that. Maybe next year. I think if I were going to explore an area it would be non-anglo originated writing, particularly Asian. I’ve read nowhere near enough Asian writing.
BTW I noticed that often when you comment on blogs – such as Bill’s recently – your name is not linked to your blog? Is that a conscious decision? It’s a shame because it makes it hard for people who read your comment and think they’d like to read more of you!
That’s understandable given your circumstances. I’m sure your review copies will be glad of the attention when you’re able to return to them. Asian writing would make an excellent project. At least you’re now spoiled for choice, when it comes to reading in English translation. So much better than it was even a decade ago!
Oh, dear: thank you for letting me know. Someone else let me know that they’d had trouble sub’ing to BIP using the WordPress Follow feature (not a problem directly from my site) so I contacted my host to make a change to that and now wonder if something has gone awry in another corner of the WordPress closet as a result. Sheesh, as if I didn’t have other dusting and polishing to worry about, now cleaning things is making new messes. Thanks for troubling to share so that I can resolve the matter. grumbles, but gratefully
I love the sound of that passionate debut novel by Jaime Burnet. And Imperilled Ocean sounds excellent too. I’ve been listening to a podcast by Hakai Magazine that tells some fascinating stories of the sea and the coast, and I’d love to plunge in deeper, so to speak 🙂
And her most believable characters are young and ambitious, so hopefully she attracts a strong readership. Ohh, I’ve never heard of that podcast but it sounds really interesting and they’re short episodes too–I’ve pinned it to my browser, thank you!
I love it when our reading overlaps (which it often does) – and this post is extra-exciting for me! What a nice variety. Old poetry, African Nova Scotian authors, new fiction, and new nonfiction. I actually didn’t know that Laura Trethewey was Atlantic Canadian. And I still haven’t read anything by Maxine Tynes, but I’m reading And I Alone Escaped to Tell You by Sylvia Hamilton (poetry).
I like what you said about Crocuses. Is your review out yet? I don’t remember reading it…
Any idea what you might read next from Atl. Canada? 🙂
That poetry collection is in my current stack as well (Hamilton) and I have three other books in this post that I’ve already finished, but it was getting so long that I had to split up the contents. Originally I was aiming for 10, and I think I’m getting close to that.
Herizons has edited it and placed it, but I’m not sure when/if the next issue has been/will be published–recently? soon? Time all seems so relative, these days–even venues with strict and dependable schedules seem subject to delays while the world adjusts to Covid-19 stresses and strains.
What I’m really looking forward to, but I don’t know when exactly, is rereading Wayne Johnston’s The Colony of Unrequited Dreams and carrying on with that trilogy (I can’t recall if I read the second and not the third, or if I haven’t read either of the follow-ups?). I also want to get to some earlier Russell Wangersky that I missed along the way. Oh, and I have the book about Donald Marshall Jr. and the Mi’kmaw community in my stack too. Okay, I’ll stop now…. 🙂