July 1, 2023
CANADIAN AUTHORS
July 1st was Canada Day! Most readers are familiar with Canadian authors Margaret Atwood and Louise Penny. The following Canadian authors also deserve a wider audience.
We were dreamers: an immigrant superhero origin story, Simu Liu, 2022. (Catalog)
Simu Liu, Marvel Cinematic Universe's first leading Asian superhero, grew up torn between China and Canada, until he found the courage to dream like his parents before him. By the time he is thirty--the same age his parents were when they immigrated--he recognizes that he and his parents have much in common, most notably their courage to dream, and to dream big. We Were Dreamers is a story about growing up as a third-culture kid, about losing and finding family, and about making your own luck.
Ducks: two years in the oil sands, by Kate Beaton, 2022. (Catalog)
Katie heads out west to take advantage of Alberta's oil rush-part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can't find it in their Nova Scotia home they love so much. Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands, where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet is never discussed.
Who by fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai, by Matti Friedman, 2022. (Catalog)
In October 1973, the poet and singer Leonard Cohen—thirty-nine years old, famous, unhappy, and at a creative dead end—traveled from his home on the Greek island of Hydra to the chaos and bloodshed of the Sinai desert when Egypt attacked Israel on the Jewish high holiday of Yom Kippur. Moving around the front with a guitar and a group of local musicians, Cohen met hundreds of young soldiers, men and women at the worst moment of their lives.
Women talking: A novel, by Miriam Toews, 2019. (Catalog)
For years, eight Mennonite women, and more than a hundred other girls in their colony, have been repeatedly violated in the night by demons coming to punish them for their sins. Now that the women have learned they were in fact drugged and attacked by a group of men from their own community, they are determined to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm. Based on real events, Toews's masterful novel uses wry, politically engaged humor to relate this tale of women claiming their own power to decide their futures. The movie by the same name, directed by Sarah Polley, won a 2023 Oscar for best adapted screenplay.
Yearbook, by Seth Rogen, 2021. (Catalog)
“I talk about my grandparents, doing stand-up comedy as a teenager, bar mitzvahs, and Jewish summer camp, and tell way more stories about doing drugs than my mother would like. I also talk about some of my adventures in Los Angeles, and surely say things about other famous people that will create a wildly awkward conversation for me at a party one day.”
We had a little real estate problem: the unheralded story of Native Americans in comedy, by Kliph Nesteroff, 2021. (Catalog)
Comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff focuses on one of comedy's most significant and little-known stories: how, despite having been denied representation in the entertainment industry, Native Americans have influenced and advanced the art form. Profiles important events and humorists from the 1880s to the present.
Compiled by Ina Rimpau