Category Archives: Canadian
Mud City by Deborah Ellis
The final installment of the Breadwinner Trilogy follows Shauzia, Parvana’s best friend from The Breadwinner, in which both girls survived by cross-dressing as young boys, working to provide for their shuttered-in families in Taliban-controlled Kabul. While Parvana’s desperate odyssey to reunite with her family continues in Parvana’s Journey, Shauzia’s story takes her to a refugee camp in Pakistan, just beyond the Afghanistan border.
Shauzia shares a tent with Mrs. Weera, a domineering woman who was once the girls’ athletics teacher, who is now involved with running secret schools, clinics, and publishing a feminist magazine. Shauzia is tired of doing “little jobs” for Mrs. Weera, being ordered around, feeling suffocated in the refugee camp. Inspired by a magazine cut-out of a lavendar field somewhere in France, Shauzia dreams of faraway escape. Filled with defiant independence, Shauzia heads to the busy city of Peshawar with her loyal dog, Jasper, expecting to find enough work to pay her passage to freedom, away from hunger, suffering, war, and especially Mrs. Weera’s endless demands.
Supporting herself, of course, proves to be far more difficult than she ever expected. She finds a few odd jobs, but must resort to theft, begging, and running with hardened street kids in hopes of staying as safe as possible. She lands in jail, is saved by an ex-pat American family, but her respite is brief and she finds herself back where she started. How she will ever achieve her dreams seems to be a daunting, neverending challenge.
Of the trilogy, Mud City, is admittedly the weakest (less developed characters, the American deus ex machina gone awry), although only in comparison to the previous two titles. Certainly Mud could stand alone, but reading all three is more rewarding , enriched by the many small details that bind the three stories together.
Although the trilogy is seemingly finished, adding a final fourth which captures Shauzia and Parvana’s reunion would surely be welcome … indeed, those promised 20 years have nearly passed. Book 1 is set sometime in or close to 1996 (when the Taliban claimed Kabul), and books 2 and 3 about three years later (Parvana is 14 in Journey). Already, we’re in 2011, so somehow, the two cross-dressing girls – now fully grown women – are due for reunion at the Eiffel Tower’s peak in just five short years … oh, to imagine that …!
Readers: Middle Grade
Published: 2003 Continue reading
Filed under ..Middle Grade Readers, .Fiction, Afghan, Canadian
Parvana’s Journey by Deborah Ellis
The second part of Canadian anti-war activist Deborah Ellis’ lauded Breadwinner Trilogy continues with Parvana’s odyssey to reunite with her surviving family. Parvana and her recently released father leave Kabul at the end of The Breadwinner, determined to find Parvana’s mother, older sister, younger sister, and toddler brother who traveled north for her older sister’s wedding.
Journey begins with harsh tragedy … at the graveside of Parvana’s father. Parvana is still traveling as Kaseem, but at 14, she will not be able to hide her true gender much longer. The villagers are initially welcoming of Parvana, but soon she must escape in the middle of the night after being warned that she is about to be sold to the Taliban.
All alone and not even certain of where she is going, Parvana recites multiplication tables, just as her father taught her, to keep her going during the most trying times. Barely able to take care of her own self, Parvana’s wanderings lead her to a struggling baby in a bombed-out village whose dead mother lies beside him, then an angry, abused young boy who has already lost a leg, and finally an imaginative little girl who believes she is forever safe from land mines that litter the damaged, broken, war-torn country. Together, the foursome form a new kind of family …
Parvana shares not only her strength and protection with the younger children, she also tries to impart her hard-won education, teaching her new siblings to read and write. She writes undeliverable letters as often as she can to her friend Shauzia, who also survived life in Kabul as a cross-dressing breadwinner for her family, with whom Parvana shares the secret promise of meeting at the top of the Eiffel Tower in (now less than) 20 years.
In spite of the endless difficulties she faces, Parvana holds on to her father’s beloved books as long as she can, as well as the single copy of a feminist magazine her mother helped to write and produce before the family was scattered. Parvana is determined she will not only find her missing family … but she will one day put her mother’s brave, banned work into her waiting hands.
Ellis creates another challenging, fast-moving story about the will to survive, even in the youngest, most vulnerable souls. The children’s ability to nurture one another even as adults prove unreliable provide moments of uplifting wonder. Truly, the future lies in children … their resilience, their determination, their forgiveness, and their awe-inspiring hope.
Readers: Middle Grade
Published: 2002 Continue reading
Filed under ..Middle Grade Readers, .Fiction, Afghan, Canadian
The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis
When Parvana’s gentle father is suddenly beaten without cause and locked away for being an educated citizen, her family is left without a means to support themselves. Under Taliban rule, women are forbidden in Kabul to leave the house unless fully covered and accompanied by a male family member. The only male at home now is Parvana’s toddler brother, hardly a likely escort. Meanwhile, their bereft mother – a former radio journalist – cannot get out of bed. Her teenage older sister is a perfect target for kidnapping.
At 11, Parvana is still young enough to dress in her late older brother’s leftover clothing, even if her resemblance to Hossain makes her mother weep. Masquerading as a boy, Parvana can leave the family’s stifling one-room apartment to go to the market, take over her father’s job as a letter-reader-and-writer-for hire, to buy food, and feed her family. As “Kaseem,” she becomes the family’s breadwinner.
In spite of her new relative freedom, Parvana – nor her family – is hardly safe, and they must struggle daily to survive, holding on to the hope of a family reunion someday. The Breadwinner is the first of a trilogy that continues in Parvana’s Journey and Mud City – all three chronicle the extreme choices Parvana and her family are forced to make amidst the cruel Taliban control of their war-torn country.
Award-winning Deborah Ellis – one of Canada’s most popular, bestselling children’s authors – is a longtime anti-war activist who traveled to Afghan refugee camps in the late 1990s and “heard many stories like Parvana’s.” Honoring those experiences of struggle, Ellis is donating all royalties from The Breadwinner to Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan – even more reason to invest in her books!
Ellis strongly reminds readers in her ending “Author’s Note” that in spite of the Taliban’s initial ousting in 2001 from Afghanistan, “the future of Afghanistan’s women and girls remains uncertain.” A full decade later, that future remains under threat. In the words of the looming Talib soldier, toting a rifle to complete his menacing shadow, “‘Read this.’”
Readers: Middle Grade
Published: 2001 (United States) Continue reading
Filed under ..Middle Grade Readers, .Fiction, Afghan, Canadian
Cry of the Giraffe by Judie Oron
In her small native village, young Wuditu – and the rest of her family – are called falasha, a derogatory term reserved for Jewish people. Their own name for themselves is Beta Israel, meaning ‘the house of Israel.’ In spite of a centuries-long history grounded in Ethiopia, Ethiopian Jews, who are often the potters and iron workers in their villages, are treated as outcasts in their own homeland.
Every new generation of Beta Israel is told of their great history in a place called Yerusalem, a promised homeland to which someday the Beta Israel will return: “‘When the time comes for you to go to Yerusalem, you must be ready to leave this land in the blink of an eye. And when you get there, your lives will be changed forever!’” the village leader reminds Wuditu once again.
That time is suddenly now. With growing violence compounded by unrelenting religious persecution during junta dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam’s brutal reign, Wuditu and her family secretly abandon their village and begin an arduous trek to a refugee camp in the Sudan, following promises that they will eventually be rescued and evacuated to Yerusalem.
One dark night in 1989 in the refugee camp, Wuditu, now 13, and her younger sister Lewteh, 10, are violently expelled from the camp and forced to walk back to Ethiopia, where they thankfully find temporary shelter with an elderly couple. Wuditu makes the difficult decision to seek help alone in order to save her sister and herself, and somehow reunite them both with their family. Her three-year solo odyssey of deprivation, violence, prostitution, and slavery is wrenching, and yet somehow, she never gives up her dream of safety, family, and salvation in a homeland she has only imagined.
For Canadian journalist and author Judie Oron, who just won a 2011 Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award for Giraffe (adding to growing list of international kudos), this story is also her own personal journey as well: for the last two decades, Lewteh and Wuditu have been part of Oron’s family. ”Cry of the Giraffe was written out of love and admiration for a daughter who bravely endured a lengthy and brutal captivity yet emerged a generous and caring human being,” Oron begins her acknowledgments on the book’s final page. That such harrowing events happened to an innocent young girl, that such suffering continues for far too many others, is undoubtedly wrenching truth. And yet that out of that horror emerged love, laughter, and family is a truly a miracle to believe.
Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult
Published: 2010
Filed under ..Middle Grade Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Nonfiction, African, Canadian, Jewish
Landing by Emma Donoghue
Had I not been so enthralled with Room, I don’t know if I would have discovered Emma Donoghue‘s many other titles, but I’ve definitely been enjoying reading newly discovered authors’ works backwards.
Take a look at the cover and you can probably guess what Landing is about. Yup, it’s a love story. But with Donoghue at the helm, you have to expect some unconventionality at the very least.
So the hand on the left belongs to Síle (pronounced Sheila) O’Shaughnessy of Dublin, Ireland, and the right to Jude Turner of Ireland, Ontario. Síle may be Irish-born and bred, but with an Indian mother, she’s not quite Irish enough for some people. At 39, she’s spent many years as a worldly flight attendant, staying well-connected via her “gizmo,” enjoying a rather glamorous city life when she’s on the ground. At 25, Jude – also a hybrid mix, of a Canadian father and an English mother – is a technophobic Luddite, runs a small village’s tiny museum, and has never had the need or desire to travel very far.
The two meet on a plane over a dead body (!) … Síle working, Jude hoping to survive her inaugural flight (another !). How much more memorable can love at first sight be? In spite of thousands of miles, die-hard habits, missing mothers, past and present lovers, doubting friends, Síle and Jude slowly work their lives together.
Interwoven with the pitter-patter inducing love story is a mindful look at immigration (“emigration sounded noble and tragic, immigration grubby and grasping”), from peripatetic parents criss-crossing the globe to their stay-at-home progeny facing re-invention and relocation. Falling in love outside your comfort zone means borders change, populations shift, cultures adapt, racism threatens, and strangers can become family.
Just a final thought … perhaps Donoghue writes part of her own immigration story here: Like Síle, Donoghue is Dublin-born, and now lives with her partner and their children in … London, Ontario. Love can land you anywhere …
Readers: Adult
Published: 2007 Continue reading
A Bed of Red Flowers: In Search of My Afghanistan by Nelofer Pazira
In September 1978, three months before her fifth birthday, Nelofer Pazira went to visit her father on the third day of what would become a five-month unjust imprisonment; his alleged crime, like thousands of other Afghans at the time, was not supporting the Communist government. His angry admonishment of “‘I didn’t raise you to cry on such a day,’” would shape the rest of Pazira’s life: she knew that she would need to be unfalteringly resilient and brave.
For Pazira, the privileged daughter of a medical doctor and a schoolteacher, childhood ended that day. For the next 12 years, her extended family would suffer an odyssey of uncertainty, oppression, violence, and death. Her country would become a hellish battleground, decimated by the Soviets and the mujahidin (supported with US dollars). In spite of her father’s stern protestations, the family finally escapes to Pakistan, where they live as unwanted refugees, until they are suddenly allowed to relocate to Canada in 1990.
Having endured a youth filled with repression, Pazira does not merely assimilate into the relative comfort and safety of her new country. Her connection to her homeland never wavers, driven by her search for a childhood friend, Dyana; she returns multiple times after 9/11 on journeys both professional (as a journalist and filmmaker) and deeply personal. The most touching (and surprising: SPOILER ALERT) of her journeys takes Pazira to Russia where she confronts, face-t0-shattered-face, her country’s former enemies.
Pazira’s memoir is a heart-thumping, page-whipping journey of both brutality and hope. For every faceless official with unjust power, Pazira brings to life the selfless friends and strangers who enabled her immediate family to survive, especially the impossibly young, inspiringly courageous Naseema who guides the Pazira family to the Pakistani border.
And yet, as a piece of literature – while told well-enough overall – a stronger editor might have made it a more flowing read, with less back and forth chronological jumping in the first third, and a few more details in the last third, especially during the family’s initial relocation in Canada. That said, readers will undoubtedly remember vivid chunks of Pazira’s experiences long after the final page. In a near-demonized post-9/11 world, Pazira offers an upturned, open face and humanizes her country’s troubled story.
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2005 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, Afghan, Afghan American, Canadian
Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China by Guy Delisle, translated by Helge Dascher
The year is 1997 when Guy Delisle journeyed to Shenzhen, an industrial city in southern China, to oversee a production project for his French animation employer. His China gig would follow with another outsourced animation project that would lead to his Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea, which was actually published before Shenzhen.
Delisle, besides being an entertaining artist, is also a droll, insightful observer. Don’t let his relaxed demeanor fool you: In spite of any protestations of ‘lost in translation’ cultural miscommunication, Delisle misses little, showing that sometimes the slightest, seemingly meaningless details reveal the most noteworthy insights of all.
Delisle’s three-month assignment is a morphing combination of the poignant and absurd. A street person goes through the motions of banging his head (his long hair hides the fact that he stops just before his head actually hits the pavement), while uniformed employees perform a line dance to commemorate the opening of a new Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. Trying to avoid another grisly visit to dentist, Delisle carries the last of his leftover dental floss in his pocket to prevent the hotel maids from discarding his overused bits. He spends a rather fairy tale evening working out by candlelight when the power goes out at the local gym (“after all, the machines work on muscle power”). And every few pages, Delisle depicts the linguistic evolution of the hotel doorman who greets him with a new senseless, non-sequitur English phrase, but by book’s end just might get a word or two right.
Bemoaning the grey bleakness of Shenzhen, Delisle openly wishes he could have instead been based in Hong Kong (where he feels like Tintin making new discoveries) or Canton (where he’s accosted by an overly friendly young man hoping to practice his English which he speaks “like a Spanish cow”).
Yet he does acknowledge, “If I draw all these anecdotes one day, it will probably look like I had a great time here. Taken out of context, even boredom can probably sublimate itself and seem entertaining … it’s a bit like memory,” he muses. Lucky for us readers, his memory filters his experiences to create unique travelogues of cultural discovery … not to mention bewildered understanding.
Tidbit: For a mind-blowing, 21st-century NOW look at Shenzhen today, check out phenomenal Mike Daisey‘s latest one-man show, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. It sold out at Berkeley Rep and DC’s Woolly Mammoth, is currently up at Seattle Rep (through May 22). It’s coming this fall to the Public in NYC. If you get the chance, do NOT miss it!
Readers: Adult
Published: 2006 (United States) Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Graphic Novel/Manga/Manwha, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, .Translation, Canadian, Chinese
Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea by Guy Delisle, translated by Helge Dascher
In another century, travelers wrote a few postcards. Today’s modern wanderer might send group emails or abbreviated texts; the more techno-savvy might start a blog and instantly upload the pictures from those tiny devices. The really ambitious write essays and even books. Guy Delisle (thank goodness!) creates unique and fantastic graphic memoirs.
His temporary animation production gig in China became Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China. A few years later, another Asian animation assignment became Pyongyang.
More recently, given his seemingly portable creative career, French Canadian Delisle works while accompanying his peripatetic wife on her far-flung posts with Médecins San Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). He apparently wrote Pyongyang, for example, stationed in Ethiopia, then went exploring in The Burma Chronicles. Sometime in the near future, surely the family’s year in Jerusalem will debut in a graphic rendition …? Please?
But back to the most northern ‘Axis of Evil,’ where Delisle spent two isolated, controlled months, sent by his French animation employer to oversee current projects with North Korea’s Scientific and Educational Film Studio of Korea (SEK). At the airport, he ironically manages to hold on to his copy of George Orwell’s 1984 by explaining through a sweaty smile that it’s “old … classic … fiction.” Surviving his entry, he is met by his guide and the waiting driver who will be his near-constant companions throughout his guarded stay. His first stop is to visit (read: pay his respects to) the 22-meter tall bronze statue of country founder Kim Il-Sung who, as Delisle notes, “despite his death (1912-1994), is still president.”
Such blatant incongruency sets the tone for Delisle’s surreal experiences. His sharp observations, captured in his signature black-and-white simple line drawings, range from the ridiculous and tragic – overworked “volunteers” forced into menial, back-breaking work – to the blinded and haunting – immaculate streets empty of handicapped people because “all Koreans are born strong, intelligent and healthy,” the guide explains and seems to truly believe.
The disconnect – far beyond the usual East/West cultural divide – is mind-boggling between what Delisle is allowed to see and hear, and what he observes for himself. While his temporary foray into the “phantom city in a hermit nation” is gravely frustrating, it also proves to be deeply poignant … that final page as Delisle urges his latest paper airplane to “C’mon, go!” is a glimmer of hope for freedom in a land that time forgot …
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2005 (United States) Continue reading
Cinnamon Baby by Nicola Winstanley, illustrated by Janice Nadeau
Miriam is a magical baker who makes her cinnamon bread last because it’s her favorite. When Sebastian bicycles by her Alchemy Bakery with his violin, he’s drawn in by her “sweet-smelling voice,” and after a year of buying a loaf every single day, asks Miriam to marry him. Of course she says yes!
Soon enough, the young couple have a little baby who is the perfect mixture of red-haired Miriam and brown-skinned Sebastian: “big brown eyes and dusky skin and smelled like sweet milk.” On the fourth day of being in the world, “the baby started to cry.” And no matter what sweet Miriam or doting Sebastian does, the baby’s tears only pause to sleep.
Days, doctors, much desperation later, Miriam figures out what will finally make the baby happy: dough … especially of the cinnamon variety. The threesome dash to the bakery, Miriam sets to work while Sebastian and the baby wait and watch, anticipating that delectable cinnamon loaf. Soon enough, their cinnamon baby settles into perfect contentment.
As adorable as the newborn tale is, the one small detail that made me pause was why the baby remained genderless at least in print, prompting debut author Nicola Winstanley to refer to the baby as “it,” even while veteran illustrator Janice Nadeau’s pretty-in-pink illustrations strongly suggest the baby is s girl. Perhaps this was a cultural choice – both author and illustrator are our far north neighbors – without any possible underlying judgment attached, but I found the choice somewhat disconcerting, perhaps oversensitive about referring to a mixed-race child as “it.”
Regardless, as the mother of a once-colicky hapa newborn, I immediately recognized and empathized with the befuddled new parents. Nadeau whimsically captures the baby’s mighty waterworks, showering her worried mother from the ever-mobile pink baby-buggy, her anxious father during an already wet bath, even baptizing the trying doctor in his examination room.
By story’s end, Mommy knows best (which I’m always trying to convince our too fast-growing, ever doubting kids) … at least for a few more years until baby’s tears evolve into teenage talkback! Oh, truly, the joys of parenthood are neverending!
Readers: Children
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Fiction, Canadian, Hapa
Watch Me Grow! A Down-to-Earth Look at Growing Food in the City by Deborah Hodge, photographed by Brian Harris
First reaction after reading this inviting title: I wanna move to Vancouver … at least for a summer or two! Who wouldn’t want to be part of this “bustling city” depicted in these colorful, diverse, delicious pages?
Amidst the concrete and tightly packed buildings are gardens in “backyards, front yards, rooftops, boulevards, vacant lots, fire escapes, balconies, patios, windowsills and kitchen counters.” Wherever a seed has good soil, sunlight, and water, it will grow … with proper care, it will give back many-fold.
In addition to gardens that flourish in surprising places, city dwellers with enough space might keep happy chickens and enjoy their fresh eggs with bright orange yolks, or even nourish honeybees in a rooftop hive. Plant the garden, and they will come: birds, butterflies, helpful bugs and insects in search of food and shelter …
Sharing your healthy bounty with others (both human and otherwise), cooking and eating and nurturing each other are some of the many benefits to growing the food together. “Everywhere in the city, people are caring for their gardens and caring for each other. They’re sharing gardens, kitchens and food. They’re learning about their neighbors and themselves. They’re making the city a more beautiful place to live.”
Admit it … even if you don’t have a green thumb (that would be me!), this city sounds downright Edenic. Vancouver’s citizens are as diverse as their gardens … just about every ethnicity, every age, shape, and size seems caught in the act of enjoying their daily lives … the blueberry pie alone had me salivating. Surely amidst such friendly faces, someone might invite me over for a homegrown meal?
Readers: Children
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Nonfiction, Canadian, Nonethnic-specific
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