Library Chat: Hat connection with Canada Reads 2018

By Medicine Hat News on January 19, 2018.

The Canada Reads 2018 longlist of books has been released with the theme Open Book to Open Your Eyes as the books challenge readers to look differently at themselves, their neighbours, and the world around them.

This year is exciting for Medicine Hat as the book “Forgiveness” by Mark Sakamoto has been nominated. Mark grew up in Medicine Hat and has family here. The book follows his maternal grandfather through capture and imprisonment as a POW in Japan during the Second World War, all while his paternal grandmother and her Japanese-Canadian family are interned by their own government in Alberta. It is a compassionate look at a family’s history, and an unflinching portrait of Canada’s own past.

The other books in the longlist are:

“Saints and Misfits” by S.K. Ali, a debut novel that follows a Muslim American teen who is struggling with balancing her family, friends, school and her crush on a boy who isn’t Muslim. When a respected member of her community attempts to assault her, she must face her rage and confusion.

“The Boat People” by Sharon Bala is told through alternating perspectives of a refugee, his lawyer, and a woman tasked with deciding who gets to stay in Canada. Suzanne by Anais Barbeau-Lavalette is an English translation by Rhonda Mullins, of a French novel, an imagined account of the life of the author’s estranged grandmother.

David Chariandy’s book “Brother “is about the lives of the mixed heritage sons of Trinidadian immigrants. Based on the author’s own experience the novel is a meditation on discrimination, agency, grief, and the power of human relationships. “Tomboy Survival Guide” by Ivan Coyote is a collection of coming-of-age memories telling the kinds of stories that create space for all those who don’t fit neatly into the boxes society expects them to.

“Precious Cargo” by Craig Davidson recounts the circumstance that led him to become a school bus driver in this nonfiction work. In the dystoian world of Cherie Dimaline’s “The Marrow Thieves,” climate change has ravaged the Earth and a majority of the world’s human beings have lost their ability to dream. The Indigenous people are on the run, hunted for their bone marrow, which is believed to restore dreams. Together they seek a new future in old lands.

“American War” by Omar El Akkard is set in the near future in a world where government restrictions on fossil fuels have sparked a second Civil War in the United States. “Scarborough” by Catherine Hernandez tells the multi-voiced story of a neighbourhood that refuses to fall apart in the face of poverty and crime. “The Measure of a Man” by JJ Lee traces the author’s journey altering his father’s old suit as an act of remembrance: a family’s story is a tale of intergenerational reconciliation.

Sandra Perron’s memoir “Out Standing in the Field” chronicles her complicated relationship with the Canadian Forces — one of institutional sexism and harassment, but also of pride in service. In “The Clothesline Swing,”by Ahmid Danny Ramadan, a storyteller prolongs the life of his dying partner by telling story after story about his youth in Damascus. Cassie Stocks’ debut novel “Dance, Gladys, Dance” is a laugh-out-loud look at how community can help us see life differently. In “Seven Fallen Feathers,” award-winning investigative journalist Tanya Talaga travels to Thunder Bay to investigate the deaths of seven Indigenous teenagers.

CBC Laugh Out Loud’s Ali Hassan returns for his second year as host. The panelists and final five books will be announced Jan. 30 with the debates taking place March 26-29. Be sure to read the books ahead of time as the public library has copies of all of the longlist books, some available in alternative formats.

Keith Walker is head of fiction services at the Medicine Hat Public Library.

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