December 5, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews
Keith Maillard never knew his father. He was just a baby when his parents split up, and he grew up with the same two stories from his mother: “‘He was a good dancer,’ was the ... Read More »
Singer and media personality Mozhdah Jamalzadah brought a vibrant personality and fresh cultural lens to citizens in Afghanistan by way of The Mozhdah Show, an Oprah-style television program that aired in the country during the ... Read More »
December 2, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews
Canadian landscape painter Lawren P. Harris told Mary Pratt in the early days of her career that if two artists were to wed, only one would become a success. In her case, Harris declared, that ... Read More »
November 21, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews
Some authors are experimental by choice; others come by it biochemically. Toronto writers Martha Baillie and Christina Baillie, sisters as well as creators of the idiosyncratic co-autobiography Sister Language, have both bases covered. Unconventional in ... Read More »
October 3, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews
In her haunting, lyrical debut memoir, acclaimed Indigenous activist and writer Helen Knott – recipient of a 2019 RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Author honour – sheds light on her addiction and mental health struggles, providing ... Read More »
August 19, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography
The child of a British mother and Persian father, Annahid Dashtgard “was always trying to fix [her] world.” Dashtgard’s family was exiled from Iran in 1980, the year following the Islamic Revolution that ushered in ... Read More »
August 15, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews
Anna Mehler Paperny is the kind of person who knows exactly what Anne Sexton meant when, in her poem “Wanting to Die,” she described the “almost unnameable lust” of suicide. Paperny’s memoir begins with her ... Read More »
August 8, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews
Jesse Thistle has lived a hard life. A descendent of Saskatchewan’s Michif “road allowance” people (who lived on small strips of land between homesteads that were unused by the Crown), his parents were not able ... Read More »
July 29, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Native Peoples, Reviews
“[T]he only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn ... Read More »
July 4, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews
Libby Davies and Sid Ryan are high-profile figures who for decades have been on the front lines, calling out governments on social service cutbacks, environmental outrages, wars, and discrimination. While they share similar life trajectories ... Read More »
June 27, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Politics & Current Affairs, Reviews