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Resisting Canada: An Anthology of Poetry, edited by Nyla Matuk, slices through the narrative of Canadian exceptionalism, the idealized notion of that elusive “melting pot” we’ve all heard so much about but have yet to experience for ourselves.
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By Marcela Huerta
A sense of being trapped – by gender, mental illness, duty, class, or indeed, a town so small that everyone knows you – is palpable in many of the stories in Send More Tourists... the Last Ones Were Delicious.
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By Carly Rosalie Vandergriendt
Sean Michaels’s second novel is about luck. The Wagers also casts a tender, incandescent light on ramshackle grocery stores, extended families, stand-up comedy, sibling rivalry, romantic and platonic love, art-making, and an unnamed city that looks uncannily like Montreal.
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By Pablo Strauss
Gretchen McCulloch's book, Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, is a study of what she calls “informal writing” and how it’s flourished in the online era.
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By Malcolm Fraser
The point is to make Indigenous languages and cultures in Canada, bizarrely, less foreign and more familiar to young readers. It’s part of a global movement to save Indigenous languages from extinction, an effort that’s having a bit of a moment.
Review by ["Dan David"]
By Taionrén:hote Dan David
Claremont traces the intersecting stories of the members of a family that is not only simply unhappy, but reeling in the face of tragedy. In the first chapter, readers follow nine-year-old Tom as his abusive father, Russell, murders his mother Mona before also killing himself. In the wake of these events, Mona’s three siblings, Will, Sonya, and Rose, attempt to rally together to care for Tom.
Review by ["Danielle Barkley"]
By Danielle Barkley
Set-Point might seem effortless in its easy, acerbic veneer, and the affectlessness of its language might be confused for a kind of apathetic neutrality, but to mistake it for either is to be the butt of the book’s joke. Parker is here to remind us: nothing is easy.
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By Paige Cooper
Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) is a strange and wonderful hybrid that uses the creation of an encyclopedia about a fictional 2001 television show, Little Blue, to pay tribute to the narrator’s closest friend Vivian Cloze after she’s gone. In the process, it casts beautiful insights onto its many themes: queer and trans living, unrequited love, ongoing mourning, joyful friendship, and the powers of (obscure) pop culture to help us cope.
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By Jacob Wren
Of Vengeance hints at another layer of crime that forms the undercurrent of the novel. In deceptively simple prose, Kurtness mounts a poignant and timely argument about the danger of running headlong into the hands of technologies we don’t fully understand.
Review by ["Quinn Mason"]
By Quinn Mason
Prez’s story is drawn from the author’s own experiences. In 1969, nineteen-year- old Freeman was stopped by a white Chicago police officer. When Freeman argued that the stop was unconstitutional, the officer, Terrence Knox, became extremely aggressive, shouting racist epithets. He pointed a gun at Freeman’s head. There was a struggle, and Knox was hit in the arm by three bullets.
Review by ["Yutaka Dirks"]
By Yutaka Dirks
Heroine, Gail Scott’s classic feminist Montreal novel, balances on the border of these two eras. Gail, our narrator, soaks in the bath in a rented room in 1980, recalling her recent experiences as a young would-be militant during the heady days of separatist revolutionary fervour. As she remembers, she also reconfigures what happened, visiting and revisiting her relationships, her moods, and her own trajectory as both an observer and an actor in a time of personal and political upheaval.
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By H Felix Chau Bradley
Dreamers and Misfits of Montclair is Paterson’s third short story collection, and it demonstrates his ease with the form’s range. “Salut King Kong” is a quick hit – quirky and to the point. Even quicker and quirkier are postcard pieces like “Body Noises with the Door Open” and “Spring Training.”
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By Joel Yanofsky