For the last couple of months I've been immersed in my own personal version of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's annual Can-lit contest Canada Reads. One of my goals for the New Year was to read more books from diverse cultural perspectives. I could read British murder mysteries by the likes of Ann Cleeves and P.D. James until the cows come home, and in fact I have. The cows are in the building as we speak, and it is time to let them rest awhile before putting them back out to pasture once again while I indulge my penchant for dead bodies found by hyper-intuitive sleuths (who have issues of their own to solve or merely live with) in ancient castles or on dreary, windswept Atlantic beaches. Additionally, mystery novels are glorified puzzles that are solved at the end. Very tidy. Not terribly realistic, but great and satisfying reading.
The last time I read a culturally diverse book, and that was just before the pandemic, was when I gasped my way through Life of Pi. I was traumatized by it, just as I was traumatized by Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance years ago. Both books were beautifully written and valuable to literature in general, but I had a hard time getting over them. I am the sort of person who travels alongside the characters in a book I am reading. The things that happen to the characters affect me in a way that is hard to describe. When I read an engaging book I also enter it for the duration. I witness the good, the bad, and the ugly and carry it around with me. When I was a teenager a book could affect my entire mood. I am better at separating real life and fiction now - perhaps my skull is just thicker, but my heart is still quite sensitive. If I have a deeply sad or disturbing book on the go I read it during the day, and read another, lighter book before I go to sleep at night, so with this strategy in mind I decided I needed to open myself up to some more challenging, educational reading once again. If I want to be a good citizen of the world, my country, and my community, I need to learn from the writers who wish to teach us how to be that through their stories.
So, what is on my cuturally diverse list this season, you ask? The first book I read this year was Washington Black by Esi Edugyan. Wahington Black is a sweeping, transatlantic epic of a novel about a young Caribbean slave boy with a very special talent. The story is full of eccentric characters and the barbarism of slavery, and it was defended in this year's Canada Reads, so at least I had read one of the books on their list. The second book on my personal list was All the Quiet Places by Brian Thomas Isaac. Now, this book entered my soul and gave me heavy dreams. If you want to learn about the lasting impact of colonialism on Indigenous peoples and their communities on a personal level, I highly recommend All the Quiet Places. The author is so good at describing and setting a scene I felt I was right there with the characters, not viewing them from a platform far away. The third book I read was Diamond Grill by Fred Wah. Diamond Grill was published in the mid-nineties, but appeared on my radar a few months ago. The poetic prose of this book perfectly captures the nuances and complexities of growing up bi-racial in mid-century small-town Canada. Yet again, I was transported, this time to the Chinese-Canadian restaurant that closed in my hometown when I was seven years old. The fourth book on my list is Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden. I was hooked by this book immediately. Boyden is a legendary author. Three Day Road is expertly written from the perspective of two people, an elderly aunt recounting her past as a 'bush Indian' in northern Ontario and her nephew who has returned, haunted and maimed, from the battlefront of the First World War. As the elderly aunt paddles her nephew back home she tells him stories from her life, and he silently re-lives his horrifying experiences as a talented sniper in the trenches and bombed out landscape of France. I learned so much from this book and look forward to reading his other novels, when I recover from Three Day Road, that is.
I have more books on my list, including a few currently on hold at my local public library. I am so grateful to the many authors who tell stories from their own unique perspective. My life is richer because of them, and I hope I can translate what I learn from these stories into action as a more sensitive and aware citizen and friend.
