BOOKWORM
THE SUM OF ALL PARTS
What You Are by M.G.Vassanji, Doubleday Canada, $29.95. What You Are is a collection of beautifully crafted short stories. And M.G.Vassanji is at ease doing what he does best, telling familiar stories with empathy and insight.
A mother’s ill, on her deathbed. The family gathers around her. One can sense the tension among the siblings, their little interpersonal squabbles and a mutual list of complaints. She raised them – all six of them – in Dar es Salaam. She was a seamstress. A young pretty widow with small children and little money. Years later when she let slip a remark, I realized the obvious, that it was a man’s world she had negotiated through, facing the sly comment, the lascivious look, the obscene suggestion when she was late in her instalments to the collectors who came by every so often.
My Brilliant Daughter takes a peek into an immigrant family’s life in Toronto. I recognize the Thorncliffe Park neighbourhood, although Vassanji has given it a new name. Men and boys in long shirts and caps hurry along the sidewalk, anxious not to miss the Friday prayer. We pass the cabs to reach the strip mall at the end of the street and are lucky to find a car backing out of a spot across from Maqbool’s Supermarket.
I know this place, I’ve been there many times. I have shopped at Maqbool’s – Vassanji has changed this name, too. I recognize Zera and Jamila like I have known them all my life.
Therein lies a writer’s craft. These are not imagined lives. The cast of characters and their circumstances are of those in one’s close circle. One could substitute the faraway Dar es Salaam with Bombay or Karachi or Delhi, and the stories would still be the same. Who hasn’t experienced both inclusion and exclusion in Canada?
Vassanji’s narrative has the quality of a Satyajit Ray celluloid classic. If you have seen Pather Panchali or Agantuk you’ll know what I mean.
THE BIG QUESTION
Horizon by Barry Lopez, Random House Canada, $39.95. When was the last time you had a precious gem delivered to your desk? You don’t have to answer the question – I’m just making a point about Horizon.
Lyrical prose; deep insights into things that make us human and the world we inhabit; a voice of concern tinged with frustration about us as the dominant species on the planet, and where we are headed. Horizon is an autobiographical reflection on many years of travel and research, and Barry Lopez tells us not just about the places he has visited from the Arctic to the Antarctic, but probes the long history of human exploration and its impact on our lives today.
As a seventeen-year-old boy, I longed for direct experience with the world. Most of my impulses, however, were purely metaphorical, without shape or purpose.
While at the university, I drove hundreds of miles to see whatever might be there in northern Michigan or in trans-Mississippi Iowa. Travelling, I came to understand, assuaged something in me.
Life takes Lopez all over the world, from western Oregon to the Galapagos; from the Kenyan desert to Botany Bay in Australia; from Nunavut in Canada to the ice shelves of Antarctica.
There’s so much history in the Canadian Arctic, he finds. And it goes back thousands of years. He tries to walk in the footsteps of Paleoeskimos who trekked across northern Canada. What did humans do here when darkness banished the light and you were left only with your imagination, your small ball of saturated moss burning on the surface of a pool of seal oil in a stone lamp, your caches of meat bunkered by rocks too heavy for Arctic foxes to pry away but not so big a polar bear couldn’t flip them aside?
He witnesses first-hand the trail of destruction left by eco-tourists, and forges friendships with scientists, artists and local residents.
In the end, Lopez leaves one with an unmistakable idea of what is it that’s out there, just beyond the end of the road.
It’s either a world more beautiful than anything you or I can imagine – or a world where our worst nightmares will come to be realized, one ecological disaster at a time, one cultural genocide at a time.
It’s a clear choice. We ignore it at our peril.
A NEW LENS
We Have Always Been Here by Samra Habib, Viking, $24.95. Samra Habib spent most of her life searching for the safety to be herself.
As an Ahmadi Muslim growing up in Pakistan, as a schoolgirl in Canada where her family sought refuge and she faced bullies, racism, the threat of poverty and an arranged marriage. The men in her life wanted to police her, the women showed pious obedience by example.
Unable to find the answers she was seeking and sinking deeper into despair, suicide began to seem like the only way out.
After seeing an ad on a cereal box, I called a youth hotline from a telephone booth. It was as if the counsellor at the other end had never encountered my specific situation – a teenage Muslim girl trapped in an unhappy arranged marriage – and when she suggested I tell my parents how I felt, I hung up on her.
Habib describes her complex relationship with her mother in a few deft strokes.
It would be far too easy to villainize my mother and her behaviour. But that would be to assume she had the tools and the privilege to consider another future for her daughter.
And, My mother has a habit of answering straight forward questions with vague Urdu poetry, codes that needed to be deciphered. As a result, I’d been trained to look for meaning in unlikely places, in things unsaid.
In her teens, she took to making dinner at home some nights, giving new dishes a familiar taste.
Every non-Pakistani food I made was drenched in the spices I’d grown up with to the point that it was unfair to call it what it was inspired by... It deserved an entirely new name, or at least to have the word desi in front of it: desi chicken linguini, desi garlic bread, desi macaroni and cheese.
Representation, Habib writes, is a critical way for people to recognize that their experiences are valid. She began chronicling the lives of queer Muslims through photography, as a way of sharing their fears, pains, needs and desires. Her work began to be noticed, celebrated and exhibited at venues like the Victoria and Albert Museum.
It’s a tough, yet compelling read.
How do you find yourself when the world tells you that you don’t exist?
Habib found the answer in the words of Zainab, one of her subjects: “We have always been here, it’s just that the world wasn’t ready for us yet.”
AGAINST THE ODDS
This Is Not the End Of Me by Dakshna Bascaramurty, McClelland & Stewart, $ 24.95. When Layton Reid, a globe-trotting, risk-taking, sunshine-addicted bachelor was diagnosed with melanoma, he returned home to Halifax to work as a wedding photographer.
Remission launched him into a new life as a husband and father-to-be. When the melanoma returned, Layton and his family placed their hopes in a punishing alternative therapy as he tried desperately to stay alive for his young son, Finn.
Denial had become a religion for Layton. In some part of his brain, he had the awareness it was irrational to believe he’d survive, that he’d grow old, but he had to ignore that part.
When hope failed, he wept watching his tiny wife haul two large boxes that were left on the driveway into the house on her own.
In a way, it was like he was already gone: a ghost watching his widow.
He found purpose in preparing Finn for a life without his father.
He had been the photographer at Dakshna Bascaramurty’s wedding and though the two bonded, the relationship was officially over, as she writes, after he handed them the DVD of images. But then he messaged her and their chain of e-mails resulted in Layton wanting Dakshana to tell his story. She shares some of the many letters he left behind for his son and wife Candace. Starting with this one before Finn was born. Alright little man, Got some shitty news last night.
She writes about the awkwardness that flares up when an argument breaks out between Layton and Candace. I stared into my lap, for fear that if I looked up, Candace or Layton might try to catch my eye and beckon me to take their side in the argument.
Everyone who has lost loved ones to cancer or watched friends and family members go through the cycles of treatment and remission and hope and despair will see themselves reflected in the story.
And they will feel his parents’ pain who go away for brief trips, “as though to take a short vacation from their mourning”. But when they arrived at their destination, Willie would unpack her clothes and there would be her grief tucked in a corner of her suitcase: still waiting for her.
With incredible intimacy, grit and empathy, Bascaramurty casts an unsentimental eye on her friend and on life in a home where cancer dwells. She describes a young man in all his vulnerability, a family fighting against the odds, and all the associated fear, anger, love and occasional laughter.
SURPRISE!
How To Surprise A Dad by Jean Reagan, illustrated by Lee Wildish, Knopf, $19.99. Full of tips on things kids can make, do, or find just for dad, including what to do when he starts getting suspicious about just what it is they are up to! Perfect for Father’s Day!
TEEN REVIEW
By VIDHI SHARMA
Finding Alice by Melody Carlson, The Crown Publishing Group, $23.99. Melody Carlson describes Alice’s experience of finding her true self amidst mental illness, living on the streets, and looking for a home.
Alice is in her final year of college as an English Literature major, has great friends, and is an intelligent young woman. However, when Amelia, a voice in her head, begins speaking to her , her entire life turns upside down. She is diagnosed with schizophrenia, or “is possessed by the demons,” as the women at her church say.
Amelia tells Alice that the hospital will give her the cruel shock treatment, so Alice runs away and ends up living on the streets. Desperate for cleanliness and food, she is told to commit suicide by Amelia. Alice realizes that she is living in misery. And one day, a cat leads her to Faye, ‘the cat-lady’, who is caring and kind.
Through her association with Faye, Alice begins to bring her life back on track, meets Simon, a great friend, and Dr. Golden. Alice realizes the importance of identity and mental health and is persuaded to obtain treatment for her symptoms of schizophrenia in Dr. Golden’s hospital. With all the help and support, Alice finally begins to recognize herself once again, and presents herself as a confident young woman.
A story of loss of identity, transformation, and finally, rebirth.
• Vidhi Sharma is an alumna, Teen Library Council, Brampton Library.