Susseptible is Geneviève Castrée’s first full-length English-language graphic novel. The multi-disciplinary artist and Quebec native has crafted a moving tale about Goglu, a bright, dreamy little girl who has a less than ideal start in life. As the title implies, she is sensitive, but Vulnerable would have also been a fitting title.

The reader meets Goglu still in the womb asking about whether sadness can be inherited from one generation to the next. The little girl is born to a 19-year-old Quebec mother and her English-speaking logger boyfriend in 1981. Her father played a very minor parenting role before moving to British Columbia, “a mythical kingdom where dads go to disappear.”

Her mother, like droves of other young people in the early eighties, had gone out west to make some quick money during the Alberta oil boom and experience their first adult adventure. Her mother, Amère, which aptly reflects her bitterness, returns to Quebec alone to give birth, but family support is not forthcoming. The youngest of 16 children, Amère didn’t receive much herself in the way of parenting.

Goglu is a latch-key kid from the time she starts school. Her mother sets an alarm clock so that the six-year-old knows when it is time to get ready and catch the bus to school.

Amère is a struggling single mother who still parties like most 20-year-olds, but strictly on the weekends. She eventually meets her significant other, Amer, and they move in together, but Amer in no way assumes any fathering responsibilities, and he, too, resents Goglu. The weekend parties continue, and too ashamed to invite friends over to her house, the girl finds herself alone, a lot. As a teen, Goglu is troubled by her mother’s increasing dependence on alcohol.

At her South Shore school, Goglu is an outcast, an odd duck among a bunch of suburban kids. But in high school, she makes friends through that great equalizer—drugs. She struggles to finish high school, but starts to use harder drugs, and then eerily finds herself in her mother’s previous predicament, the one that ruined “her bright future.”

Geneviève Castrée shows genuine talent as a graphic novelist and has created a compelling story. Particularly innovative is the circular panel she uses to illustrate an intense argument with her mother. We can all attest that arguments tend to be circular in nature, often returning to the original accusations.

Of all the books I’ve read in the last few years, I found Susceptible the most heart-wrenching. Goglu, like many unwanted children, internalizes her mother and stepfather’s resentment, which unsurprisingly results in her own anger, depression and self-imposed alienation.

Although it would be easy to point the finger at Amère for being a poor mother, she too was an unwanted child and did not receive the parenting that she needed either. As a single-parent with few resources, she chose to live with another wage-earner to make life and decision-making a little easier. In her desperation, she not only chose a man she didn’t love, but also one who had little patience for her daughter.

A lot of people will find this a difficult read, but for many this will be validation for their own experiences growing up in cash-strapped homes with ill-equipped parents. Susceptible should be on the bookshelf of every teacher, guidance counsellor, social worker and planned parenthood advocate.

I applaud the publisher for taking this risk on a story that could potentially help a lot of people, both young and old.

Heather Leighton is Rover Arts’ Literary Editor. You can find more of her writing at the Unexpected Twists and Turns.

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The Blue Metropolis Literary Festival has grown tremendously in popularity since its inception in 1999. Not only have pre-festival ticket sales soared, but so has the festival’s ability to draw internationally acclaimed writers. On Thursday night, the Blue Metropolis International Literary Grand Prix was presented to Colm Tóibín before a sold-out crowd at the Bibliothèque Nationale. The prize and $10,000 purse are awarded each year to a world-renowned author in recognition of a lifetime of literary achievement. The Irish writer is no stranger to literary awards, having won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Booker Prize, among many others.

Best-selling Canadian author and jury member Claire Rothman Holden told the audience how the jury had selected Tóibín over the other illustrious contenders, which included Barbara Kingsolver, Orhan Pamuk and Rohinton Mistry. It was in part the writer’s versatility. In addition to being a novelist and short story writer, he is an essayist, poet, literary critic, playwright and journalist. “It was also the ease with which he writes, and the fact that he has accomplished all of this before the age of 60,” said Rothman Holden.

After the formal award presentation, Tóibín was joined on stage by Eleanor Wachtel, the host of CBC Radio’s “Writers and Company.” It might be assumed that a man named one of Britain’s top 300 intellectuals would be a snob, but this was not the case. With a keen sense of humour, he spoke frankly with Wachtel about his recent work, Broadway play, religion and family.

Although the Enniscorthy native is best known for his novels The Master and Brooklyn, it was his most recent work, The Testament of Mary that seemed to most interest Wachtel. Tóibín breathes new life into the tale of the mother of Christ, something he was surprised no one had tried to do before. Instead of the meek and mild version we’re familiar with, Mother Mary is imbued with a fierce intelligence, in spite of being illiterate. In addition to being incurious about what her son is doing, she refers to the disciples as a group of misfits and leaves the crucifixion before Jesus dies. The premier performance of the Broadway production of The Testament of Mary opened last Monday night in New York, and as can be expected some religious groups were up in arms. Nevertheless, the author showed genuine enthusiasm for the standing ovation his play received, the instant reaction a novelist never sees from someone reading his book.

On the topic of religion, the audience learned that Tóibín had once entertained the thought of joining the priesthood. “My family thought it was funny,” said the writer. The second youngest of five children, he had even considered something grander. “If I’d joined the Church then I wanted to be a Bishop,” said Tóibín. He admitted, however, that in spite of being a sucker for stained glass and enjoying Bach’s religious music, he just couldn’t “bring himself to believe any of it.”

A recurring theme in Tóibín’s work is family. His university-educated father was a teacher, local journalist and historian. His death when the writer was only 12 was devastating. “It was one of the first things to surface in therapy,” said the author. “After a death, everyone acts as if nothing has happened, life goes on and the whole issue becomes unmentionable. It’s like having half your face bitten off, but still having to smile.” The author made a number of thought-provoking statements about the truth of our interior lives, our secret selves, and how these thoughts can sometimes only be validated through reading experiences similar to our own.

His wise words were more than worth the admission price. As I walked up the steps of the auditorium listening to other people’s excited chatter about what they had just heard, there was a rush to get out of the auditorium, but it wasn’t to go home. A larger than usual crowd was milling around the display tables with Tóibín’s books, smiling and looking exhilarated.

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A former Bombay journalist, Veena Gokhale has penned her first collection of 12 short stories set almost entirely in India. While her stories impart a genuine taste and flavour of India familiar to Indophiles, there is a definite departure from tradition in this collection, giving the reader a sense that considerable change is in the air.

Gokhale also throws in a few surprises, such as a story set in Japan in the last third of the book, serving as a type of aesthetic contrast, in addition to a tale about a young Canadian woman who finds moving spiritual enlightenment in Kathmandu. For anyone who loves stories about the Subcontinent, this collection offers some gems that are both evocative and visually pleasing.

The title story, “Bombay Wali,” also the collection’s longest, brings together a number of young professional women eking out an existence. Renuka’s dreams are shattered when she has her bag slashed and money stolen outside a bank. Too ashamed to tell her father, she entertains the idea of robbing a bank, an idea suggested by her friend Gulnar on a girls’ night out. In desperation, Renuka agrees to take part. For their disguise, six burqas are purchased, and then the plans abruptly change. This leads to a less than satisfying ending to an otherwise original and engrossing tale. “Bombay Wali” is a welcome shift from the traditional portrayal of Indian women.

Equally audacious is “The Room,” which opens with a young couple, Suj and Vikram, smoking an illicit substance. As their relationship becomes more intimate, Suj is unsuccessfully pressured into taking a key for a room from Vikram’s unsavoury friend so that the couple might be alone. Although Suj is portrayed as more sexually open than her friends, as the reader witnesses, the stakes are still high for even the most minor displays of public affection.

My favourite in the collection is “Zindagi Itefaq Hai” (Life is Chance). Vishwanath Iyer is an investigative journalist at a small-time Bombay rag, The Disquieter. As fate would have it, page two of his report, containing a key quote, is blown out the window and into the alleyway. Unable to retrieve his page two, Vish rushes to the station where his source, a judge, is catching a train. Both humorous and realistic, this story is easy to visualize, “The station was a tide of bodies, a cacophony of sounds – human and mechanical, a solid flow of heat-resistant energy. Nevertheless, the announcer’s steady voice, talking alternatively in Marathi, Hindi and English, managed to prevail over the chaos.” In spite of its somewhat weak ending, “Zindagi Itefaq Hai” feels like the beginning of a very entertaining full-length novel.

Other noteworthy stories include “the Tea Drinker,” about an adolescent boy who befriends a rich social outcast, and “Freire Stopped in Bombay,” which details the ravages of hunger on a poor student who is too proud to borrow money. Despite its pedestrian title, “Middle Age Jazz and Blues” is the most beautiful story in the collection. At a jazz concert, Feroza a middle-aged single woman is struck by the vision of the love of her life, who died tragically.

As is usually the case, some stories are not as interesting as the others. However, in spite of some vague references to “things” and “stuff,” a handful of heavy adverbs and some unconventional dialogue tags, Veena Gokhale shows genuine promise as a short story writer. Let’s hope she chooses to write more about the Bombay newspaper world.

Bombay Wali is available on amazon.ca and at ChaptersIndigo.

Veena Gokhale will be reading at: 

Sunday April 28, 6 pm: The Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival, Hotel10, 10 Sherbrooke Street West, with other Guernica authors, (Free event.)

Saturday May 4, 4.30 pm: Naada Yoga, 5540 Casgrain Avenue (Free event)

Wednesday May 8, 5 pm: Ashtanga Yoga Montreal, Suite 118, Belgo Building, 372 Ste-Catherine Street West, (Free event)

Tuesday May 14, 7.30 pm: Visual Arts Centre, McClure Gallery, 350 Victoria Avenue, Westmount (with other authors); $5.00 entrance

IMAGE: Creative commons here

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It was still light out on Friday night when I left wearing rubber boots to see Alison Bechdel at the Ukrainian Hall, an event sponsored by Drawn and Quarterly and the Institute For Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at McGill. As I trudged through the slush of the late spring snow, dodging mud sprayed from passing cars on St-Denis, I wondered what Bechdel would talk about. She wouldn’t have to do much to please the crowd. Bechdel is the syndicated cartoonist of the long-running comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For. The critically acclaimed graphic memoirist has legions of adoring fans. The evening’s presenter even told the crowd that a video of Bechdel rescuing an earwig from the kitchen sink garnered more than 7,000 views.

In the end, however, it was not her talk that was the most interesting, but the Q&A that followed. Both of her groundbreaking graphic memoirs Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic and Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama were more widely read than I had ever imagined. It was also interesting to see her reaction to personal questions that appeared to hit a little too close to home.

No one can deny that authors speaking in public have some expectation of privacy, so why wouldn’t Bechdel?

A proponent of “the personal is the political,” Bechdel (pronounced Bekdel) writes and draws about very personal issues in great detail. In her first wildly successful graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, she chronicles her childhood and early adulthood in a rural Pennsylvania town and her complex relationship with her father, a funeral home director and high school English teacher. Her father is overbearing and at times violent, like many dads of that era, but he also lives a secret life. Just as the author is coming to terms with her own sexuality, she realizes that her father, too, is gay. It is around this time that there is a tragic accident and her father dies. However, the daughter sees it as a suicide.

Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama, her second memoir, is equally personal. Bechdel writes about her relationship with her very distant mother, who never fully gives her blessing to the her memoir. It is also abundantly clear that Fun Home was not a family favourite. Are You My Mother? goes into detail about Bechdel’s relationships and her psychotherapy with multiple references to Virginia Woolf, Adrienne Rich and Donald Winnicott.  The book does not offer the same closure as Fun Home, but then making sense of our relationships with our mothers is often a work-in-progress.

Although Bechdel admitted at the Q&A that she was not pleased with the end-result of Are You My Mother?, it was nevertheless a critical success.

The talk and slide show of Dykes to Watch Out For were in fact short. The Q&A started like most others with a few timid questions until a sexologist came to the microphone to ask the author about the openness of her therapists to Bechdel’s sexual orientation. The author was frank about her positive experiences. At any other Q&A, this would have been a cringe moment, but not this time. In fact, I nearly made a move to the mic myself. I had my own question: I wanted to know how the little Pennsylvania town where she grew up reacted to Fun Home. But clearly, I was not alone, as many more people quickly got in line to ask a question. A therapist said that she used Are You My Mother? with her patients as a means to teach the heavy-handed writing of Winnicott. There was also a question from a teacher who taught Fun Home to his high school English class. Bechdel said that the book was used in college English classes and that she always found it strange that students talked about her father as an actual character.

Then the question everyone was expecting materialized: What did Bechdel’s mother think of Are You My Mother? The author took a step back and put her hand over her mouth before answering. Her mother was not happy. “I had to take her to Las Vegas,” she said.

Then it was announced that there was enough time for two more questions for the last two people in line. The next person asked a question about the Bechdel test for films and then asked why neither of her siblings appeared in Are You My Mother? Again the author’s hand went up to her mouth. “Ahh, that’s a bit of a hornet’s nest,” she said. “I can’t talk about that.” She then waved her hand in the air and called an end to the question period, leaving one last person in line.

Alison Bechdel has truly espoused “the personal is the political” and her books have helped and validated the experiences of many. But I think that her honesty and openness may have come at a very high price personal price.

The post Asking the Tough Questions appeared first on The Rover.

While there are a lot of great writers in Canada, there seems to be little meritocracy. Some great writers are widely promoted, while others rarely get the attention they deserve. A case in point for the latter is the inventive, unique and moving Gay Dwarves of America (GDA) by Anne Fleming.

True, it could be that GDA is a collection of short stories, not always the first thing people reach for when they read. Or, as the title suggests, some of the stories are unconventional, even outlandish, maybe not exactly what everyone might be in the mood for. Nevertheless, the reader will be generously rewarded with this refreshingly original collection of short stories. Fleming strikes that fine balance between the humourous and realistic, reeling us in with a few laughs only to show us a more serious issue.

The nine-story collection contains a wide variety of tales, from the stellar and almost mainstream “Thorn-blossoms,” about an eccentric hockey mom who must contend with her once ambitious journalist mother, now stricken with Alzheimer’s, to the experimental and self-explanatory, “Thirty-One One Word Stories.”

In the middle of the spectrum, there are stories about a boy on a unicycle, a bearded parasitologist named Edna and a musical about a bunch of wannabe artists working in inventory at the back of an outdoor equipment store. This story includes a chorus of cashiers and of course, a love triangle with the cuckold in a coma. Yes, this is a laugh-out-loud book, but it also elicits a range of other emotions.

The title story, “Gay Dwarves of America,” is about two college roommates who, on a whim, set up a chat room for gay dwarves. However, when one of the roommates receives a serious email from a mother who suspects that her son, a little person, is gay, a distance develops between the two friends.

My favourite, “Puke Diary” is about the funny and harrowing events surrounding each family member’s experience vomiting. This even includes an entry on Sarah, the family’s cat. My least favourite was the “Backstock: the Musical.” Although original, I found it long and had to restart it a few times.

GDA is not a quick read and is best enjoyed over an extended period of time, and preferably not on your commute to work. The conspicuous jacket attracted quite a few smiles and inquisitive looks on the metro. Or was it my giggling?

Anne Fleming’s stories have been widely published in literary journals, and she has been shortlisted for both the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Danuta Gleed Award. That said, although GDA might not be considered mainstream fiction, I’m still surprised that it didn’t generate more buzz.

The post Say Anything appeared first on The Rover.

The all-woman art collective, Images de femmes, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year and will be featuring work by some 70 women artists. The kick-off is today, Saturday, March 2, at 1:30 pm at the Mile End Library with a reception and vernissage. In addition to a sister art exhibit across the street at AME ART, workshops given by local artists are scheduled throughout the week, and culminates with Rythmes de femmes, a celebration of women and music at the Rialto Theatre on Sunday, March 10.

While Images de femmes has always had a strong visual arts focus and a growing music component, in the past it has also featured literature and film.

At the vernissage in 1994, Governor General recipient, playwright and novelist Marie Laberge and internationally acclaimed playwright Abla Faroud read from their work. Award-winning documentary filmmaker, screenwriter and director Mireille Dansereau presented Les seins dans la tête in 1995 and Les cheveux en quatre in 1997. While documentary filmmaker and long-time Mile End resident Sophie Bisonnette showed Des lumières dans la grande noirceur in 1996, with the film’s star Léa Roback in attendance. In recent years, Bisonnette has been widely praised for Sexy Inc: Our Children Under the Influence, a documentary about the media’s hypersexualization of children.

As one might expect, the idea behind Images de femmes arose around a kitchen table in the fall of 1992, when Claudine Schiradin and some friends discussed what Mile End women artists could do to celebrate International Women’s Day. The abundance of cheap, spacious apartments had attracted droves of young women artists. “But they had no venue in the Mile End where they could show their work,” says local historian and long-time Images de femmes participant Kathryn Harvey.

The Mile End of the early 1990s was hardly the thriving artistic neighbourhood it is now. “It didn’t have much identity at all,” notes Harvey. Empty storefronts lined Park Avenue, and north of St.Viateur, there were plenty of crack houses. “I can’t count the number of times I witnessed police cuffing some young dealer lying face down with a cop’s boot on his back,” she adds.

The Mile End’s turning point came in 1993. Not only was the dilapidated YMCA torn down and rebuilt, but the Habs also won the Stanley Cup, filling cafés on Bernard and St. Viateur streets with screaming fans during the playoffs. There was also another important initiative. A citizen’s action group, le Comité des citoyens du Mile-End (CCME) successfully convinced the city of Montreal to buy the old Anglican Church on Park Avenue and convert it into a library. This development project not only added a library and meeting place to the neighbourhood, but it also provided Images de femmes with a much-needed venue.

The CCME has been instrumental in assisting initiatives like Images de femmes. “Their work has made the neighbourhood the creative, vibrant place it is today,” says Harvey.

CCME member Baska Séguin, artists Françoise Barraud and Nancy Héroux, and Josée Moreau from the city of Montreal were key figures in organizing the first ever Images de femmes. However, by 1996, the annual event had become so popular that even the library was too small. They typical neighbourhood solution was to ask local merchants to display the work of up-and-coming artists.

“Residents of the Mile End did their socializing where they shopped, in doorways, and out on the street, having no other place to congregate,” says the local historian. As a result, there has always been a strong relationship between members of the community and shop owners, who have always been more than willing to lend a hand to aspiring artists.

This tradition is alive and well today. A number of Mile End businesses still feature the work of local artists in their storefronts and shops. The first week of March is a great time to go for a walk in the hood and see the work of the next generation of aspiring artists.

For a listing of the Images de femmes events, “like” their Facebook Page or follow them on Twitter at @MileEndIdF. Tickets to the March 10 Rythmes de femmes are on sale at the Rialto ticket office or can be purchased at the door ($15 general admission, $10 for students and seniors).

Heather Leighton blogs at the Unexpected Twists and Turns.

IMAGE: Françoise Barraud, Images de Femmes, 2003

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Award-winning author Alexander MacLeod will be one of two mentors in the inaugural Mentorship Exchange Program between the Quebec Writers’ Federation (QWF) and the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia.The 2010 Giller Prize nominee will be coaching up-and-coming Quebec writer Josée Lafrenière, while Montreal Gazette literary critic and author Ian McGillis will go to Halifax to work with Nova Scotia writer Jessica Chisholm.

MacLeod believes that the exchange “is a great idea” and is pleased to be taking part. He will be mentoring Lafrenière on her work-in-progress. “I’m very impressed with her writing” said the bestselling author. “It’s precise, careful and nuanced.”

MacLeod’s debut collection of short stories, Light Lifting, received rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition to being shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Award and the Commonwealth Prize, it received an Atlantic Canada Book Award. There’s an emphasis on labour and physical exertion in this collection, but it also includes stories on parenting and boyhood friendships. The common thread throughout is the setting–Windsor, Ontario.

“My dad taught at the University of Windsor, so we spent most of our elementary and secondary school years there before heading back to our house in Cape Breton for the summers.”

The author’s father, International IMPAC Dublin Award winner Alistair MacLeod, taught English and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor, which was a literary hub in Canada at the time. Alistair MacLeod taught alongside Joyce Carol Oates and her late husband Raymond Smith, the editors of the now legendary Ontario Review literary journal, which published work by such illustrious writers as John Updike, Margaret Atwood, Saul Bellow and Phillip Roth.

Did this have an influence on the young MacLeod?

“Yes, I think it certainly did,” said the author, who is a proud graduate of the same university program. “The great Eugene McNamara recruited my dad to come to the school in the early seventies and then that excellent group… Joyce Carol Oates, Raymond Smith, W.0. Mitchell, John Ditsky, Adele Wiseman, Wanda Campbell, Ed Watson, Peter Stevens, and a whole host of year-long writers in residence came together to build this.” The author said that he and his family knew what it was like to feel part of a vibrant literary community, attending readings and public events on both sides of the Canada-US border.

Alexander MacLeod will be in Montreal on Saturday, February 23, to give a one-day QWF  workshop on fiction’s position between the poles of poetry and raw journalistic narrative, with a focus on the micro- and macro-levels of storytelling. Unfortunately for many, all the workshop spots were filled within hours of being posted.

However, you can still catch a reading by the author at independent bookseller Argo Books (1915 St. Catherine Street West) this Saturday at 7:30 pm. MacLeod will be reading from Light Lifting and possibly something new…

The post Heavy Lifting in Montreal appeared first on The Rover.

Winner of the People’s Choice Awards at the RIDM, 5 Broken Cameras is an intimate look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as seen through the lens of Emad Burnat, a Palestinian farmer and amateur videographer living in Bil’in, West Bank. In his attempt to create a visual record of the border conflict that unfolds over six years, he has a series of five cameras destroyed. This is just one narrative thread that runs through this autobiograpical film, brilliantly edited by Israeli video activist Guy Davidi.

In 2005, Burnat purchases his first camera to film the birth of his fourth son Gibreel. This event  coincides with the arrival of Israeli surveyors who are laying the groundwork for a barrier through the village’s olive groves. The barrier, a combination of barbed wire fence, a concrete wall and watchtowers, is ostensibly to protect the expanding Israeli settlements from snipers and suicide bombers. But the barrier appropriates the Palestinian olive groves, the villagers’ means of subsistence. Local Palestinians begin peaceful weekly protests, often resulting in violent clashes with Israeli soldiers. As can be expected, the conflict intensifies, the army closes in and the resistance movement swells to include Israeli and foreign sympathizers, all of which Burnat doggedly captures on film.

But 5 Broken Cameras also chronicles many personal events that run parallel to the struggle, taking the edge off the escalating violence and giving this conflict a much-needed human face. Burnat’s friends, Adeeb and Basseem, the de facto resistant leaders, are key figures in the story. In addition to cheating death in their verbal confrontations with Israeli soldiers, Adeeb is shot in the leg, while Basseem, the gentle giant, eventually meets his fate with a gas grenade. Another narrative thread involves Burnat’s son Gibreel. He grows from a joyful toddler whose first words are “cartridge” and “army,” to a child with hardened eyes learning about heroes. Burnat, himself, also undergoes a few changes in the course of the film. His hair greys, he gains weight, and at the end of the film, he is involved in a near tragic accident that is unrelated to the conflict. Ironically, his life is saved at an Israeli hospital, and the Palestinian Authority refuses to pay him any compensation.

There are a few scenes, however, that appear staged to create a stronger family narrative. The first scene that comes to mind is Burnat’s wife putting Gibreel to bed and singing him a lullaby, and the second involves Burnat’s wife telling him that his filming is jeopardizing their lives. These scenes may well have happened, but they appear to me to have been filmed after the fact. In addition, although it is stated explicitly in the film’s credits, not all the footage used was Burnat’s. Footage was taken from both Davidi’s work and that of another unnamed cameraman.

In spite of this, Davidi’s editing is nothing short of masterful. In an interview with Box Office, we learn that he had to go through over 1,000 hours of film, and then do the final edit with Véronique Lagoarde to create this 90-minute film. The challenge, he said, “[was] to create a balance between the violence and the nice moments, the delicate moments.” And I must add that without these delicate moments, 5 Broken Cameras would have come across as just more horrifying coverage of the conflict in the Middle East, and I would have left after 10 minutes.

In the end, 5 Broken Cameras is a gripping tale that gives us a much more nuanced story of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it should come as no surprise that the film won at both Sundance and the IDFA, the world’s largest documentary film festival.

5 Broken Cameras plays at the ExCentris until December 13. 

Heather Leighton blogs at the Unexpected Twists and Turns.

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Director Heidi Ewing grew up four miles from Detroit. After each visit home, she would find herself telling friends in New York just how bad things were in the Motor City. Then she and fellow director Rachel Grady made a trailer for a film about the city. “Turned out there were other people also interested in Detroit,” Ewing told the Huffington Post. The award-winning directors of Jesus Camp and The Boys of Baraka quickly received funding from PBS and the Ford Foundation. In October 2009 they started filming the highly acclaimed Detropia, recently presented at the 14th annual Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montreal.

The demise of Detroit is old news. We’ve been hearing about it for decades. In fact, a friend familiar with the area recently said that the purpose of building the Renaissance Center (RenCen) was to revitalize the downtown – and that was in 1976. Even so, the last decade of globalization and outsourcing has decimated Detroit and the film makes it abundantly clear that the extent of the devastation has to be seen to be believed. The Motor City reportedly has 100,000 abandoned homes and 25% of its population has left in the past decade. Detropia is intended to be a wake up call to the world of what can happen to our cities if we continue to make decisions for purely economic reasons.

Ewing and Grady take us to the streets, showing us the city through the eyes of a handful of tough Detroiters who are unwilling to give up on their city. The cinematography is nothing short of stunning. The dilapidated homes, derelict hotels and rundown movie theatres are in stark contrast to the vintage footage of Detroit in its heyday, when it was the world’s car capital and home to a burgeoning middle class. A haunting musical score is intercut with scenes from Detroit’s Opera, which clings to life from support from the Big Three automakers.

The scenario may sound grim, and it is. Through local UAW President George McGregor, we see the status of what remains of the automotive industry. He chairs a meeting where management “offers” workers a sizeable cut to their hourly wages. There’s also retired school teacher Tommy Stephens, who runs the only blues bar left in East Detroit. He keeps the money-losing operation open with the hope that the plant up the road will soon be bustling once the electric car is perfected. The two represent the doomed hope of many North Americans – that manufacturing jobs will soon return to this side of the world.

But Detropia also offers hope. The film follows twenty-something Crystal Starr, a video blogger and urban adventurer when she isn’t working in a café. Starr films herself breaking into abandoned buildings and houses, and imagines for her viewers what life was like when the city “was bangin.” Visiting the ruins of cities like Detroit, known as ruin porn in Tumblr culture, has begun to tempt a new kind of tourist to the city, not to mention scores of artists who are attracted to Detroit’s low-cost of living and dirt-cheap real estate. I must admit that my initial interest in Detropia stemmed from seeing “the Ruins of Detroit,” a brilliant photo essay by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.

Ewing and Grady have given us a powerful snapshot of Detroit at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, with all of its crumbling architecture and infrastructure. The film also provides a much needed picture of the human element, the Detroiters who refuse to leave, something that no statistic, headline or “expert” can deliver.

There’s some much needed food for thought in this film about globalization, the shrinking middle class, and ultimately, the future of our cities.

Detropia is showing at Cinéma du Parc from November 24 to November 29.

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What better way to beat a gray November day than to follow passionate fruit hunters, Noris Ledesma  and Richard Campbell, on their quest to find a “wani” mango in Bali and then rescue a rare durian from the evil clutches of encroaching industrialists in the jungles of Borneo. Their noble mission: to obtain plant grafts to preserve the species for cultivation on the other side of the world. The duo’s obsession with rare fruit is by no means unique, as moviegoers discovered at the world premiere of The Fruit Hunters presented at the 14^th annual Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montreal. Among the ranks of fruit fanatics, the film features a scientist who works tirelessly to create a banana resistant to a deadly fungus threatening crops the world over, a detective who studies paintings from the renaissance era to rediscover forgotten fruit, and a well-known actor and fruit activist who spearheads a campaign to start a community orchard on coveted property in the Hollywood Hills.

Based on Adam Leith Gollner’s best-selling book, The Fruit Hunters is a visually stunning, fast-paced Indiana Jones-style documentary that takes us back in history and around the globe, investigating our love affair with fruit. Although actor Bill Pullman adds some celebrity to the film, there is no question that the star of the show is none other than fruit itself, in all its myriad incarnations.

From the very first scene, the object of affection is cast in a sensual and delectable light in a series of close-ups that enhance the colour, texture and fullness of the star performers. A good thing the premiere was followed by a fruit-tasting event! And what better way to further enhance the natural beauty of fruit than by quickly switching to images of our mass-produced supermarket variety—the plain Jane and insipid-tasting cousins of the real thing.

The Fruit Hunters takes a step away from the documentary in its strictest sense, using humourous re-enactments, highly detailed miniatures and a sprightly musical score. But these aspects add to the film’s playfulness and will remind many viewers of childhoods when both fruit and dreams of adventure were welcome distractions.

The film incorporates plenty of high stakes and irresistible hooks to keep the adventure rolling. Yet, it left viewers hanging as to the fate of Pullman’s Hollywood Orchard and whether or not Ledesma and Campbell’s white mango seedling graft was successfully transplanted. Something tells me there might be a sequel, and I’ll be the first in line.

The Fruit Hunters will be opening at Cinéma Excentris in Montreal and at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema Theater in Toronto on November 23, 2012, and at the Vancity Theatre in Vancouver on November 30, 2012.

Other writing by Heather Leighton can be found at the Unexpected Twists and Turns.

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Short-listed for this year’s Governor General’s Award for literature, The Juliet Stories is the most recent work by Carrie Snyder. This novel-in-stories spans the life of Juliet from the tender age of 10 to adulthood. The eldest of three children, Juliet is the daughter of naive left-wing parents who uproot their family from Indiana and go to Nicaragua to help the Sandinistas fight the Reagan-backed Contras in the early 1980s.

The well-intentioned father, however, is much more interested in fighting alongside the Sandinistas in el campo than helping his wife and young family get acclimatized to the new language and culture. But Juliet’s father is not the only one with his focus elsewhere. Although her mother, Gloria, is busy with her family and chasing down a toddler, it appears that she would rather be strumming her guitar and showing off her beautiful singing voice at adult parties than being a mom. Gloria is quick to pass on some of her parenting responsibilities to the eldest Juliet, then 10, something that the daughter resents.

The three children slowly adjust to their new life in Nicaragua, but Juliet is always an outsider at school, or the girl who has the unladylike habit of sweating and throwing like a boy in gym class. There is a constant stream of Roots for Justice volunteers arriving from the United States to continue the struggle, and her father gets a little too involved with a few.

The family endures some harrowing experiences, which include being stopped by a group of armed men in the hills and having their car stolen. This is around the time that the family discovers that Juliet’s brother Keith has cancer. The father stays behind to fight for the cause, while the rest of the family goes to live with the paternal grandmother in southwestern Ontario, where the brother undergoes treatment. Juliet is again an outcast at her new school, as she comes to terms with her brother’s illness and the fact that he is the exclusive focus of her mother’s attention. In the years that follow, the family disintegrates, and the parents move on to new partners.

Carrie Snyder has beautifully captured what many North Americans feel while living abroad as ex-pats, negotiating the invisible cultural lines only to find that in spite of their best intentions, integration and acceptance are part of a long complicated process.

The entire family is marked by their experience in the Central American country, and it is where Gloria chooses to remarry, an event that Juliet finds exceedingly awkward. Throughout the book, Snyder gives an accurate depiction of the complexity and often contradictory emotions of mother-daughter relationships, possibly the book’s strongest point. When Gloria says that she cannot sing during her wedding ceremony, Juliet does not buy the statement. “Parse the words, are any of them truthful, or would each sentence make better sense read in a mirror? Gloria is not a nervous woman; she has an icy reserve, a chill that permits her freedom to pursue, to leave, to choose at will, with control. She thrives on performance.” Yet, later at the reception when Gloria actually does sing and play her guitar, Juliet “experiences a shot behind the eyes, a burst of pride at her mother’s unexpected accomplishments.”

Fortunately, Juliet does not heap all her anger and blame onto her mother. The daughter is able to forgive her mother’s lack of attention when she discovers that she is pregnant after a one-night stand. Juliet learns from her aunt that she, too, was initially an unwanted pregnancy. Her father is more the target of Juliet’s wrath. After his death, the adult daughter wants to torch the farmhouse, the last place the family lived together.

Carry Snyder is a writer that we’re bound to hear more of in the future. Her razor-sharp prose is insightful and rich throughout, but the stories set in Nicaragua are by far the best. This is the perfect book for anyone who has lived or travelled in Latin America or who is simply curious about what it was like to have revolutionary parents in the early 1980s.

Heather Leighton  blogs at the Unexpected Twists and Turns.

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What better way to spend a rainy afternoon with the kids than seeing The Day of the Crows (Le Jour des corneilles), an animated feature directed by Jean-Christophe Dessaint. Presented as part of the 41st edition of the Festival du cinéma du nouveau monde at the Théâtre Outremont, the much anticipated film, a France-Canada-Belgium-Luxembourg production is based on the internationally acclaimed book Le Jour des corneilles by Quebec writer Jean-Francois Beauchemin. In addition to using the voices of actor Jean Reno and late nouvelle vague legend Claude Chabrol, the film was drawn almost entirely by hand. As 24 frames are required for just one second of animation, making a feature-length film is no small feat.

In The Day of the Crows, the central character is a young boy called simply “Son.” After the mother dies in childbirth in the wild, the infuriated father first discards the infant but then reluctantly raises him alone in the woods. Son, however, still sees his mother as a half-human half-fawn animal spirit. She and other anthropomorphized forest creatures are his only companions other than his decidedly strange father.

When Son is old enough to venture to the forest’s edge, he discovers a new world. His father warns him of the dangers of civilization, but when the elder falls ill, Son seeks help in the village where his father is eventually given medical treatment. This is where we learn of the father’s tragic past and the grudge that some of the villagers still harbour against him. While the father recovers, Son stays with the doctor’s family, discovers love and learns the ways of the civilized world from Manon, the doctor’s daughter. Son eventually returns with his father to the forest, but his stay in the village has prepared him for his future survival.

The Day of the Crows incorporates some beautiful painting and finely detailed characters, but Son, intended to be simple and devoid of any sophistication, is basic to the point of being bland, with few traits to endear him to young viewers. Artistically, the film was stunning with strong influences from Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, but there were technical problems that might be the result of a poor film transfer. The colours were oversaturated, and there were details out of focus throughout the film. But probably the biggest problem was its length. In spite of its artistic merits, the film could have easily been edited by at least 20 minutes.

Had Day of the Crows been released 10 years earlier, it would have been wildly popular. But with stiff competition from Pixar, Studio Ghibli, Dreamworks and Disney, and the technical innovations of the last decade, young viewers (and their parents) now expect much more than just beautiful artwork and music. They want to be dazzled and entertained from beginning to end, which Day of the Crows fails to do. However, for the purists or those curious to see what hand-drawn animation looks like, this is an enjoyable film.

Heather Leighton blogs at the Unexpected Twists and Turns.

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In The Goodtime Girl, Tess Fragoulis spins a tale set in the 1920s featuring Kivelli Fotiathi, the daughter of a wealthy family living in Smyrna, in present-day Turkey. Determined to decide her own destiny, Kivelli turns down a number of wealthy suitors introduced by her father. But her life is torn asunder when the Turks seize control of Smyrna and set the town ablaze. Kivelli’s life mirrors the fate of many Greeks who survived the Great Fire of Smyrna in 1922, later finding themselves penniless and largely unwanted by Greek mainlanders.

The options available to a young unmarried woman are limited, and Kivelli finds herself cleaning a brothel for a madam in Piraeus, an Athens slum. When it is revealed she can sing, she becomes a performer for hashish-smoking manghes (gangsters) in a local tavern. Her modest income allows Kivelli to repay the madam and buy her freedom, but life in the underworld is difficult to negotiate for anyone, let alone a young woman.

Kivella sings rembetika or the Greek blues, the music of a subculture, with themes of drink, drugs, crime, prostitution and violence.  A native of Crete, Fragoulis has said that the story came to her when she heard rembetika on the radio for the first time. Initially the music of the underclass, rembetika later gained popularity among the working and lower middle classes. Kivelli’s talent unexpectedly opens doors for the singer, and soon she finds herself recording songs written by Marianthi, a songwriter who becomes both Kivelli’s friend and rival. Just as her fortunes change, Kivelli meets a handsome bad boy and ends up in a love triangle, realistically rendered by Fragoulis.

Knowledge of the Great Fire of Smyrna is key to understanding the order of the book. While the mention of Smyrna and the 1920s will be enough for some readers to understand the sequence of events, a few may be confused by Kivelli’s sudden change in social standing, from her wealthy life in Smyrna in one chapter to subsisting in a brothel in Piraeus in the next. Although Kivelli’s resolve to forget her past is consistent throughout, her ability to suppress all thoughts of the tragedy until chapter 24 borders on the superhuman. But this is a minor point. The focus of the story is not her dramatic fall in status, but her survival as a singer in a drug-infested underworld where there is no room for weakness.

The Goodtime Girl is infused with music. Lines taken from songs open each chapter and give a clear indication of the sordid clientele that populate Kivelli’s world. Fragoulis’s descriptions are rich and evocative, if occasionally over the top, and a deliciously dark sense of humour permeates the story. “The Cucumber ruffled Spiros’s hair and apologized to Kivelli, not because he’d shot her lover but because blood had spattered her dress.”

Although there was a lack of closure among the characters at the end, I found the Goodtime Girl a satisfying read. There’s a beautiful film noir feel to this tale, and it comes with a welcome twist: it is seen through the eyes of a strong woman, an entertainer, and the only woman apart from prostitutes allowed into this sleazy world. Her observations in no way aggrandize the murders and thugs in her presence, but paint them exactly as they are, with all their strengths and vulnerabilities.

If you can’t afford a trip to Greece this summer, The Goodtime Girl is the next best thing. Escape guaranteed.

Heather Leighton blogs at the Unexpected Twists and Turns.

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Forget what you saw on Oprah. Thomas Beatie was not the first pregnant man. In fact, it was Joanna Nutter’s transgendered brother, James, who had that honour. In this innovative one-woman show, Nutter tells the true story of her hapless hippie mother, her younger sister, and their precarious lives growing up on the Main.

Our narrator is the strong one in the family and just when she decides to abdicate her caretaking role, her sister declares that she is a man and has her breasts removed. Nutter is forced not only to deal with this dramatic change, fumbling and stumbling around with pronouns and introductions, but must also deal with her transgender brother’s emotional issues and, finally, her mother and brother’s estrangement.

With simple chalk lines, Nutter creates the Plateau’s grid of streets, complete with the mountain and cross on a chalk board backdrop. The actor adds details and streets to her map as the story of brother’s gender transition and pregnancy unfolds. Nutter weaves a touching tale with evocative detail to help the audience visualize the street corners she describes.

In addition to shedding light on some of the emotional issues a transgendered individual might face, the story also explores the feelings of family members.  Nutter delivers a humorous and poignant performance, with the birth of her niece in an East Van hospital as possibly the most beautiful. Yet, it is the final roadside tragedy that is by far the most heartrending, reminding the family of just how precious life is, whether in the body of a woman or man.

Johanna Nutter’s courageous one-woman show explores subject-matter that is both original and risky, putting a human face on what is usually relegated to the pages of tabloids. For a unique and entertaining theatre performance, look no further. This is storytelling at its best.

There are two more shows of My Pregnant Brother on Thursday and Friday.

Entrance with Charge – Two Girls Smoke a Cigarette in Only 30 Seconds
Labelled as “performance,” Entrance with Charge puts the spotlight on les Filles Follen, a Spanish duo, who “decided to show what they really are: two pretty girls,” according to the Zoofest program. The mission of this festival is to offer “wild adventure and unique experiences,” but comedy is not a given in spite of being affiliated with Just For Laughs.

A nod to cabaret and the cigarette girls of the 1950s, the performance included plenty of cleavage, suggestive dancing, homo-erotic displays and simulated fighting. Obviously trained dancers, les Filles Follen were experimenting with what they could get away with based on their attractiveness. And while it’s true that the audience may have been less tolerant towards a pair of hairy middle-aged men doing the same routine, it might have provided some much needed comic relief.

The Spanish duo’s performance fell short of anything entertaining and instead served up little more than titillation. For a costume change, they pulled in a male member of the audience to help them zip up and recorded it on a web cam for the audience’s enjoyment.  They walked through the audience striking arabesques in short skirts and high heels among the quiet, polite audience at the Café Cléopatra. I yawned a little too audibly when the performers were parading through spectators with cigarette boxes bearing the sign “We Are Pretty,” and then unexpectedly had a member of the duo at our table, attempting to stare me down.

The act was pure provocation, an experiment in which the audience served as guinea pigs. Les Filles Follen performed strictly to pull our strings, and although some people might enjoy taking part in their little experiment, I found it empty and artless.

Heather Leighton blogs at the Unexpected Twists and Turns

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I had no idea what I was in for at the Tohu on Saturday night. The decision to see Séquence 8 by Les 7 doigts de la main had been my husband’s. As Montreal’s usual six degrees of separation would have it, he had gone to high school with one of the founders. I’d seen a clip of Eric Bates performing his mesmerizing cigar box act in the halls of Radio-Canada, but that was the extent of my exposure to the collective, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.

Like many others living in this city with exacting circus standards, set by none other than the world-renowned Cirque du Soleil, I was expecting a performance with a new take on the traditional circus acts, some vibrant costumes, bright lights, pulsating music, and a slew of flexible acrobats performing death-defying stunts. But the new take this time was subtlety, which produced stunning and unforeseen results. Séquence 8 presented a small troop of eight acrobats casually dressed in muted colours, performing to an indie rock soundtrack with minimal props and a sparse décor. It was a stellar example of less being more.

This brilliant pared-down approach not only reduced all the usual stimuli competing for the audience’s attention but it put the focus squarely on the collective’s world-class acrobatics, which left the audience nothing short of gobsmacked. In fact, I can’t recall ever attending any other circus performances where I’d repeatedly heard such a loud chorus of gasps, but it might be because they weren’t drowned out by the music.

Although the best acts may be the subject of fierce debate, my personal favourite was flying man Devin Henderson with his diving through hoops and scaling the Chinese pole. His work seemed so effortless that even when there were flaws they seemed planned to give the audience a little more gut-wrenching angst and a greater thrill when he succeeded in subsequent attempts. A close second was Alexandra Royer on the Russian bar, and it wasn’t the sheer height or difficulty of her double back lay-outs, it was her silent landings on the bar held by porters Eric Bates and Tristan Nielsen. In fact, it was the many small details such as the performers’ choreographed steps and interconnected movements, the sparse sensual lighting and the use of improv and humour that made for an unforgettable evening.

Séquence 8 was an intimate show that exceeded my expectations for a circus performance and made it abundantly clear to me for the first time why it is considered an art form.

Heather Leighton blogs at the Unexpected Twists and Turns.

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Award-winning author Billie Livingston has once again used her crisp clean prose to deliver another compelling story about an at-risk teen coming to terms with the severe limitations of her once-idolized grifter parents. As in the author’s first novel Going Down Swinging and her collection of short stories, Greedy Little Eyes, there are no silk blouses or cashmere sweaters in One Good Hustle. Livingston spins a humorous gritty tale set in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby in the mid-80s that is both gripping and realistic.

Sixteen-year-old Samantha Bell (Sammie) leads a precarious life through no fault of her own. The daughter of two small-time hustlers, Sammie leaves home after a number of her mother’s alcohol and drug-induced episodes and ramblings about suicide. The victim of a hustle gone wrong, mother Marlene spirals out of control until Sammie finally seeks refuge at the home of high school friend Jill, whose working-class parents are caring and stable, something that Sammie finds both foreign and comforting. Sammie’s relationship with her own con artist father is equally as troubled, particularly when she is forced to see that he put her in harm’s way for the sake of a heist. Confronting her long-cherished beliefs about her parents, Sammie experiences intense feelings of disappointment, shame, betrayal and hope, a highly vulnerable situation rendered beautifully by Livingston in this coming-of-age novel.

The author has delivered a well-rounded character in Sammie. Still a street-smart teen able to see a potential hustle, which she uses to finance her driver’s ed classes, Sammie nevertheless remains drug and alcohol-free as a means to maintain what little control she has over her own life. She is also determined to finish high school, no small feat given her limited stability and guidance. Sammie’s life is anything but carefree, which Livingston expertly illustrates through the use of her friend Jill as a foil. Average teen Jill goes to bush parties and naively dives into a doomed romance, whereas Sammie finds the prospect of a relationship a highly stressful undertaking, a luxury she simply cannot afford.

Sammie keeps her love-interest, Drew, at arm’s length for fear that his wealthy Christian family will discover the truth about her past. But Sammie has a lot of tracks to cover, which causes further turmoil. When Drew moves too close, Sammie physically strikes out, and this minor incident is what makes One Good Hustle so resoundingly real. As a young woman with few socially acceptable means for venting her anger and frustration, Sammie suffers in silence, internalizing her feelings. Her lashing out in the face of mounting stress makes her character all the more credible and gives the reader a well-deserved break from the passive heroine so widely flogged in mainstream media.

Last year, in an interview with Billie Livingston on her YA novella taken from One Good Hustle, I asked her about the origins of Sammie’s character. She told me that in addition to drawing on family members and girls she had gone to school with, Livingston had grown up with many small-time hustler families like the Bells. It is perhaps the author’s first-hand knowledge of this milieu that makes this novel ring so true.

One Good Hustle will remind many of us not only of those dark days when we feared becoming our parents but also of just how trying those teen years can be. Many young readers will find validation for their own experiences in the book, particularly those who are marginalized and who rarely find anything resembling their own reality on the pages of a book. Livingston has once again given us a stellar novel about people we see every day on the street but rarely ever know.

Heather Leighton blogs at the Unexpected Twists and Turns.

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If you’re trying to move away from social media, switch off your smart phone, or disengage from the current political situation in Montreal, then you might want to head down to the Conservatoire de musique et d’art dramatique de Montréal for the last day of the first annual Yoga Festival Montreal. There are numerous sessions to work on your breathing, unblock your chakras and reach new depths of consciousness. This is a great way to relax and regroup, but more importantly the perfect means for silencing the background noise in our lives.

Yoga Festival Montreal, brainchild of the Yoga Community of Montreal (YOCOMO), is a grassroots initiative aimed at recognizing the breadth of yoga practice and skill. The purpose of the Festival is to empower individuals and connect the city’s vast range of traditions and practices, and celebrate its vibrant diversity. More than 30 different sessions have been scheduled in the spacious conservatory studios, and the cheerful volunteers will direct you to your session of choice.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend a session on ayurvedic yoga with Bita Bitajian, who trains at the Ayurvedic Institute with Dr. Vasant Lad in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Ayurveda is the traditional Indian system of health that recommends a daily regimen of yoga to offset imbalances, while respecting our life stages and the changing seasons.

In the last session of the day, I heard the wise words of Dr. Madan Bali, the founder-director of the Montreal-based Yoga Bliss. An inspirational example of a healthy lifestyle, 88-year-old Dr. Bali has been credited with introducing yoga to schools, hospitals, community centres and corporations, as well as developing yoga as a complementary form for treating psychosomatic disorders.

If your yoga experience involved small dark studios with wooden floors groaning under your every movement, I recommend you stop by the conservatoire today to luxuriate in the large luminous studios. In fact, I don’t think that YOCOMO could have found a more inspiring venue.

You still have a chance to catch some enlightening sessions today. Here are three sessions that should not be missed. Dissolve the negativity in your life by meditating on the image of light with Juniper Glass, learn about the dynamic sacred art of Nritya, the yoga of dance, with Amrita Choudury or engage in a discussion on the interplay sex and yoga (Brahmacharya) with Lauren Rudick.

Namaste!

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Perhaps the highlight of the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival is the International Literary Grand Prix, awarded to a very deserving Joyce Carol Oates at the Bibliothèque Nationale last night. The prolific writer, who began her career at the tender age of 26, has penned some 70 works, which include novels, short stories, essays, memoirs, plays and children’s fiction. She has also written under the pen names of Lauren Kelly and Rosamond Smith. In spite of her many literary achievements and her prominent professorship at Princeton University, Oates came across as affable, calm and poised, with many fine words for Canada, where she taught in the 1970s and founded the Ontario Review with her late husband.

In an interview with award-winning writer and broadcaster Eleanor Wachtel, Oates spoke of her humble beginnings on a poor farm in Millersport, New York, a mere crossroads, a little ways from Lockport and the Lake Erie Barge Canal. When Wachtel asked why the Canal and Niagara Falls often resurfaced in her work, Oates replied, “Language is inadequate so we must revisit them to make sure.”

The Princeton professor attributes her impressive body of work to a farmer’s work ethic and her life-long love of animals to her days on the farm. Her father, Fred Oates, performed his daily chores and then went to work as a tool and dye designer in a factory, Harrison Radiator. It was when Fred Oates retired that he attended university in Buffalo and that Oates and her father were able to interact on different level. Her maternal grandparents were Hungarian, her grandfather a hardworking, hard-drinking smithy. Upon his death, her grandmother wanted him to be buried in a Catholic cemetery, but the long-lapsed Catholics apparently had a few problems persuading the priest and finally offered themselves as converts to cinch the deal.

The writer’s education started out modestly in a small rural school, then a suburban high school, Syracuse University and later Princeton.”We may have had two books in our house,” Oates told Wachtel. It was her paternal grandmother who gave her her first book by CS Lewis and her first typewriter. It was much later that she learned of this grandmother’s Jewish heritage and of her great grandfather`s tragic suicide, the raw material for the Gravedigger’s Daughter.

When asked why Joyce Carol Oates was drawn to the dark side and the tragic, the author replied that her work was lighter than the tragic side of her country, the US: the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and slavery. But among her remarks I found the most insightful were on US politics, specifically why working class Americans voted Republican, against their best interests. Apparently, it has to do with the elusive dream of one day being wealthier than Croesus.

The author did make a remark about Canadians being on higher political ground, evidently unaware that just two metro stations away students and riot police had been hurling projectiles at each other for two days. When asked by a member of the audience about her thoughts on the current Quebec student standoff, Oates graciously replied that she did not have the cultural or political knowledge to comment, but offered that she and her husband would be offering their support to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The International Literary Grand Prix event was an evening that will not soon be forgotten. Not only did it gave us the chance to see Eleanor Wachtel, Canada’s finest literary interviewer, in action, but it also afforded us the opportunity to see Joyce Carol Oates, possibly a soon-to-be winner of the Nobel Prize for literature.

Heather Leighton blogs at www.theunexpectedtnt.com

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Recipient of several literary prizes, including the Governor General’s Award for Literature, Ru is the autobiography of Kim Thuy. Under the name of Nguyen An Tinh, the author recounts her story: from her childhood in a palatial Saigon home, which her family is later forced to share with the invading Communist forces, to the squalor of the Malaysian refugee camp where she and her family fled before coming to Canada by boat. Starting out in Granby, Quebec, in the late 1970s, her parents work in menial jobs so that their children may one day live their “American” dream. As an adult, the protagonist returns to her native Vietnam where she is told that she is too fat to be Vietnamese and is mistaken for both an escort and a Japanese tourist.

In Vietnamese, Ru means lullaby, while in French, it signifies a flow of money, blood or tears, three recurring themes in this book. The narrative is a series of vignettes, usually no longer than a page, taking the reader back and forth in time and space. One vignette segues into the next with a single thematic thread. In one instance, the author describes her silence growing up in the shadow of her cousin Sao Mai, who is the same age and gender. In the next, she is attending a Canadian military cadet school so that she can learn English for free. She spends her summer receiving incomprehensible orders from over-exuberant teens who know nothing of the horrors of war. At the end of the summer in her first English words to her superior officer, our protagonist bids him adieu: “Bye. Asshole.”

As all writers know, appealing to the five senses is key to bringing the reader into the story. In Ru, Thuy not only relies on vibrant colours and rich sensual detail to layer her narrative, but she also introduces refreshingly original sensations, such as the texture of a comma, the sharp smell of sun-baked hair or the sound of crumpled dollar bills as they hit the feet of young naked women. And it is perhaps the rich detail of Ru that will make it so compelling for the North American reader, as it fills in the many cultural blanks we have of a country and a people about whom we have heard so much but know so little.

For many, our ideas of Vietnam stem from the black and white war footage of the nightly US news in the early 1970s, only to be followed by a series of Hollywood movies on the war experience from the perspective of American GIs. But there were North and South Vietnamese: the enemies and the victims, some of whom later became boatpeople. Growing up with Vietnamese classmates, we were never to ask them any questions about their past for fear we would unearth some horrific memory.

Although the story is at times harrowing, it also takes humorous turns. In addition to shedding some light on the presence of the “hairy hands,” as the US GIs were known, the book also gives further details on the invading North Vietnamese soldiers, who were often illiterate country bumpkins. The young operatives occupying the family’s Saigon home once rifled through the mother’s undergarment drawer only to discover her bras. Convinced they had found coffee filters, they immediately wanted to know why there were always two together. They deduced that one never drinks coffee alone. One day, the Communist soldiers also demanded that the family return their fish to them. The soldiers had apparently stored their dinner in the large white bowl in the shared washroom, unaware of the porcelain fixture’s purpose. The family had unwittingly flushed the fish away.

With its innovative yet simple narrative structure, Ru is a rich, sensual, poetic and enlightening read. My only criticism was its length. As I turned the last page, I frowned. At 139 pages, it was far too short. I wanted more.

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Winner of the 2009 Prix Médicis, Dany Laferrière’s eleventh novel is about his return to his native Haiti after living 33 years in exile. Half prose, half poetry, The Return is a finely crafted autobiographical account of the author’s voyage back to his place of birth. But his homecoming is bittersweet, as he bears the news of his father’s passing.

Windsor Laferrière, the former Assistant Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and the former Mayor of Port-au-Prince was driven out of Haiti by ruler Papa Doc, François Duvalier, and later settled in Brooklyn. His father had left when Dany was four or five years old, and before that, he had spent much of his time in hiding. As a result, although the son loved his father, he never really knew him. A generation after his father`s exile, the son too flees Haiti after a close friend and journalist is murdered. The stifling loneliness of exile took its toll on the mind of the elder Laferrière, but for the son it was the exile in time that was more pitiless. He missed his childhood more than his country. Going back to the Haiti of his youth and visiting his family is just one part of the Return. The final leg involves going back to Baradères, the village of his father`s birth.

Although returning from exile is difficult for many North Americans to grasp, Laferrière continually draws his readers into his story through common experience, which starts on the second line of the very first page, “The inevitable phone call that every middle-aged man one day will receive. My father has died.” As many can attest, the death of a parent is one of life’s milestones and a harsh reminder of our own mortality, but it is also a time of tremendous personal growth. In the author`s case, he is able to discover much about his father, and by extension himself, through the anecdotes of his father`s friends in Brooklyn, Port-au-Prince and later in the countryside on his way to Baradères.

The Return is replete with thought-provoking observations about the human condition, from the dynamics and cyclical nature of power in Haiti to the preoccupation with hunger and finding one’s next meal. Laferrière’s writing is poetic, profound and beautiful, and this was only the translation. Is it possible that the original was even more moving? The author eloquently reminisces about his country of birth only to discover that although he speaks Creole, he is no longer considered Haitian by the people he meets.

About life and death, the city and country, north and south, The Return is also a rumination about identity, time and space. A single reading of this novel will yield its beauty and thoughtfulness, but to fully appreciate it warrants a second reading. For anyone who has lost a parent, this is a must-read.

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