2021 books: 4-8

[the_siobhan]

    

Nina Here Nor There: My Journey Beyond Gender by Nick Krieger This one showed up in the Little Free Library. Nick is non-binary and this book is the story of figuring out who he is and learning to be comfortable in his own skin. There are parts of the story that really resonated for me - it wasn't until "Nina" started interacting with genderqueer people that he started figuring out the language that he could apply to himself. That testing and questioning and hesitation felt pretty damn familiar. My favourite line in the book; "We understood that queers receive nine adolescences like cats received nine lives."

    

The World is a High Hill: Stories About Jamaican Women by Erna Brodber A bunch of books showed in up in my library with stickers inside that marked them as part of the Little Free Diverse Libraries project. I grabbed a couple of the titles that looked interesting. This one is a collection of short stories about the lives of various Jamaican women. They all have the same theme of overcoming hardship to find success. I found them kind of repetitive and they're so short that we don't really get into the inner lives of any of the women. I don't doubt that they are important narratives, but I suspect I'm not the target audience for these stories.

    

Black Girl Unlimited: The Remarkable Story of a Teenage Wizard by Echo Brown Another Little Free Diverse Library Project book. The story is of a black girl growing up in a poor neighbhourhood in Cleveland. Realism is interspersed with magic and Brown uses the lessons of becoming a Wizard to tell the story of how she learns to fight her way through the depression and pain that surrounds her. The book is described as "heavily autobiographical" and parts of it are really hard to read - there is a lot of abuse and neglect here. But there is also community and family and strength and hope.

    

In the Black: My Life by B Denham Jolly Another Little Free Diverse Library Project book. Jolly was the founder of FLOW FM, the first black radio station in Toronto. It took him 12 years to get the license. The book tells that story along how he became a successful businessman and entrepreneur in a town where he had to hire a white guy to show up at the bank on his behalf whenever he needed a business loan. Jolly writes well and his story is an interesting one. I don't know if it would be of interest to people who don't live in Toronto since so much of his life was focused here, but I found it well worth the read.

    

This Place: 150 Years Retold Anthology. "As indigenous people, we all live in a post-apocalyptic world." 10 stories created by indigenous writers and artists living in the settler colony of Canada. Some of the stories are excerpts from the lives of historical people. There are a couple that deal with tribal legends and several that talk about the ongoing struggle over resources. One comic is about "the 60's scoop" and another is about a pipeline fight. I bought this book before the most recent revelations about the residential school in Kamploops, but it's not like these stories will ever stop being topical. Like all compilations, some are engaging and some don't grab me as much. It's still an excellent collection and I'm keeping this one on my shelf.