Exporting Virtue? China’s International Human Rights Activism in the Age of Xi Zinping by Pitman B. Potter Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021 $32.95 / 9780774865562 Reviewed by Larry Hannant * With the resolution of the three-year saga of the 3 Ms (the two Michaels and Meng), British Columbians might be thinking they’ll get a break from…
Read more 1257 China’s human rights orthodoxies
Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto, illustrated by Ann Xu New York: First Second Books (Macmillan), 2021. Distributed by Raincoast Books. Please order from your local independent bookstore $24.99 (U.S.) / 9781626723566 Reviewed by Carol Matthews * Vancouver poet and novelist Hiromi-Goto’s graphic novel Shadow Life, brilliantly illustrated by Ann Xu, is a vollendungsroman, a story…
Read more 1253 Running away in old age
MEMOIR: Chennai, a place in between by Jane Frankish * It was the last week of October 2002 and we were homeless, jobless, and rootless. This is just the way it was when we entered Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu in Southern India. Our home for the previous eight years had been Kuching, the…
Read more 1218 Chennai, a place in between
Deep and Sheltered Waters: The History of Tod Inlet by David R. Gray, with a foreword by Nancy J. Turner and Robert D. Turner Victoria: Royal British Columbia Museum Press, 2020 $29.95 / 9780772672568 Reviewed by Matthew Downey * With Deep and Sheltered Waters: The History of Tod Inlet, David Gray provides an account, both…
Read more 1192 The histories of Tod Inlet
Chinatown Stories, Volume 3 by Brooke Xiang and Tyler Mark (editors) Vancouver: Chinatown Today, 2020 $25.00 / 25611607 (ISSN) Note: a digital version of this book can be seen here; hard copies may be purchased at Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden and at About Boutique Reviewed by LiLynn Wan * In this third volume of…
Read more 1190 Resilient Vancouver Chinatown
The Ku Klux Klan in Canada by Allan Bartley Halifax, NS: Formac Publishing, 2020 $24.95 / 9781459506138 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * In the mid-1920s Canada was a hotbed for KKK recruiters . . . and they’re still here. For almost a century, the racist and often violent Ku Klux Klan has found a home…
Read more 1167 Hate mongering in Canada
I will be more myself in the next world by Matsuki Masutani Salt Spring Island: Mother Tongue Publishing, 2021 $19.95 / 9781896949871 Reviewed by Ken Madsen * Full disclosure: I know Matsuki Matsutani. I met him almost a decade ago, after my wife Wendy and I moved south from the Yukon to the same small…
Read more 1157 Poetry for the wider world
The Colour of God by Ayesha S. Chaudhry Toronto: Simon and Schuster Canada (Oneworld Publications), 2021 $30.00 / 9781786079251 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * Sibghatullah, “the colour of God” in Qur’anic Arabic, is the name of the author’s little nephew, whose sudden death at the age of 4 provides a frame for Ayesha Chaudhry’s narrative….
Read more 1135 An Islamic-Canadian journey
The Last Exiles by Ann Shin Toronto: HarperCollins (Park Row Books), 2021 $16.99 / 9780778312017 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * Stepping into the first few pages of Ann Shin’s The Last Exiles, some readers may feel they’ve entered the recognizable world of dystopian fiction. After all, this is a world “where women in skirt suits…
Read more 1130 A docudrama of defection
Chiru Sakura — Falling Cherry Blossoms: A Mother & Daughter’s Journey through Racism, Internment and Oppression by Grace Eiko Thomson Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2021 $24.95 / 9781773860411Reviewed by Patricia E. Roy * In 1997, for the benefit of her children and grandchildren, 84-year-old Sawae Nishikihama began writing memoirs of her experience as a Japanese…
Read more 1114 Steveston, Powell Street, Minto
Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression by Teresa Wong Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019 $19.95 / 9781551527659 Reviewed by Claire Sicherman * When I first held a copy of Teresa Wong’s Dear Scarlet: The Story of my Postpartum Depression, I fell in love with the cover. On it, an image of a woman’s…
Read more 1103 A graphic memoir of endurance
As if They Were the Enemy: The Dispossession of Japanese Canadians on Saltspring Island by Brian Smallshaw Victoria: University of Victoria, 2020 $24.95 / 9781550586671 (available at UVic bookstore for $24.95 plus shipping costs, or direct from b@pixelmap.ca for $26.00 including postage) Reviewed by Marie Elliott * Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December…
Read more 1095 Iniquity on the Gulf Islands
The Library of Legends by Janie Chang Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2020 $22.99 / 9781443456050 Reviewed by Valerie Green * The year is 1937. The place is eastern China. The story of The Library of Legends by Janie Chang is a true account of the evacuation of university students from the city of Nanking across thousands…
Read more 1094 Escape from Nanking, 1937
The Rat People: A Journey through Beijing’s Forbidden Underground by Patrick Saint-Paul, translated by David Homel Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020 $19.95 / 9781551528038 Reviewed by May Q Wong * In The Rat People: A Journey through Beijing’s Forbidden Underground, veteran foreign correspondent Patrick Saint-Paul exposes how Beijing’s, and indeed China’s, explosive growth has been…
Read more 1077 Life beneath the streets
Claws of the Panda: Beijing’s Campaign of Influence and Intimidation in Canada by Jonathan Manthorpe Toronto: Cormorant Books, 2019 $24.95 / 9781770865396 Reviewed by Trevor Carolan * Book-length critiques of our national failures of nerve and vision seldom make easy reading. Drug use policies, Quebec-ROC relations, Indigenous reconciliation, housing and environmental issues — on and…
Read more 1056 Beijing in Canada
Toshiko by Michael Kluckner Vancouver: Midtown Press, 2020 (new and revised edition; first published 2015) $19.95 / 9780988110175 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * A graphic novel about the wartime treatment of Japanese Canadians? Well, why not? After all, my earliest reading about the Japanese was in comic strips and the weekend newspapers. Terry and the…
Read more 1049 A wartime internment romance
Burning Province by Michael Prior Toronto: Penguin Random House (McClelland and Stewart), 2020 $21.00 / 9780771072345 Reviewed by P.W. Bridgman * Editor’s note: The West Coast Book Prize Society announced on April 8, 2021, that Burning Province, by Michael Prior, has been shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in the 2021 BC and Yukon Book Prizes….
Read more 1031 Where are my people?
My Summer of Love and Misfortune by Lindsay Wong Toronto: Simon and Schuster, 2020 $17.99 / 9781534480704 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * My Summer of Love and Misfortune is an aptly titled comic YA novel with a propensity for food-centric similes, “super” as the omnipresent intensifier of choice, no shortage of hyphens, and featuring Iris…
Read more 1029 Redemption in Beijing
Thinking a Modern Landscape Architecture, West & East: Christopher Tunnard, Sutemi Horiguchi by Marc Treib Novato, California: ORO Editions, 2020 $45.00 (US) / 9781943532780 Reviewed by Martin Segger * Thinking a Modern Landscape Architecture is a tale of two architects — or rather of two prominent books: Christopher Tunnard’s Gardens in the Modern Landscape (1948)…
Read more 1028 Christopher Tunnard’s gardens
The Diary of Dukesang Wong: A Voice from Gold Mountain by Dukesang Wong, edited by David McIlwraith, translated by Wanda Joy Hoe Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2020 $18.95 / 9781772012583 Reviewed by May Q. Wong * Editor’s note: The West Coast Book Prize Society announced on April 8, 2021, that The Diary of Dukesang Wong: A Voice from…
Read more 1008 Mighty land, small laws