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Called to his dying father’s bedside, Gabriel Golden’s life is turned upside down after receiving his mother’s journal. The journal chronicles his mother’s life in post-war Britain, her genteel upbringing and her eventual marriage to Gabriel’s father, a complicated man raised in an aggressive, Jewish family who drinks to escape financial worries. Gabriel is shocked as the novel reveals dark secrets about his parents’ relationship, shaking Gabriel’s preconceptions about his father – and himself.
Based on a true story and winner of the H.R. Percy Novel Prize and the Beacon Award for Social Justice, Turn Us Again is a powerful exploration of the dynamics within family relationships, enticing the reader to embark on a journey towards a more complex understanding of the issue of abuse.
Read the review by The Chronicle Herald
here.

In Twenty-First-Century Socialism, Atilio A. Boron traces the history of capitalism in Latin America and finds that the capitalist mode of production has not led to development but instead has fostered underdevelopment. Boron argues that within a wider historical and geographical perspective, capitalism is a mode of production that has served as a means of development for a small group of nations at the price of excluding the benefits of development to all the rest. As Boron concludes, with globalization there is no longer any possibility for autonomous capitalist development.
Arguing on the inability of capitalism to drive development in Latin America, Boron states that with capitalism, Latin America has no prospects. Neo-liberal policies such as the privatization of education, health and social security in household-debt-ravaged Chile, the violent usurpation of Indigenous lands, and the ever-widening gap between the rich and poor in Brazil lead to a dead end. On the other hand, countries that have resisted these destructive neo-liberal economic policies, such as Cuba and Venezuela, illustrate that any hopes of a promising future for the people of Latin America will be in a post-capitalist setting, the elements of which Boron presents in great detail.

Tucked away in her tattoo studio in the port city of Halifax, Shaz draws meaning and symbolism onto the bodies of her clients. After the ransacking of her home, the brutal attack on her friend and the sudden appearance of her white father, Shaz is compelled to explore the racial divides in her life and in the city around her. A chance encounter with Rashid, a parkour-performing refugee from Sri Lanka, provides a stabilizing counterpoint to the tumultuous relationships in her life.
Ultimately, Shaz discovers the complexities of truth, the meaning of loss and how we are all coloured by our experiences. In a narrative that explores racism, family dysfunction and the experiences of refugees, Under Her Skin paints the canvas of our landscape, making us aware of who we are.

“There are people who break open and make a new, bigger, self. But some of us are … brittle.”

When stress causes an old trauma to surface, Lucy, a longtime community organizer, teacher and anti-poverty activist, loses control of her life. On probation and living on the streets of Halifax’s North End, all she has left is friends. Faithful friends like Judith, her lawyer, who is helping her take back her life.
Lucy begins to regularly sneak into Judith’s basement to take refuge from the cold, but Lucy’s presence in the house betrays their friendship, and she uncovers mysteries from Judith’s past. As events draw their lives closer, Lucy and Judith are forced to face the toll taken by their secrets. Each of them must choose between confronting past pain or remaining broken.

With contributions from Dayna B. Daniels & Judy Davidson, Valda Leighteizer and Ross Higgins

Under the Rainbow is a primer on the social and political history and the everyday practices and processes of living queer lives in Canada. Framed through a life-course perspective, this book provides an overview of the historical and contemporary issues in the lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans and/or queer folk. The chapters in this text highlight the contributions of academics and community groups as well as individuals working on queer issues in Canada and focus primarily on contemporary Canadian material, introducing readers to topics such as law, history, health, education, youth, older persons, end of life decisions, social constructions of sexual identities, sports, transgender issues and issues experienced by lesbians and gay men living in Quebec.

In Understanding Violence and Abuse, Heather Fraser and Kate Seymour examine violence and abuse from an anti-oppressive practice perspective and make connections between interpersonal violence and structural, institutional and cultural violence.
Using case studies from Canada, the U.K., the U.S., Australia, Bangladesh, India and elsewhere, the authors discuss topics ranging from class oppression, street violence, white privilege, war, shame, Islamophobia and abuse in intimate relationships, as well as introduce the core tenets of anti-oppressive social work practice. They encourage readers to reflect upon hierarchies of identity and difference in relation to the ways in which violence and abuse are defined, understood and addressed. Further, they discuss several responses to violence using an anti-oppressive framework.

What do local conflicts about land rights tell us about Indigenous-settler relations and the challenges and possibilities of decolonization? In Unsettled Expectations, Eva Mackey draws on ethnographic case studies about land rights conflicts in Canada and the U.S. to argue that critical analysis of present-day disputes over land, belonging and sovereignty will help us understand how colonization is reproduced today and how to challenge it. Employing theoretical approaches from Indigenous and settler colonial studies, and in the context of critical historical and legal analysis, Mackey urges us to rethink the assumptions of settler certainty that underpin current conflicts between settlers and Indigenous peoples and reveals settler privilege to be a doomed fantasy of entitlement.
Finally, Mackey draws on case studies of Indigenous-settler alliances to show how embracing difficult uncertainty can be an integral part of undoing settler privilege and a step toward decolonization.

Established under late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, Misión Barrio Adentro (MBA) — Venezuela’s adaptation of the Cuban social medical model — utilizes a free, universal health care system to serve and educate rural, poor and marginalized populations and to broaden the very praxis and ideology of what health means in a true Latin American social medicine approach. MBA moves beyond conventional medicine to form a true community-oriented primary care system
Through qualitative research with personnel from both sides of the political spectrum in Venezuela, Venezuela’s Health Care Revolution offers a unique analysis of MBA’s ability to empower marginalized populations to become health care providers for their own medically vulnerable and under-served communities. Further, Chris Walker argues that the potential of this medical approach is significant not just in Latin America but in Canada and the United States as well.
Chris Walker is a PhD candidate at Saint Mary’s University and the author of several publications on Cuban medical adaptations as well as on the cultural constructions of health care, medical education, rural/urban medical disparities and the connections between politics, health and poverty.

Many Canadians know that Viola Desmond is the first Black, non-royal woman to be featured on Canadian currency. But fewer know the details of Viola Desmond’s life and legacy. In 1946, Desmond was arrested for refusing to give up her seat in a whites-only section of a movie theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. Her singular act of courage was a catalyst in the struggle for racial equality that eventually ended segregation in Nova Scotia.
Authors Graham Reynolds and Wanda Robson (Viola’s sister) look beyond the theatre incident and provide new insights into her life. They detail not only her act of courage in resisting the practice of racial segregation in Canada, but also her extraordinary achievement as a pioneer African Canadian businesswoman. In spite of the widespread racial barriers that existed in Canada during most of the twentieth century, Viola Desmond became the pre-eminent Black beauty culturist in Canada, establishing the first Black beauty studio in Halifax and the Desmond School of Beauty Culture. She also created her own line of beauty products.
Accessible, concise and timely, this book tells the incredible, important story of Viola Desmond, considered by many to be Canada’s Rosa Parks.

Winner of the 2017 Robbie Robertson Dartmouth Book Award for Non-Fiction!
The Miramichi Reader’s best non-fiction book of 2016

In 1946, Viola Desmond was wrongfully arrested for sitting in a whites-only section of a movie theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. In 2010, the Nova Scotia Government recognized this gross miscarriage of justice and posthumously granted her a free pardon.
Most Canadians are aware of Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat on a racially segregated bus in Alabama, but Viola Desmond’s act of resistance occurred nine years earlier. However, many Canadians are still unaware of Desmond’s story or that racial segregation existed throughout many parts of Canada during most of the twentieth century. On the subject of race, Canadians seem to exhibit a form of collective amnesia.
Viola Desmond’s Canada is a groundbreaking book that provides a concise overview of the narrative of the Black experience in Canada. Reynolds traces this narrative from slavery under French and British rule in the eighteenth century to the practice of racial segregation and the fight for racial equality in the twentieth century. Included are personal recollections by Wanda Robson, Viola Desmond’s youngest sister, together with important but previously unpublished documents and other primary sources in the history of Blacks in Canada.

NEW: Teaching Guide Available Here

Canada’s next major challenge is not economic or political. It’s ethical. On the issue of racism, Canadians tend to compare themselves favourably to Americans and to rely on a concession that Canadian racism, if it exists at all, is more “subtle.” Is there a future time when newcomers and visible minorities will be enabled to feel like they belong in Canada? Or will they have to accept their experience as visitors to Canada no matter how long they have lived here? These are some of the questions Anthony Stewart tackles eloquently and with considerable wit.
“As a Black Canadian, the Canada that I have come to see is different from the idealized Canada of Tim Hortons commercials, Hockey Night in Canada and countless other imaginings. It’s a Canada that takes credit for a level of open-mindedness that far exceeds its reality. It’s a Canada that distinguishes itself for its population of citizens who passively lay claim to welcoming difference while staying silent when those around them who are in fact different are disenfranchised, dehumanized, undervalued and left to feel that we do not belong in the country in which many of us were born, or about which we are told tales of tolerance.” – Anthony Stewart

Set in a small northern town, under the mythical shadow of the Sleeping Giant, Wake the Stone Man follows the complicated friendship of two girls coming of age in the 1960s. Molly meets Nakina, who is Ojibwe and a survivor of the residential school system, in high school, and they form a strong friendship. As the bond between them grows, Molly, who is not native, finds herself a silent witness to the racism and abuse her friend must face each day.

In this time of political awakening, Molly turns to her camera to try to make sense of the intolerance she sees in the world around her. Her photos become a way to freeze time and observe the complex human politics of her hometown. Her search for understanding uncovers some hard truths about Nakina’s past and leaves Molly with a growing sense of guilt over her own silence.

When personal tragedy tears them apart, Molly must travel a long hard road in search of forgiveness and friendship.

Walking This Path Together is an edited collection devoted to improving the lives of children and families that come to the attention of child welfare authorities by demonstrating and advocating for socially just child welfare practices. In this new, updated edition, authors provide special consideration to the historical and political context of child welfare in Canada and theoretical ideas and concrete practices that support practitioners, educators and students who are looking for anti-racist, anti-oppressive and anti-colonial perspectives on child welfare practice.

Canadian child welfare policies and practices have been central to maintaining a settler colonial nation by controlling and managing the childhoods and future lives of children. While ostensibly grounded in the “best interests of the child,” child welfare policies and practices far too often make the lives of young people more precarious because they are stratified along race and class lines rather than caring for their wellbeing. There have been dire consequences for Indigenous communities but also for Black, newcomer, non-citizen and poor people, who are also disproportionately the primary focus of child welfare. The contributors to this book reveal these unjust conditions so that workers can contribute to the ongoing transformation of child welfare to facilitate child wellbeing.

The third edition of Walking This Path Together continues the transformative vision of the first two editions and charts a new way forward. There are several new chapters and authors, who focus on Métis kinship protocols, family group conferencing, decolonizing child welfare, and the criminalization of newcomers, refugee children and Indigenous youth in care. They demonstrate how to bring forward transformative practices to moving child welfare into a truly new decolonial era. This transformative vision is the path that we are walking.

In 2012, journalist Hugo Meunier went undercover as a Walmart employee for three months in St. Leonard, Quebec, just north of Montreal.
In great detail, Meunier charts the daily life of an impoverished Walmart worker, referring to his shifts at the box store giant as “somewhere between the army and Walt Disney.” Each shift began with a daily chant before bowing to customer demands and the constant pressure to sell. Meanwhile Meunier and his fellow workers could not afford to shop anywhere else but Walmart, further indenturing them to the multi-billion-dollar corporation.
Beyond his time on the shop floor, Meunier documents the extraordinary efforts that Walmart exerts to block unionization campaigns, including their 2005 decision to close their outlet in Jonquiere, QC, where the United Food and Commercial Workers union had successfully gained certification rights. A decade later he charts the Supreme Court of Canada ruling that exposed the dubious legal ground on which Walmart stood in invoking closure and throwing workers out on the street.
In Walmart: Diary of an Associate, Meunier reveals the truths behind Walmart’s low prices. It will make you think twice before shopping there.

In a moment where unlawful pipelines are built on Indigenous territories, the RCMP make illegal arrests of land defenders on unceded lands, and anti-Indigenous racism permeates social media, the renowned lawyer, author, speaker and activist Pamela Palmater returns to wade through media misinformation and government propaganda and get to the heart of key issues lost in the noise.

Warrior Life is the second collection of writings by Palmater. In keeping with her previous works, numerous op-eds, media commentaries, YouTube channel videos, and podcasts, Palmater is fiercely anticolonial, antiracist, and more crucial than ever before. Palmater addresses a range of Indigenous issues—empty political promises, ongoing racism, sexualized genocide, government lawlessness and the lie that is reconciliation—making complex political and legal implications accessible to all of us.

From one of the most important, inspiring, and fearless voices on Indigenous rights, decolonization, Canadian politics, social justice, earth justice, and beyond, Warrior Life is an unflinching critique of the colonial project that is Canada and a rallying cry for Indigenous Peoples and allies alike to forge a path toward a decolonial future through resistance and resurgence.

The view that capitalism is an inherently flawed, exploitative, crisis-prone, oppressive system is not new. But neoliberal capitalism’s flaws are increasingly dangerous in Western countries and globally as corporations exert growing influence on governments, as the endless pursuit of profits pushes our climate to the breaking point and as far-right politics dominate the media. Solutions are needed. Fast.
In We Can Do Better, David Camfield lays out a theoretical basis for political and social change that fuses critical Marxism with insights from anti-racist queer feminism. This reconstructed historical materialism treats capitalism and class as inextricably interwoven with gender, race and sexuality. After discussing today’s most influential social theories, Camfield uses this theory to analyze a range of issues that face our world today, including climate change, growing social insecurity and the persistence of sexism and racism. Camfield argues that the key to achieving change for the better is social struggle, and he offers ideas about moving from social theory to social action.

The title of this book We Were Not the Savages speaks to the truth of what happened when Europeans invaded Mi’kmaw lands in the 17th century. Prior to the European invasion the Mi’kmaq lived healthy lives and for thousands of years had lived in harmony with nature in the land they called Mi’kma’ki. This book sets the record straight. When the Europeans arrived they were welcomed and sustained by the Mi’kmaq. Over the next three centuries their language, their culture, their way of life were systematically ravaged by the newcomers to whom they had extended human kindness. The murderous savagery of British scalp proclamations, starvation, malnutrition and Canada’s Indian residential and day schools all but wiped out the Mi’kmaq. Yet the Mi’kmaq survived and today stand defending the land, the water and nature’s bounty from the European way of life, which threatens the natural world we live in and need to survive.

Since the first edition was published in 1993, Daniel Paul’s ongoing research confronts the mainstream record of Canadian settler colonialism and reveals that the mistreatment of Indigenous Peoples is not confined to the past. In this 4th edition the author shares his research, which catalogues not only the historical tragedy but the ongoing attempts to silence the Mi’kmaq and other Indigenous Peoples. Paul’s work continues to give the Mi’kmaq a voice that must be heard.

Winner of the 2014 Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction East Coast Literary Award


What Lies Across the Water recounts the events leading up to the arrest of the Cuban Five, five Cuban anti-terrorism agents wrongfully arrested and convicted of “conspiracy to commit” espionage against the United States. In response to decades of deadly attacks by Miami-based, anti-Cuban terrorist organizations, Cuba dispatched five agents – Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González – to Florida to infiltrate and report on the activities of these terrorist groups. Cuba even passed on information their agents learned about illegal activities to the FBI. But, instead of arresting the terrorists, the FBI arrested the Cuban Five on September 12, 1998. The five men would be illegally held in solitary confinement for seventeen months and sentenced to four life sentences in 2001. The terrorists these five men tried to stop remain free to this day.
In light of America’s supposed post-9/11 zero tolerance policy toward countries harbouring terrorists, the story of the Cuban Five illustrates the injustice and hypocrisy of this case: why were these men who tried to prevent terrorist attacks against Cuba charged with espionage against the U.S? And why does the U.S. continue to protect and harbour known terrorists?

Emerging from the Radical Imagination Project, a social movement research initiative based in Halifax, Canada, What Moves Us? brings together a diverse group of scholar-activists and movement- based thinkers and practitioners to reflect on the relationship between the radical imagination and radical social change. Combining political biography with movement-based histories, these activists provide critical insights into the opportunities and challenges that confront struggles for social justice today.
In original essays and interviews, these radical thinkers from across Canada and beyond contemplate the birth of their own radical consciousness and the political and intellectual commitments that animate their activism.

Founded in Toronto in 1968, the Praxis Corporation was a progressive research institute mandated to spark political discussion about a range of social issues, such as poverty, homelessness, anti-war activism, community activism and worker organization. Deemed a radical threat by the Canadian state, Praxis was put under rcmp surveillance. In 1970, Praxis’s office was burgled and burned to the ground. No arrests were made, but internal documents and records stolen from Praxis ended up in the hands of the rcmp Security Service. All this occurred as Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal government shifted away from social spending and poverty reduction towards the economic regime of austerity and neoliberalism that we have today.
In When Poverty Mattered, Paul Weinberg combines insights gleaned from internal government documents, access to information requests and investigative journalism to provide both a history of radical politics in 1960s Canada and an illustration of misdeeds and dirty tricks the Canadian government orchestrated in order to disrupt activist organizations fighting for a more just society.

Yasmine enters Lebanon escaping a messy divorce and seeking the family, culture, and connection that her Palestinian mother hid during their life in Toronto. It’s 2006, and she’s meeting her cousin Reem for the first time after connecting over social media. Reem teaches Arabic and lives in a refugee camp with her mother and sister. Her brother Ahmed lived there too until he went to Syria for work and then disappeared. When Yasmine receives a package of mysterious letters suggesting her father might still be alive, the cousins embark on a discovery of political secrets no one in the family wants them to know.

Complicating her questions about identity, belonging, and healing even further, Yasmine runs into Ziyad — an old flame who’s incidentally taking Reem’s class. Though the cousins' lives could not be more different, Yasmine and Reem must learn from each other as they navigate abusive relationships, grief, displacement, and war.

Set amid the arid glamour of Lebanon’s beaches and urban landscapes, Where the Jasmine Blooms is at once a political historical thriller and a Muslim feminist love story. Turn-of-the-century Arab politics feature prominently, echoing loudly even twenty years later.

An anthropological analysis of education, this book is the first to examine the root cause of contemporary pedagogical systems from a truly comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. This confluence of ethology and anthropology reveals that the very category “human” is a requirement of civilization contingent on domestication and submission to structural violence at the root of civilized pedagogical practices.

“Rape, femicide, and the social exploitation of women are endemic. Feminist activism to end gendered oppression and violence is urgent and will be strengthened by fostering a greater understanding of the masculinist and patriarchal nature of militarism and war and making the scope and extent of current movements for change better known.”
—Cynthia Cockburn

Women in Black is a worldwide network of women “committed to peace with justice and actively opposed to injustice, war, militarism, and other forms of violence.” The late feminist solidarity activist Cynthia Cockburn tells the story of this indispensable global anti-violence movement known around the world for staging dramatic actions that seek to expose and denounce war, rape, militarism, and apartheid. An inspiring account of a networked feminist struggle, this book also presents a template for analysis and action in our era of multiplying wars, surging military spending, and rampant gendered violence. As neoliberal states starve the commons to feed the war machine and nationalist movements gain traction around the world, there is much to learn from the transversal actions and coalition building that Women in Black has engaged in for decades.

Cynthia Cockburn knew she was going to die before she was able to complete this book, so she asked her companions from the global Women in Black network to carry on with this vital project of chronicling a movement that has spanned decades and continents. The result is a testament to the beauty and intellectual power of a truly collective effort. This dramatic and inspiring story of a history-making movement could not be more vital and life-affirming.

In Working for the Common Good, Madelyn Holmes details the political policy work of eight social democratic Canadian women and highlights their largely unrecognized struggles and accomplishments.
Throughout their political careers, Agnes Macphail, Thérèse Casgrain, Grace MacInnis, Pauline Jewett, Margaret Mitchell, Lynn McDonald, Audrey McLaughlin and Alexa McDonough worked towards curing society’s economic and social ills. They raised their voices for world peace from the 1920s to the 2000s. They were incensed about economic inequality in Canadian society and advocated for policies to reduce poverty. They fought for social justice for Indigenous peoples, Japanese-Canadians, Chinese-Canadians, Muslim-Canadians and the imprisoned. The profiles in this book illustrate the many ways these politicians embraced the cause of gender equality and served as role models for generations of Canadian women.

The culmination of four years of ethnographic research at the Roma Community Centre in Toronto, Writing the Roma is the first book to provide an overview of the identities, origins, history and treatment of Roma refugees. Cynthia Levine-Rasky traces the historical and cultural roots of the Roma in Europe, through their genocide in the Holocaust, their persecution in Eastern Europe in the post-Communist era, to their settlement as refugees in Canada. What emerges is a book that challenges the stereotypes surrounding this non-territorial nation while exposing the ways that Canadian immigration policies have affected
Roma populations.

Since 2001 and the beginning of the “War on Terror,” Canadian culture has undergone a profound militarization. Moving away from previous myths of national identity centred on notions of multiculturalism and peacekeeping, Canada is increasingly being defined through a new patriotism based on military and policing actions around the world. In this book, A.L. McCready explains how this cultural transformation took place by examining a range of Canadian cultural case studies, from the supposedly grassroots “Support Our Troops” campaigns to films and CBC programs. McCready shows how a combination of cultural shifts and explicit government actions have worked to silence internal debate and criticism and to transform Canadians’ understanding of their country and its role in the world. McCready also shows how today’s patriotic militarism is part of a much broader socio-economic transformation of Canadian society towards a more neo-conservative and free-market oriented paradigm and how Canada’s militarized nationalism emerges from and is continuous with the nation’s racial and colonial history.

On December 6, 1989, a man walked into the engineering school École Polytechnique de Montreal, armed with a semi-automatic rifle and, declaring “I hate feminists,” killed fourteen young women. “I Hate Feminists”, originally published in French in 2009, examines the collective memory that emerged in the immediate aftermath and years following the massacre as Canadians struggled to make sense of this tragic event and understand the motivations of the killer. Exploring stories and editorials in Montreal and Toronto newspapers, texts distributed within anti-feminist “masculinist” networks, discourses about memorials in major Canadian cities and the film Polytechnique, which was released on the twentieth anniversary of the massacre, Mélissa Blais argues that feminist analyses and the killer’s own statements have been set aside in favour of interpretations that absolve the killer of responsibility or even shift that blame onto women and feminists. In the end, Blais contends, the collective memory that has been constructed through various media has functioned not as a testament to violence against women but as a catalyst for anti-feminist discourse.