Fierce, Fabulous, and Fluid: How Trans High School Students Work at Gender Nonconformityby LJ SlovinPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$32.95 ISBN 9781779400505 To write the academic text Fierce, Fabulous, and Fluid: How Trans High School Students Work at Gender Nonconformity LJ Slovin (the Martha LA McCain Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto) undertook a year-long ethnographical study in a Vancouver high school to explore the experiences of gender-nonconforming youth, who, Slovin found, were “often overlooked in discussions about trans issues, in part due to policies created by well-meaning educators that inadvertently perpetuated a narrow definition of trans identity.” Ethnography is the study of people in their own environment through methods including participant observation and face-to-face interviewing. Slovin, a non-binary researcher and Vanier Scholar, writes that in witnessing how six “gender-nonconforming youth navigated their genders … through different spaces and relationships at school,” they attended their grades 9-12 classes, “joined in during their extracurricular activities and clubs, ate lunch with them, attended their performances, and hung out” inside school and out, ie: in cafés. Slovin’s work focused on “youth who were not regularly recognized by others as trans,” and these…

Gehl v Canada: Challenging Sex Discrimination in the Indian Actby Lynn GehlPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Toby A. Welch  $26.95 ISBN 9780889778252 Knowing I am a reader, a friend of mine asked me an interesting question recently: “Are there any book publishers that you will read their books without even knowing what the book is about?” I immediately replied, “Yes – Harlequin and University of Regina Press. The first because I’m a sucker for a heartfelt romance and the second because every single book they publish is so thoroughly researched that any topic they cover is fascinating to read about.” So when University of Regina Press publication Gehl v Canada landed on my desk, I couldn’t wait to dive in! Detailing in a brief review what Gehl v Canada is about is nearly impossible as the subject matter is gigantic. We hit on so many familial, feminist, and Indigenous issues, among others. It’s challenging to encapsulate it. Perhaps Mary Eberts says it best in the forward: “Dr. Lynn Gehl describes the effort she made to document the sex discrimination affecting her and her family, her decision to challenge that discrimination, and how she applied herself to various proceedings… until she achieved victory.” To be clear,…

Spark: On Writing for Kids & Young Adultsby Alice Kuipers Published by University of Regina PressReview by Toby A. Welch  $22.95 ISBN 9781779400222 I must come clean – the title of this book threw me off. Spark: On Writing for Kids & Young Adults. I thought the title meant that this was a book geared for kids and teens who wanted to be writers. But it’s not. It’s for writers of any age who want to write books for children and adolescents. With that cleared up, let’s jump into one of the best books about writing that I’ve ever read! (And as a writer of almost three decades, I have devoured almost every writing book on the market.)  Canadian powerhouse writer Richard Van Camp said that “Spark is right up there with Stephen King’s On Writing” and I agree 100%. This is a phenomenal book on the craft of writing and it covers so many topics. The first third of the book covers how to write for a younger audience. Kuipers does an overview of writing for young people first and then goes into the specifics of writing picture books, chapter books, and then writing for middle grade and young adult readers. That covered, Kuipers delves…

An Open-Ended Runby Layne ColemanPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Brandon Fick$22.95 ISBN 9781779400260 Layne Coleman’s An Open-Ended Run is a deep dive into one man’s love, grief, ecstasy, failings, and triumphs. The entire range of human emotion is on display in this short memoir. Dramatic and morally complex, the book traces Coleman’s life from his fundamentalist upbringing in rural Saskatchewan to becoming a noted actor, playwright, and theatre director in Toronto. It is an intensely felt love story between Coleman and French Canadian arts critic and novelist, Carole Corbeil, whose premature death from cancer in 2000 upended his life. In wake of that loss, Coleman had to navigate being a widower and single father, and by far, the relationship with his daughter Charlotte is the most touching part of the memoir. Yet he does not skimp out on less savoury memories of sexual encounters, questionable decisions, drug and alcohol addiction, physical health challenges, even his own sense of vanity. Reading an aging actor’s memoir may not sound like most people’s idea of fun, but I assure you, if you give An Open-Ended Run a shot, you will be shocked and moved in equal measure. Truly, this is one…

The Salmon Shanties: A Cascadian Song Cycleby Harold RhenischPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$19.95 ISBN 9781779400154 I was excited to read BC poet Harold Rhenisch’s The Salmon Shanties: A Cascadian Song Cycle, as I know him to be a respected writer working in various genres—including fiction, nonfiction and memoir—and his poetry’s been recognized with several awards. The latest of his thirty-three books swims upstream with salmon through Cascadia’s rivers, sings the songs of history as experienced by the English and Chinook Wawa, laments how humans have abused this earth and each other, and praises the natural world and its creatures, from grass to mountains to sky. The poems, scored mostly in couplets, are detail-rich and I recommend reading them slowly to savour the language, names and ideas. It’s also helpful to read them in tandem with the author’s notes on the poems and his extensive glossary of Chinook Wawa—a blended language “of trade and diplomacy … as developed by the wives of traders at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River” that was commonly used across the Pacific Northwest. In naming these poems shanties (songs), one can rightfully expect that they’re musical. Readers hear grasshoppers “click-clacking in…

The Medicine Chest: A Physician’s Journey Towards Reconciliationby Jarol BoanPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$29.95 ISBN 9780889779730 I was expecting an academic text when I received The Medicine Chest: A Physician’s Journey Towards Reconciliation by Regina-raised-and-returned-to physician and educator, Dr. Jarol Boan, but immediately discovered there’s nothing dull about this engaging, well-researched and important book. In fact, I flew through it. Boan, an internist who spent twenty years practising and teaching in the US, returned home in 2011—at fifty-seven—to find “Indigenous people played a different role in Saskatchewan’s affairs than they once had,” and this book documents her poignant experiences while treating Indigenous patients within Saskatchewan’s health care system from 2011 to the present. Her accounts are balanced between compelling anecdotes about patients in Regina and on reserves in the Touchwood Hills, other healthcare workers, the system (ie: fee-for-service) and politics; and medical history (ie: the TB epidemic), research and statistics. A few details about Boan’s own personal history (ie: challenging divorce and custody battle) are included, but the true focus concerns the inequities, oppression and racism inherent in the Canadian health care system. Moreover, she explains how she and a few others in the healthcare…

The Good Walk: Creating New Paths on Traditional Prairie Trailsby Matthew R. AndersonPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$27.95 ISBN 9780889779655 Uncanny timing. I recently completed a pilgrimage walk—the 300-kilometer Camino de Santiago (Portuguese Coastal Route)—and not a week after my return from Europe I was reviewing a book about a very different—but much closer to home—set of pilgrimages. The Good Walk: Creating New Paths on Traditional Prairie Trails, by Swift Current-born and raised educator, author and Lutheran minister, Matthew Anderson (who’s also walked the Camino de Santiago), is compelling, exceedingly well-written and researched nonfiction concerning three ambitious Saskatchewan pilgrimages across Treaty 4 and 6 pastures, valleys, roads, ranches and farms, abandoned homesteads, brush belts, villages, First Nations’ reserves and more via the Traders’ Road/NWMP Patrol Trail (2015), the Battleford Trail (2017), and the Frenchman Trail (2018), and creating “healthy new stories” on the journey. “By walking,” Anderson writes, “our group was attempting to pay attention”. These “good walks” were undertaken by an eclectic assemblage—including clergy, writers, Elders, family members, a hydrologist, naturalist Trevor Herriot, and book dedicatee and Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society president Hugh Henry—to connect to the land and its stories while respecting the…

Into the Continentby Emily McGiffinPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$19.95 ISBN 9780889779891 I wasn’t sure how to begin Emily McGiffin’s poetry collection, Into the Continent, with its similar but opposite-side-up covers, front and back, and a Page 1 at either end. On one cover, a bayonetted rifle on a creamy background. On the other, a “Big Old Axe” against the same. As I chose a side (the rifle) to start my reading, I hoped I’d find the answer to why the book—praised by Jan Zwicky and Tim Lilburn—was structured thus. What is McGiffin, author of Between Dusk and Night and Of Land, Bones, and Money: Toward a South African Ecopoetics, metaphorically saying with this either way-ness and dramatic images? What I do know is that the University of Regina’s Oksana Poetry & Poetics book series, of which this book’s a part, concerns titles that “[probe] discussions of poetry’s cultural role”. I mined the internet and learned that the author/academic’s work “concerns the interplay of extractivism, empire, and expressive arts,” and she self-describes as “a multidisciplinary environmental humanities scholar researching arts, extraction, and environmental justice”. Currently a Research Fellow at University College London, she’s also studied and…

Defining Sexual Misconduct: Power, Media, and #MeTooby Stacey Hannem and Christopher J. SchneiderPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Toby A. Welch$34.95 ISBN 9780889778092 As Defining Sexual Misconduct is published by University of Regina press, I knew before I even started page one that I was in for a fact-based read that dove extremely deep into the subject matter. I wasn’t wrong. This bookby Stacey Hannem and Christopher J. Schneider takes a handful of high-profile sexual misconduct cases and delves deep into how they are framed by the news media. Readers then get to see how survivors are treated – often horrifically – and the after-effects. The book focuses primarily on the coverage of allegations against former Canadian media personality Jian Ghomeshi, Bill Cosby, Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, as well as two comedians: Aziz Ansari and Louis C.K. It also goes into detail about the Weinstein Effect: the phenomenon where some men (Trump, for example) seem impervious to sexual misconduct allegations whereas others (such as the man that the phenomenon is named for) do not. This is fascinating reading! Two other areas that Defining Sexual Misconduct explores are the #MeToo movement and Indigenous women. I’d forgotten how the #MeToo movement started and it was helpful to…

Going to Seed: Essays on Idleness, Nature & Sustainable Workby Kate J. NevillePublished by University of Regina PressReview by Michelle Shaw$30.95 9781779400000 In this award-winning collection of essays, Kate Neville melds the different areas of her life into a fascinating perspective on our perception of idleness: personal reflections from living in an off-grid cabin in northern BC and her academic life as associate professor in the Department of Political Science and the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto. Neville draws from a wide range of poets, writers, researchers and scientists to reconsider the notion of idleness in a world where our reaction to problems is invariably to accelerate and advance. What if instead, she asks, we “step back and slow down?” In 2020, when Kate Neville found herself living fulltime in her off-grid cabin during the pandemic, she began to ponder the accuracy of the perception that “going to seed“ was something to be avoided at all costs. As a gardener friend protested — “the seed phase… is a time of so much activity. Plants send out compressed packets filled with the energy and nutrients needed to sow new life.” The fact that I was reading this…