Where the Cherries End Up: A Memoirby Sandra RamberranPublished by Wood Dragon BooksReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$19.99 ISBN 9781990863769 “You have not lived until you have shared a staff room with ten other women, sharing information about male genitals …” British-born Sandra Ramberran writes in Where the Cherries End Up: A Memoir. This quote exemplifies the brazen author’s honesty and matter-of-fact confessions in her tell-all, and clearly demonstrates that from the time she was nine and a fellow student “put his hands down [her] knickers,” her body’s been controlled by others. Soon an older man was also taking advantage of her and other “young, maturing school girls” by offering to “put money in their training bras.” The quick cash allowed them to “buy sweets or single cigarettes from the local shop.” Born the eldest of six with an alcoholic father, Ramberran’s rape at age fourteen and the ability to drink “more than most women,” seemed to set the stage for several challenging decades among “the world of massage parlours, drugs, and sex.” School was something to be endured, and as a teen, “done with childhood games,” her focus turned to “chasing boys and being chased”—and she had an eye for…

In the Light of Dawn: The History and Legacy of a Black Canadian Communityby Marie Carter, Foreword by Afua CooperPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$36.95 ISBN 9781779400468 Canada’s multicultural history is diverse and complex, and at times its narratives have been erroneously rendered. Take Black Canadian history, for example. Take the Dawn Settlement, a historical abolitionist community at the end of the Underground Railway (UGRR) in the area in and around Dresden, Ontario. Intended to be a “utopia” for emancipated American slaves, the Dawn Settlement has often been portrayed as a failure and its numerous founders overshadowed by the spotlit fame of one individual, Reverend Josiah Henson. The role of the British American Institute (BAI) has also been conflated in Dawn’s 200-year historical record. Furthermore, not all of the Black asylum-seekers who arrived in Canada via the UGRR were part of “a destitute band of fugitives” … many were members of the “Black Elite:” educated Pennsylvanian activists who migrated north and contributed intellectual and financial wealth to the “vibrant multicultural community.” These idealists fought for both the eradication of slavery and for securing equality, ie: in the segregated education system. In her book In the Light…

My Tarzan Tree and Other Farm Boy Memoriesby Doug CameronPublished by Cameron NarrativesReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$25.00 ISBN 9781738687749 I grew up in small-town Saskatchewan and thus am familiar with folks who congregate daily at “coffee row” to remember the good old days, tell amusing stories, share gossip and passionately discuss current events. I continually thought about coffee row while reading Swift Current-area writer Doug Cameron’s memoir, My Tarzan Tree and Other Farm Boy Memories. This 1945-born author is obviously a storyteller at heart, but more than that, he’s done what many people talk about doing—writing a book about their life—but few accomplish. Cameron’s light and informal tone; the emphasis on his rural upbringing (near Alcomdale, Alberta); and rambling reminiscences of boyhood escapades with eight siblings, cousins, and friends reads like coffee row conversation: I could even imagine Cameron’s coffee mates nodding in recognition as they stirred another spoonful of sugar into their coffee cups. Cameron, who had a significant career in agricultural science (he was employed at Ottawa’s Agriculture Canada Research Station, and worked globally), has culled his varied childhood experiences into an easy and pleasurable read. He says that he’s “always wanted to write about [his] boyhood days…

kôhkominawak ocihcîwâw: Our Grandmothers’ Hands – Repatriating Métis Material Artby Gregory Scofield, Historical Overview by Sherry Farrell RacettePublished by Gabriel Dumont Institute PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$65.00 ISBN 9781988011226 In Gregory Scofield’s introduction to Our Grandmothers’ Hands: Repatriating Métis Material Art, the multi-genre Métis author, academic and bead-worker immediately demonstrates his poetic prowess via a description of the said, titulary hands: “I always imagine them as fine-boned birds, taking musical flight over a pattern traced onto velvet, stroud, or hide.” This fine writing compelled me to sink into this 245-page treasure trove of photographs, descriptions, and necessary stories about the grandmothers’ beaded artifacts—what Scofield refers to as “grandmother-pieces”—and his years-long efforts to repatriate them from “antique stores and ‘Indian art’ galleries, e-Bay and Etsy, and online auctions”. It was the myriad pieces themselves, he explains, that “guide[d] and educate[d] him” to give voice and honour to these Métis women and their creations during “a time of reconciliation” and “colonial reckoning.” Scofield recalls his Aunty Georgina teaching him—a nicâniskôhpicanisak, or “little ancestor”—to bead at her kitchen table, and recounts his ongoing dedication to learning how to “properly care for historic beadwork and silk embroidery.” Scofield’s illuminating introduction is followed by Sherry…

Dark Chapters: Reading the Still Lives of David GarneauCurated by Arin Fay, Paintings by David Garneau, Edited by Nic WilsonPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$32.95 ISBN 9781779400536 How did I not know about Saskatchewan-based David Garneau? The Governor General award-winning Métis artist, writer and educator initiates integral conversations about Indigenous identity and experience, colonization and the academy through politically-charged art and writing, and now 17 Canadian writers have responded to his large, compelling and highly symbolic still life series, Dark Chapters, in a striking new text. Titled Dark Chapters: Reading the Still Lives of David Garneau, the collection’s contributor list reads like a who’s who of contemporary Canadian literature, including poetry from Susan Musgrave, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Fred Wah and Rita Bouvier, and essays from Trevor Herriot, Jesse Wente, Paul Seeseequasis and curator Arin Fay. “Dark Chapters” refers to Justice Murray Sinclair’s Reports of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and many of the book’s contributors are of Indigenous heritage. Editor Nic Wilson shares how across Garneau’s lifelong art-making, “Each foray is soaked in [Garneau’s] incredible attention to the codes of history, meaning, emotion, sociality, and pedagogy.” The book contains numerous colour images of Garneau’s provocative still lives,…

“Isúh Áníi: Dátł’ìshí Ts’ìká áa Guunijà / As Grandmother Said: The Narratives of Bessie Meguinis”As narrated by Dátł’ìshí Ts’ìká Bessie Meguinis and Ninàghá Tsitł’á Willie Little BearRetold by Dit’óní Didlíshí Bruce StarlightIllustrated by Treasa StarlightPublished by University of Regina PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$24.95 ISBN 9780889779853 The University of Regina Press is doing important work with their commitment to honouring the traditional languages, legends and cultures of Canada’s First Peoples, and the list of books in their First Nations Language Readers series recently grew again with the landmark publication of Isúh Áníi: Dátł’ìshí Ts’ìká áa Guunijà / As Grandmother Said: The Narratives of Bessie Meguinis. This is the first book to be published in Tsuut’ina (“a critically endangered language”) in more than one hundred years. It contains nine traditional narratives originally narrated by Elders Dátł’ìshí Ts’ìká Bessie Meguinis (1883-1987) and her son, Ninàghá Tsitł’á Willie Little Bear (1912-1989). Here they’re retold by Dit’óní Didlíshí Bruce Starlight, the grandson of Bessie Meguinis. Dr. Starlight spent much of his early childhood with Meguinis, listening to her stories and teachings as he recovered from tuberculosis, and with the help of colleague Dr. Christopher Cox—and chapter-beginning, black and white illustrations by Treasa Starlight—he shares…

Food for the Journey: A Life in Travelby Elizabeth J. HaynesPublished by Thistledown PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$24.95 ISBN 9781771872690 Calgary novelist and short fiction writer Elizabeth J. Haynes has just published a new book, and this time it’s an essay collection. Food for the Journey: A Life in Travel is the kind of book I can really sink my teeth into. As I read these engaging essays about the author’s far-flung travels, family dynamics, heartbreak, a health crisis, history, politics and her former profession (Haynes is a retired speech-language pathologist), I quickly ascertained that the “food” here is much more than literal. Mining experiences from a lifetime of global travels, the introverted and interesting author comes by her love of travel honestly: her father worked on a fisheries project for the British Colonial Office in Nigeria in the 1950s. “He arrived on a freighter, squinting into a bloody sunrise on the Gulf of Guinea,” Haynes writes. She concludes her first essay with an observation of her father’s “big, gnarled hands holding the knife that sliced cleanly through ham and bread and cheese and the fire-red peaches.” In my experience, one of the most exciting things about travelling is the…

From the Ground Up: An Anthology of New FictionEdited by Annabel TownsendPublished by Pete’s PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$21.99 ISBN 9781069000965 Annabel Townsend loved the “From the Ground Up” theme of Regina’s Cathedral Village Arts Festival (2024) so much, she used it as the theme for an anthology featuring ten Regina area fiction writers. Townsend—a writer, editor, publisher and former bookstore owner—held a “Battle of the Pitches” event at the festival: short story writers were given three minutes to “pitch” a story before a live audience and judges, with the prize being publication in the first-ever anthology by Pete’s Press, From the Ground Up: An Anthology of New Fiction. A few other writers also contributed stories. The stories include a futuristic story by well-known, multi-genre author Alison Lohans. The piece, “Crystal Sister,” is set on the planet Terruggia, which contains a “massive crystal lode” that’s being mined. The main character is young Lytha, whose “job was to form and impress images into waiting crystal, which had the capacity to amplify and transmit halfway across a galaxy.” Legend has it that the Terruggian waters are unsafe, so what’s any self-respecting teenager going to do? You can guess. The anthology opens with…

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…

Walking Upstreamby Lloyd RatzlaffPublished by Thistledown PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$19.95 ISBN 9781771872706 Saskatoon’s Lloyd Ratzlaff—essayist, former minister, walker in wild places—has released his first poetry collection, and wow. I know this man and have long believed that poetry lives in him; I’m grateful his mostly contemplative poems—alive with water, birds and creatures—have found a deserving home in Walking Upstream. The first two sections map “The Old Path” and “The Irresistible Forces,” while the latter two, “To Grouse like a Mountain,” and “Afloat,” ferry readers from “Coffee at Starbucks” to a “Prairie Cemetery” and “Nirvana Big Rest Motel.” At the latter, the narrator waits out “a steady rain” and concludes “I can do nothing/for my mother in her care home bed/but think,/look Mother,/I am because of you.” Whew. For a piece with just eleven lines, this unsentimental poem packs serious emotional punch, aided by an image of the “white petunias [that] sag/under the water’s grey weight.” Ratzlaff possesses a gift for evoking emotion in just a few poignant lines—some might consider this poetry’s raison d’être—and his poems reflect that over a lifetime, the former counsellor’s mastered the oft-ignored art of listening. “The Realm” contains just nine lines, but in the…