National Network for Equitable Library Service

South Away is an adventure story of the author's bicycle trip with her sister from Terrace, BC along the West coast to (almost) the tip of the Baja Peninsula. Meaghan Marie Hackinen experiences apprehension and determination as she camps in the dense forests of northern Vancouver Island and in frigid Mexican deserts; encounters strange men, suicidal highways and monster trucks; strong winds and violent storms; flat ties and broken spokes. Her couch-surfacing adventures provide an insight into the "kindness of strangers" en route.

In this memoir, Lamees Al Ethari traces her transition from an idyllic childhood in a large extended Iraqi family to the relative stability of family exilic life in Canada. Through memory fragments, clips of poetry, diary entries, and her own art, the author reveals the trauma of three senseless wars, a decade of dehumanizing sanctions on an innocent population, the blindness of a dictatorship to the suffering of its own people, and finally their resilience and the humanity they manage to preserve.

No two curries are the same. This Curry asks why the dish is supposed to represent everything brown people eat, read, and do. Curry is a dish that doesn't quite exist, but, as this hilarious and sharp essay points out, a dish that doesn't properly exist can have infinite, equally authentic variations. By grappling with novels, recipes, travelogues, pop culture, and his own background, Naben Ruthnum depicts how the distinctive taste of curry has often become maladroit shorthand for brown identity.

With the discussion of the work of the experimental filmmaker Chris Marker as a starting point, Chase Joynt and Mike Hoolboom engage in a dialogue based on their own life stories, comparing experiences before and after life-altering events, their "first" and "second" lives

This book is about relatedness. Using a form of generative refusal towards western writing practices, the text works with the idea of kinship that derives from the author's Plains Cree and other kinship teachings. It also examines how queer kin were some of their first experiences of reciprocal relationality and care.

This book is about mental illness, family caregivers, Alzheimer's and dementia, and the health care system. It continues the story of the Martini family and their experiences with mental illness (which was earlier chronicled in the book Bitter Medicine: A Graphic Memoir of Mental Illness). In The Unravelling, Olivier Martini has lived with his mother, Catherine, since his diagnosis with schizophrenia thirty-six years ago.

What do you do when your outspoken, passionate, and quick-witted mother starts fading into a forgetful, fearful woman? In this powerful graphic memoir, Sarah Leavitt reveals how Alzheimer's disease transformed her mother Midge - and her family - forever. In spare black and white drawings and clear, candid prose, Sarah shares her family's journey through a harrowing range of emotions - shock, denial, hope, anger, frustration - all the while learning to cope, and managing to find moments of happiness.

In these fifteen searingly honest personal essays, debut author Susan Olding takes us on an unforgettable journey into the complex heart of being human. Each essay dissects an aspect of Olding's life experience, written with lyricism, detail, and artfulness.

Falling into Flight untangles a daughter's complicated relationship with immigrant parents -- her angry Russian mother and quiet Finnish father. And it offers insight into a life experienced through the arts: first as a young enthusiastic dancer, then as a thoughtful--and equally enthusiastic--dance critic. Shortly after her parents die, Kaija begins to experience increasingly debilitating physical ailments that have no clear diagnosis. After many referrals to specialists, her doctor suggests psychotherapy.

Most people think Alzheimer's disease is the same as memory loss or hope that if they ignore it hard enough, it will go away. That was certainly Marion Agnew's hope when her mother -- a Queen's and Harvard/Radcliffe-educated mathematician, nuclear weapons researcher, award-winning professor and researcher, as well as a mother of five -- began drifting away from her. This moving memoir looks at grief and family, at love and music. It is a coming-to-terms reflection on the endurance of love and family.