National Network for Equitable Library Service

In 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Canada v. Bedford that key prostitution laws were unconstitutional. Red Light Labour addresses the new legal regime regulating sex work by analyzing how laws and those who uphold them have constructed, controlled, and criminalized sex workers, their clients, and their workspaces. This groundbreaking collection also offers nuanced interpretations of commercial sexual labour from the perspectives of workers, activists, and researchers.

In 1844, seven widows dared to cast ballots in an election in Canada West, a display of feminist effrontery that was quickly punished: the government struck a law excluding women from the vote. It would be seven decades before women regained voting rights in Ontario. Our Voices Must Be Heard explores Ontario’s suffrage history, examining its ideals and failings, its daring supporters and thunderous enemies, and its blind spots on matters of race and class.

What’s the right way to be a feminist? Reconsidering Radical Feminism is not only a clear, precise summary of late-twentieth-century feminist debates about the politics of heterosexuality. It’s also an examination of how we become invested in arguments that position us as particular kinds of feminists – and as gendered subjects. Through the lens of poststructuralism, queer theory, and affect theory, Jessica Joy Cameron investigates the legacy of the passionate dispute between radical feminism and sex-positive feminism.

The transfer of knowledge is a key issue in the North as Indigenous peoples meet the ongoing need to adapt to cultural and environmental change. In eight essays, experts survey critical issues surrounding the knowledge practices of the Inuit of northern Canada and Greenland and the Northern Sámi of Scandinavia, and the difficulties of transferring that knowledge from one generation to the next.

In 2013, a violent crime left Jane Harris seriously injured and tumbling down the social ladder toward homelessness -- for the second time in her life -- leading her to question the underlying conditions that could allow this to happen in a country like Canada. Finding Home in the Promised Land is the result of her harrowing journey through the wilderness of social exile. Her Scottish great-great-grandmother Barbara's portrait opens the door into pre-Confederation Canada; Harris's own story lights our journey through 21st-century Canada.

Details the innovative, courageous, and creative activism of the "second wave" women's health movement in Canada between 1960 and 2010. This activism (re)claimed women's bodies, created women-centered spaces and services, and challenged a medically dominated healthcare system. Feminists challenged diagnoses, treatments, laws, policies, and research, as well as the care women were offered the way they saw their bodies and themselves.

Being a feminist can mean different things to different people, but one thing it always includes is the belief in equality and human rights. Whether you are talking with one close friend or hanging out with a group of classmates, it matters what you say and how you say it. Not everyone is going to agree with your opinions, especially when you are talking about social justice issues. Can Your Conversations Change the World? provides insight into the origins and history of feminism, how it plays out on the global stage and what it means to be a young feminist and activist today.

What you choose to wear becomes part of your identity, but it doesn't affect just you. Your clothing sends a message to the world, whether you want it to or not! And often we don't know what that message really is. Can Your Outfit Change the World? looks at how and where clothes are made, how the people who make the clothes are treated and how the companies who sell the clothes affect the health of our planet. Armed with information, you can follow the book's guide to spending your fashion dollars in a responsible and eco-friendly way.

The World Around Us series introduces children to complex cultural, social and environmental issues in a straightforward and accessible way. These illustrated nonfiction picture books tackle global concerns and initiate conversations about subjects that are difficult, sad or overwhelming with school-aged children who are just beginning to observe the world outside their homes. A gentle introduction to the issue of poverty, On Our Street explores the realities of people living with inadequate resources.

Better Together explores how people gather in groups of all kinds to fulfill the basic human need for companionship. From the smallest units of parents, siblings and friends to global organizations that try to build on a foundation of common human experience to meet their goals, people working together are a powerful force for change. Too often, we look at someone and see all the ways we are different. People all around the world come together to build things, teach and entertain each other, and provide everything from better health care to good food to security and education.