National Network for Equitable Library Service

Since childhood, Tony Fabijančić has travelled frequently to Yugoslavia and Croatia, the homeland of his father. He spent time with his peasant family in the village of Srebrnjak in the north and escaped to the Adriatic islands in the south where he could break free from the constraints of everyday life. Those two worlds-the north, marked by the haunting saga of family life, its history and material practices, and the south, a place defined by travel and escape-formed the two halves of Fabijančić's Croatian life.

A stunning memoir of coming of age and recovering from anorexia in the 2020s Charlotte Bellows wrote The Definition of Beautiful between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, in the wake of lockdown and in recovery from anorexia. In the tradition of Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar and Frandcoise Sagan in Bonjour Tristesse, Bellows writes with deceptively straightforward urgency, pushing through society's constraints on the bodies and minds of girls and women to offer a story both achingly familiar and devastatingly new.

A narrative that amplifies a voice rarely heard - that of the child at the centre of a transracial adoption and a searing account of being raised by religious fundamentalists. Harrison Mooney was born to a West African mother and adopted as an infant by a white evangelical family. Growing up as a Black child, Harry's racial identity is mocked and derided, while at the same time he is made to participate in the fervour of his family's revivalist church.

En mai 2020, une baleine égarée remonte le fleuve jusqu'à Montréal. Au moment où elle est retrouvée morte, la mère de Martine Béland rend l'âme au terme d'une longue maladie. Dans ses derniers moments, celle qui préférait souvent la compagnie des animaux à celle des humains demandait des nouvelles du « mégaptère », mot qu'elle employait pour désigner ce grand mammifère marin qui la fascinait.

As a Gitxsan teenager navigating life on the streets, Angela Sterritt wrote in her journal to help her survive and find her place in the world. Now an acclaimed journalist, she writes for major news outlets to push for justice and to light a path for Indigenous women, girls, and survivors.

For readers of Crying in H Mart and Wintering, an unforgettable memoir about a family secret revealed by a DNA test, the lessons learned in its aftermath, and the indelible power of love. Three months after Kyo Maclear's father dies in December 2018, she gets the results of a DNA test showing that she and the father who raised her are not biologically related. Suddenly Maclear becomes a detective in her own life, unravelling a family mystery piece by piece, and assembling the story of her biological father. Along the way, larger questions arise: what exactly is kinship?

A witty, winning, and revelatory personal narrative of the author's transition from sightedness to blindness and his quest to learn all he can about blindness as a distinct and rich culture all its own. We meet Andrew Leland as he's suspended in the strange liminal state of the soon-to-be blind: He's midway through his life with retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that ushers those who live with it from complete sightedness to complete blindness over a period of years, even decades.

With her arrival on the music scene in the early 1980s, Madonna generated nothing short of an explosion—as great as that of Elvis or the Beatles—taking the nation by storm with her liberated politics and breathtaking talent. Within two years of her 1983 debut album, a flagship Macy's store in Manhattan held a Madonna lookalike contest featuring Andy Warhol as a judge, and opened a department called “Madonna-land.” But Madonna was more than just a pop star.

One of the few biographies of an Inuk man from the 19th century--separated from his family, community, and language--finding his place in history. Augustine Tataneuck was an Inuk man born near the beginning of the 19th century on the northwestern coast of Hudson Bay. Between 1812 and 1834, his family sent him to Churchill, Manitoba, to live and work among strangers, where he could escape the harsh Arctic climate and earn a living in the burgeoning fur trade.

When we need help, we count on doctors to put us back together. But what happens when doctors fall apart? Jillian Horton, a general internist, has no idea what to expect during her five-day retreat at Chapin Mill, a Zen centre in upstate New York. She just knows she desperately needs a break. At first she is deeply uncomfortable with the spartan accommodations, silent meals and scheduled bonding sessions.