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A Little Devil in America Book Review

Hanif Abdurraqib
Subtitled “Notes in Praise of Black Performance”, this book explores all the nooks and crannies of what we mean by performance, from Aretha Franklin’s hours-long funeral to Beyoncé’s tribute to the Black Panthers during her Superbowl halftime show appearance. But it’s also about the intimate moments of performing for close friends, family members, elders… Abdurraqib is a master at melding historical context, cultural critique, and emotional presence.

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Fallout Book Review

Peter Such
A clumsy mashed-together story set in the 1950s uranium boom towns of Northern Ontario. Sparse sentences, meant to evoke a more poetic Hemingway, fail to stick the landing and end up feeling like a novel written in bullet points. The characters don’t have romantic tension so much as surprise horniness. Unsatisfying all around.

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Learning from 20 years of high-density development in Kitchener

When I have conversations with friends and neighbours about new housing being built in Kitchener, I see a strong sense of bewilderment — especially when they haven’t been downtown in a while. “I don’t even recognize Kitchener anymore with all the new condo towers.” “With these high-rises popping up all over to…

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Seven Japanese Tales Book Review

Junichiro Tanizaki
If this collection is meant to showcase the best of Tanizaki’s work, it is a disappointingly uneven reading experience. Sometimes, as with the 6-page short story “Terror”, or the 10-page “The Thief”, he successfully plunges you into a character’s visceral experience. Other times, and especially with women characters, he is coolly distant. He may describe the softness of someone’s skin, but in such a detached way that you’d think he was describing a sculpture and not a living human being. If there’s one overarching theme, it seems to be his characters’ inability to grow or change — they are doomed to let their singular fixations pull them along the journey of life.

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