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The Mass Strike Book Review

Rosa Luxembourg
A handbook for social-democratic politicians and labour leaders, this book tries to untangle the knot of what makes mass social movements successful. It was written after the 1905 Russian Revolution, but before the 1917 Revolution. Luxembourg rails against top-down organizing, instead urging leaders to keep an ear to the ground for any spark that they can help fan into flame. I love her description of the ebb-and-flow nature of revolutions. They don't come up out of nothing, and there were several decades of struggle that all fed into the 1905 revolution. Knowing that as she wrote this, the Bolshevik revolution was still years away, I got chills thinking of how Lenin would turn this energy into violent opportunism.

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A Mind Spread Out On The Ground Book Review

Alicia Elliott
This essay collection leaves no stone unturned, peeling back the layers of family dysfunction, colonialism, sexual assault, and corn subsidies, among other themes. It's a masterclass in finding the political in the personal. I especially like Elliott's way of weaving back and forth between Canadian and American contexts, even jumping from one to the other in the same paragraph. Our nation-state boundaries can't define this Haudenosaunee writer.

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Crude awakening

The Green Party of Canada has released its climate action plan for the fall election. It's called Mission: Possible, and lays out a path to zero carbon emissions, renewable energy, and green jobs all in a spirit of political co-operation. If we're going to turn the corner on the climate crisis, …

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Brother Book Review

David Chariandy
The boys in this story dig around for tenderness, belonging, and respect in a hard city. It's difficult not to compare this against Zadie Smith's *White Teeth* or Stephan Kelman's *Pigeon English*. But *Brother* falls short in creating that immersive world-within-a-world. The first-person narration often sounds too grown-up and removed from the character's point of view. Smart turns of phrase get repeated a little too often.

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