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Emergency Contact Book Review

Mary H.K. Choi
Choi writes all her characters – even the minor ones – with such tenderness that it's impossible not to be rooting for all of them at the same time. This novel plays with emotional distance in such a great way. Friendship as a replacement for family intimacy, digital connection as a surrogate for IRL relationships. And the amazing vulnerability that happens when we're ready to break down all of those boundaries. After you finish the last chapter, flip to the next page for the book's *real* twist ending.

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Chop Suey Nation Book Review

Ann Hui
A new perspective on Canadian multiculturalism. Who knew ginger beef is a Chinese food staple invented to appease Albertans' tastebuds? Who knew so many restaurant owners came from the same tiny region in China? It's fascinating how Hui traces the geography of migration by starting at the endpoint: small-town Chinese-Canadian restaurants. There seems to be a lot of fluff in this book, and I think it could have benefited from another round of interviews to get more details from restaurant workers who were reticent to talk. Weaving in her own family history is a nice touch, but many of the anecdotes feel forced – maybe it would have been better for this book to be a series of investigative features in the Globe & Mail.

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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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