Caroline Topperman’s memoir is not only highly anticipated but powerfully titled. Your Roots Cast a Shadow: One Family's Search Across History for Belonging (HCI, December 17, 2024), arises from Caroline’s 2013 move from Vancouver to her family’s homeland, Poland, and encourages readers to examine the ways in which family histories shape our understanding of ourselves and society.
Jewish Heritage Month Feature: Excerpt from Rubble Children by Aaron Kreuter
May is Jewish Heritage Month, and we are delighted to host an excerpt from Rubble Children (University of Alberta Press, July 2024)—new short fiction from Govenor General Award Finalist Aaron Kreuter.
Rubble Children is an absorbingly timely and necessarily explorative read, tackling Jewish belonging, settler colonialism, Zionism and anti-Zionism, love requited and unrequited, and cannabis culture, all drenched in suburban wonder and dread. Engaging, funny, dark, surprising, this collection is a scream of Jewish rage, a smoky exhalation of Jewish joy, a vivid dream of better worlds.
BOOK REVIEW: The Home Stretch: A Father, a Son, and All the Things They Never Talk About
Everyone has parents. Everyone’s parents die. Yet the stories where parents and death intersect are unique.
George K. Ilsley’s recent memoir tells one such story. As a young adult, George left his Nova Scotia home, heading west, eventually landing in Vancouver—as far away as he could get while remaining in North America. Then, as he turns 50, his father turns 90, and his father needs, but doesn’t especially want, Ilsley’s care.