All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
If I Fall, If I Die by Michael Christie
City of Glass is not just a book from my country, but from my city. Coupland grew up not far from where I live now, and this book is all about Vancouver, also known as the City of Glass. If you want to see what it’s really like here – not the stuff that you find in tourist books – this book will tell you. All My Puny Sorrows is a gorgeous book with some autobiographical elements that made me cry and laugh. The Glass Hotel is by the same author who wrote the more well-known Station Eleven, but this one really has the feel of my part of Canada, so it felt like the right one to include. Michael Christie has turned into a favourite author, but his first novel If I Fall, If I Die is a book that just got me in the feels. He lives not far from where I am now I think, but is from Ontario, where this book is set. It’s a tender book about a child navigating difficult home and community situations, but also has some wonderful moments in it.
21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph
The Skin We’re In by Desmond Cole
Son of Elsewhere by Elamin Abdelmahmoud
I read Care Of at a time when I really needed to feel less alone, and it certainly did that. Coyote is something of an icon in British Columbia, and this book is a great one. It’s a series of letters written to Coyote – mailed, emailed, left on their windshield after a gig – with responses written by the author. It’s deeply emotional and moving, and one that I treasure. 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act should, in my opinion, be required reading for Canadians. It’s got a step by step breakdown of the historical context and present-day effects of each part of the Indian Act, and in laying this out provides an important opportunity for all readers to understand more about the history and current issues facing those of Indigenous heritage – and, importantly, every Canadian. I’ve read a lot of books about anti-Black racism, but most of them have dealt with Black Lives Matter in the US or looked at roots of racism in Europe. Desmond Cole’s book takes a similar look at Canada, calling out our proudly multicultural self-identity and sharing the reality of what people of colour experience in our supposed cultural mosaic of a country. Son of Elsewhere is Abdelmahmoud’s story of immigrating to Canada with his family, and the things he dealt with growing up here and trying to fit into Canadian culture while still navigating his cultural and family identity and expectations. It’s a wonderful account of what it feels like to be Canadian, but also not really, and it evoked such emotion for me.
The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
Borders by Thomas King and Natasha Donovan, Illustrator
Dance Me Outside by W.P. Kinsella
Okay, so Anne of Green Gables isn’t an under the radar hit, but I just had to include it. I adore Anne, have adored her for most of my life, and the Canadian literary landscape rests firmly on her shoulders in my opinion. Similarly Emma Donoghue is well known for Room (a book I couldn’t handle reading and don’t want to read), but I didn’t know she was Canadian until recently. I loved The Pull of the Stars, and would highly recommend it. Borders is a graphic novel by Thomas King, who has written non-fiction books about First Nations issues in North America as well (notably The Inconvenient Indian). But this simple story about a young man and his mother trying to cross the Canada-USA border to visit a family member brought one important aspect of colonization into life for me in a way it hadn’t been before – our borders now were drawn right through existing territories, and left First Nations communities straddling it. This has created issues for their rights to movement and ability to inhabit their ancestral land, and that’s something I don’t think we think about enough. Dance Me Outside is a book my mother gave me, and it’s about life for a group of young adults growing up on a reservation. I don’t remember the details well as I read it a couple of decades ago, but I do remember that this book and the film of the same name based on it had a big impact on me when I was younger.
So those are some of the amazing books that have been written by authors who can, in one way or another, claim to be Canadian. I’d recommend each and every one of them. What did you do with the prompt this week? Any of my books appear on other Canadian lists? Which is your favourite or most interesting book from your list this week?
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly link-up feature created by The Broke and the Bookish and hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every week TTT has a different topic, and everyone who links up has to create a link of ten items that fit that topic. To see past and upcoming topics, go here.