June 2009 New Arrivals:
the first 5 titles are 25% off in June!

The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir, Staceyann Chin, Scribner, $32.00
Acclaimed performance artist Staceyann Chin brings her passionate lyricism to the page in a powerful memoir chronicling the resilience of one woman faced with a lifetime of struggle. Born on Christmas Day in Lottery, Jamaica, Staceyann was thrust into the arms of a mother who did not want her. It was her grandmother who stepped in to nurture and provide for her and her older brother, but when the three are separated, Staceyann was again left to survive in an unfamiliar and unwelcome home in Paradise, Jamaica. The Other Side of Paradise is an unforgettable story told with grace, humour and strength.
We will be hosting a Toronto launch for this book with the author sometime in August – check our website next month for details!

Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?, Judith Butler, Verso, $33.50
In Frames of War, Judith Butler (Gender Trouble, Bodies That Matter)  takes to task the exploration of current global conflicts. Exploring issues of gender, violence, and resistance, Butler analyzes the media’s portrayal of state violence, which she argues is integral to the way in which the West wages modern war. This portrayal has saturated our understanding of human life, and has led to the exploitation and abandonment of whole groups of people, who are cast as existential threats rather than as living populations in need of protection. These people, many of whom are already marginalized, are depicted as “lost causes” due to status, imprisonment, unemployment or starvation and are thus considered dismissible. The loss of such populations is deemed necessary to protect the lives of 'the living'. This disparity, Butler argues, has profound implications for why and when we feel horror, guilt, loss and indifference and she calls for resistance to these illegitimate effects of state violence.

Something Torn and New: an African Renaissance, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Basic Civitas Books, $29.00
In Something Torn and New, African novelist and scholar Ngugi wa Thiong’o explores Africa’s historical, economic, and cultural fragmentation by slavery, colonialism, and globalization. He examines the collateral damage of colonization, focusing on the erasure of indigenous people’s cultural memory and how the renaming of people, places, and objects to reflect the culture of the colonizer resulted in the dismemberment of African memory. Seeking to remember language in order to revitalize it, Ngugi’s quest is for wholeness. Wide-ranging, erudite, and hopeful, Something Torn and New is a cri de coeur for Africa’s cultural future.

Who’s Your Daddy? And Other Writings on Queer Parenting, Rachel Epstein, Sumach Press, $28.95
Rachel Epstein has been doing research, education and community organizing related to LGBTQ parenting for close to 20 years. In Who’s Your Daddy? she has compiled a vital and varied collection of essays from queer parents, parents-to-be, and children of LGBTQ folk with contributors ranging in interest from writers to lawyers to activists. The themes represented in these 40 essays include butches raising sons; queer youth as parents; trans experience in fertility clinics; legal and historical reflections; bisexuality and adoption; race relations in the family; heteronormativity in queer family kids' books; class issues within families; dealing with infertility; polyamory and parenting; discussions with sperm donors, single moms, gay dads; developments in reproductive technologies; rural and urban experience; and reflections on the meanings of biology and “queer” parenting.

Fierce Departures: The Poetry of Dionne Brand, Wilfred Laurier University Press, $14.95
Drawn from the Dionne Brand’s work since 1997, the selections in Fierce Departures delineate with searing eloquence how history marks and dislocates peoples of the African diaspora, how nations, concretely and conceptually, fail to create safe haven, and how human desire persists nevertheless. Through a widening canvas, Brand unfolds the (im)possibilities of belonging for those whom history has dispossessed, while also showing how Canada, and in particular Toronto, remade by those who alight on it, is a place of contingency. As afterword, Brand has selected passages from her evocative collection of essays A Map to the Door of No Return. Read as an ars poetica, the passages summon the presences of those whose lives are circumscribed by the histories the poet narrates as her own.

The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters, McClelland & Stewart, $32.99
Sarah Waters (Tipping the Velvet, Fingersmith) takes her readers on a journey through time once again in The Little Stranger. Set in England in the late 1940’s, Waters has created a world of mystery and forgotten secrets as the narrator, Dr. Faraday, visits the legendary Hundred Hall for the first time in thirty years. His stay at the house is haunted by characters, living and otherwise, and their stories soon become entwined with his own. The book is ripe with all of the suspense of a ghost story, but it is also a poignant reflection of the British class system post WWII. The Little Stranger is a chilling specter tale guaranteed to have you keeping a light on.

Risk, Elana Dykewomon, Bywater Books, $16.50
More than ten years after she published her landmark novel Beyond the Pale, winner of both the Lambda Literary Award and the Ferro-Grumley Award, Elana Dykewomon returns with Risk. Carol is an idealistic, Berkeley-educated, Jewish lesbian living in Oakland, California and through her, Dykewomon engages the reader with the changing times and values in America. A beautifully told story, Risk explores transformations in attitudes and politics spanning the years from the mid-eighties to post-9/11.

The Immigrant, Manju Kapur, Faber and Faber, $22.00
Manju Kapur’s novel blends beautifully the dichotomy between the yearning to belong and the need to retain one’s version of self. The so-called “immigrant experience” is given a subtle and nuanced breath of life in this story set in 1970’s Halifax. Nina and Ananda are newly married and while Ananda has lived the Canadian life for some time, Nina is newly emigrated and finds adjusting to these new transformations more than trying. She finds solace amidst the shelves of a library and in the company of a group of consciousness-raising women. While not a comedic story at heart, Kapur writes with a non-judgmental warmth that lends a light touch to Ananda’s experience of commitment and self-discovery.

The Eternal Smile, Gene Luen Yang, First Second, $18.95
From two marvels of the graphic novel--Gene Luen Yang (American Born Chinese) and Derek Kirk Kim (Same Difference and Other Stories) come fantastical adventures in which the worlds we live in and the worlds we create are woven together through the threads of three separate adventures. The first is the story of a prince who defeats his greatest enemy only to discover that maybe his world is not what it had seemed; second is the story of a frog who finds that hair-brained schemes might be best left to the professionals; and lastly the story of a woman who receives an email from a Nigerian Prince asking for help. With vivid artwork and moving writing, Derek Kirk Kim and Gene Luen Yang test the boundaries between fantasy and reality, exploring the ways that the world of the imagination can affect real life.

Evening is the Whole Day, Preeta Samarasan, Mariner Books, $18.95
For six year old Aasha, there is too much change happening much too fast. In a matter of weeks, her grandmother passes away and Uma, her older sister, leaves for Columbia University, forever. Aasha finds herself left in a family, and a country, that are slowly going to pieces. Circling through years of family history, Evening is the Whole Day illuminates in heartbreaking detail one Indian immigrant family’s layers of secrets and lies, while exposing the complex underbelly of Malaysia itself. Sweeping in scope, exuberantly lyrical and masterfully constructed, Preeta Samarasan's debut is a mesmerizing and vital achievement which has been has earned her comparisons to Arundhati Roy and Zadie Smith and a listing for the Orange Prize.

Justice For All, Radclyffe, Bold Strokes Books, $18.95
Winner of a 2005 Lambda Literary Award for her novels Distant Shore and Silent Thunder, Radclyffe has delighted readers with her thrilling tales of lesbian detectives and P.I.s. In Justice for All we meet Detective Lt. Rebecca Frye and her elite unit as they attempt to uncover the connection between the local organized crime syndicate and a human trafficking ring. However, as they delve deeper into the mystery, she and her team, and those they love unwittingly become targets. As part of the operation, Dellon Mitchell goes undercover with a young woman posing as her lover—a woman with a secret agenda who puts Mitchell’s personal and professional life at risk. Before long, the hunters and the hunted are caught in a complex web of double-crosses and desire where the lines between good and evil blur, and justice may be the ultimate victim.

Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches Guide to Romance Novels. Sarah Wendell & Candy Tan, Simon & Schuster, $19.99
Creators of the popular blog “Smart Bitches, Trashy Books” Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan have joined forces to uncover and dismantle the shame behind readers’ love of the romance novel. In a wildly funny and tongue-in-cheek guide, the authors discuss that although the romance novel is something read under cover of night and discussed with whispered voices in the corners of the bookstore – it continues to be one of the top selling genres. With quick wit and intelligence Wendell and Tan attempt to lift the divide between those who love a Harlequin, and those who think they’re too smart to enjoy a little trash now and then.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, Quirk Books, $17.95
In place of Elizabeth Bennett’s heaving sighs on the hills of Meryton, and Mr. Darcy’s brooding monologues, Seth Grahame-Smith has infused the classic story with an undead twist. While 85 percent of the original text remains intact, Jane Austen’s account of witty women and tortured love is fused with “ultraviolent zombie mayhem”. The book opens somewhat familiarly with “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” The quiet English countryside is overrun with a plague of zombies prompting the Bennetts to send their daughters away for assassin training and Lady Catherine de Bourgh to employ an army of ninjas. Darcy and Lizzy, highly trained killers, still find a way of slaying their way to a happy ending.

Our Stories, Our Visions: Powerful Voices Fighting for Change, Edited by Zoe Sallis, Duncan Baird Publishers, $15.95
Revealing, honest, and at times heartbreaking, these candid conversations with forty great women offer tales of struggle and strength against all the odds, as well as words of wisdom and guidance for women everywhere. This extraordinary and diverse range of interviewees includes Isabel Allende, Maya Angelou, Shirin Ebadi, Tracey Emin, Wangari Maathai, Kim Phuc, Benazir Bhutto, and many other women who have worked hard to achieve great things in their chosen fields.

Women, Power, Politics: The Hidden Story of Canada’s Unfinished Democracy, Sylvia Bashevkin, Oxford University Press, $19.95
Women's participation in politics matters very much. Yet in Canada, women MPs have been stuck at a level of roughly one-fifth since 1993, so it comes as no surprise that we hear little about issues of particular interest to women--breast cancer, violence against women, or the poverty of single mothers. In this engaging, no-nonsense, and witty book, Toronto author Sylvia Baskevkin argues that Canadians have a profound unease with women in positions of political authority ñ what she calls the "women plus power equals discomfort" equation. She explores the specific reasons why this discomfort is particularly severe in Canada, and evaluates a range of barriers faced by women who enter politics, including the media's role in assessing the leadership styles, personal appearances, and private lives of female politicians. In clear, accessible terms, she explains concepts such as "gender schemas" and "media framing" in terms of key examples, such as Belinda Stronach and Hillary Clinton, and outlines some compelling solutions to address the stalemate facing women in Canadian politics.

The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy, Yves Engler, Fernwood/RED Publishing, $24.95
The public image of Canada’s primary role internationally has been as peacekeeper or honest broker in difficult-to-solve disputes. But, contrary to the mythology of Canada as a force for good in the world, The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy sheds light on many dark corners: from troops that joined the British in Sudan in 1885 to gunboat diplomacy in the Caribbean and aspirations of Central American empire, to participation in the U.N. mission that killed Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, to important support for apartheid South Africa, Zionism and the U.S. war in Vietnam, to helping overthrow Salvador Allende and supporting the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, to Haiti, Iraq and Afghanistan today.

It Sucked and Then I Cried, Heather Armstrong, Simon & Schuster, $32.00
An irreverent and captivating memoir about the unexpected joys and glaring indignities of pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood from the creator of the popular personal blog dooce.com. Heather Armstrong gave up a lot of things when she and her husband, Jon, decided to have a baby: beer, small boobs, free time -- and antidepressants. The eighteen months that followed were filled with anxiety, constipation, nacho cheese Doritos, and an unconditional love that threatened to make her heart explode. Still, as baby Leta grew and her husband returned to work, Heather faced lonely days, sleepless nights, and endless screaming that sometimes made her wish she'd never become a mother. Just as she was poised to throw another gallon of milk at her husband's head, she committed herself for a short stay in a mental hospital -- the best decision she ever made for her family. In It Sucked and Then I Cried, Heather tells, with trademark wit, the heartfelt, unrelentingly honest story of her battle with postpartum depression and all the other minor details of pregnancy and motherhood that no one cares to mention.

Unbuttoned: Women Open up about the Pleasures, Pains and Politics of Breastfeeding, edited by Dana Sullivan, Harvard University Press, $16.95
In Unbuttoned, 25 women share their thoughts and feelings about breastfeeding, all from the standpoint of personal experience. By turns enlightening, entertaining, moving, and thought provoking, they address a wide range of experiences from the serious, such as the pressure of “breast is best” to the comic, such as “projectile milking”contests. “Our hope is that readers, no matter what their experiences, will find essays that really capture what they felt, what they feared, what they hoped, so that they can see they aren't alone.”

The Orange Trees of Baghdad: In Search of My Lost Family, Leilah Nadir, Key Porter Books, $19.95
Born to an Iraqi-Christian father and a British mother, and raised in England and Canada, Leilah Nadir has never set foot on Iraqi soil. Distanced from her Iraqi roots through immigration and now cut off by war, the closest link she has to the nation is through her father, who left Baghdad in the 1960s to pursue his studies in England Through her father’s memories, Leilah recounts her family’s lost story, from Iraq at the turn of the twentieth century during the British occupation, to the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War. Through her cousins still living in Baghdad, she experiences the thunderous explosions of the present-day conflict, and Lelilah’s friend, award-winning photographer Farah Nosh, brings home news of Leilah’s family after her visits to Iraq, as well as stunning photos of civilians and their tragic stories. Key Porter Books, $19.95

A Time to Speak Out: Independent Jewish Voices on Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity, edited by Barbara Rosenbaum, Verso, $22.00
In A Time to Speak Out, a collection of strong Jewish voices, drawing on an established tradition of Jewish dissidence, come together to explore some of the most challenging issues facing diaspora Jews, notably in relation to the ongoing conflict in Israel-Palestine. With articles on such topics as international law, the Holocaust, varieties of Zionism, self-hatred, the multiplicity of Jewish identities, and human rights, these essays provide powerful evidence of the vitality of independent Jewish opinion as well as demonstrating that criticism of Israel has a crucial role to play in the continuing history of a Jewish concern for social justice.

Real Nurses & Others: Racism in Nursing, Tania Das Gupta, Fernwood Publishing, $15.95
“Most nurses of colour experience everyday forms of racism, including being infantilized and marginalized. Most reported being “put down,” insulted or degraded because of race/ethnicity/colour.” These are only some of the conclusions that author and York professor Tania Das Gupta arrived at as a result of her survey of 593 Ontario Nursing Association members. Within the framework of the political economy of health care and drawing from the findings of her research, she develops an intersectional theoretical framework that helps us understand how racism happens and provides a base from which nurses and other workers can fight racial harassment. This book shows how systemic racism persists in the workplace. It shows how fear, lack of support, management collaboration, co-worker harassment and ineffective institutional responses make it difficult for victims of racism to fight back.

Femmes of Power: Exploding Queer Femininities, Ulrika Dahl and Del LaGrace Volcano, Serpent’s Tail, $38.00
Going beyond identity politics and the pleasures of plumage, Femmes of Power captures a diverse range of queerly feminine subjects whose powerful and intentional redress explodes the meaning of femme for the 21st century. Femmes of Power unsettles the objectifying ”male” gaze on femininity and presents femmes as speaking subjects and high-heeled theorists. Features both every-day heroines and many queer feminist icons, including Michelle Tea, Virginie Despentes, Amber Hollibaugh, Itziar Ziga, Lydia Lunch, Kate Bornstein and Valerie Mason-John.

Queer in Black & White: Interraciality, Same Sex Desire, & Contemporary African American Culture, Stefanie K. Dunning, Indiana University Press, $23.00
Queer in Black & White analyzes representative works of African American fiction, film, and music in which interracial desire appears in the context of same sex desire. In close readings of these texts, Stefanie K. Dunning explores the ways in which the interracial intersects with queerness, blackness, whiteness, class, and black national identity. She shows that representations of interracial desire do not follow the logic of racial exclusion. Instead they are metaphorical and anti-biological. Rather than diluting race, interracial desire makes race visible. By invoking the interracial, black gay and lesbian artists can remake their conception of blackness.

Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of Aids, Elizabeth Pisani, Penguin Canada, $20.00
The Wisdom of Whores addresses how sex and drugs have turned the global epidemic of HIV into a billion-dollar-a-year industry. Epidemiologist Elizabeth Pisani takes a no-holds-barred approach to finding out exactly why 40 million people are living with HIV and 28 million have already died of AIDS when we have the knowledge, the money, and the means to wipe out the disease in 90 percent of the world. She makes a convincing argument that the measures needed to control the disease are not impossible, just unpopular. "It would mean spending lots more of the available money on prostitutes, addicts, and gay guys, and lots less on school kids, pregnant women, and church groups. It would mean making fun things (sex, drugs) safe, instead of trying to make safe things (abstinence, monogamy) fun."

Eco-Sufficiency & Global Justice: Women Write Political Ecology, edited by Ariel Salleh, Pluto Press and Spinifex Press, $34.95
As the twenty-first century faces a crisis of democracy and sustainability, this book attempts to bring academics and alternative globalization activists into conversation. Through studies of global neoliberalism, ecological debt, climate change, and the ongoing devaluation of reproductive and subsistence labour, these uncompromising essays by internationally distinguished women thinkers expose the limits of current scholarship in political economy, ecological economics, and sustainability science. Contributors include Vandana Shiva, Marilyn Waring, Maria Mies, Peggy Antrobus, and Silvia Federici.

From Clients to Citizens: Communities Changing the Course of Their Own Development, edited by Alison Mathie and Gordon Cunningham, Practical Action Publishing, $39.95
Communities worldwide act on their own initiative, drawing on their own resources of leadership and solidarity and, in spite of poverty, to achieve their own goals. Development practitioners have too often viewed poor communities as helpless and disadvantaged and have encouraged their dependency. If, instead, communities are recognized as having social and cultural as well as material assets, then their capacity to negotiate external assistance on their own terms will be strengthened. From Clients to Citizens is aimed at community workers, researchers and policy makers who want to take a fresh look at community development.

Bankruptcies & Bailouts, Julie Guard & Wayne Antony, Fernwood Publishing, $18.95
Recession? Depression? Market adjustment? Billion-dollar bailouts? Just what is happening to the economy? The essays in Bankruptcies and Bailouts show, in clear and accessible language, that the global capitalist economy, dependent on hyper-extended credit, fuelled by systematic deregulation and rooted in the contradictions of a mad drive for unlimited profits, must inevitably end up in its current predicament. The authors also demonstrate that there are ways out of this economic mess that do not involve simply bailing out the obscenely over-paid executives whose decisions led us to this chaos.

A New Life, Rukhsana Khan and Nasrin Khosravi, Groundwood Books, $12.95
Eight-year-old Khadija, her older brother Hamza, and their parents have just arrived in Canada from Pakistan.  Khadija is exited about their new life, but Hamza is in a foul mood after the long flight. Everything is different than it was in Pakistan  - it is cold, their new home is a small apartment and faces of the children at school do not look like anyone back. At first Khadija and Hamza are left out at school and become targets of school bullying, but eventually they find new friends and begin to feel more at home. Accompanied by beautifully illustrations this book tells the story of what it is like to begin a whole new life in a strange new land.

Outside Beauty, Cynthia Kadohata, Atheneum Books, $19.99
There is only one way Shelby and her sisters can describe their mother; She’s a sexpot. Helen Kimura collects men (and loans, spending money, and gifts of all kinds) from all over the country. Sure, she’s not your typical role model, but she’s also not just a pretty face and nail polish. She is confident and brave; she lives life on her own terms, and her four daughters simply adore her. These girls have been raised outside the traditional boundaries. They know how to take the back exit. They know how to dodge crazed lovers in highway car chases. They do knot, however, know how to function without one another. Then suddenly they must. A late-night phone call unexpectedly shreds the family apart, catapulting the girls across the country to live with their respective fathers,. But these strong-willed sisters are, like their mother, determined to live life on their own terms, and what they do to pull their family back together is nothing short of beautiful.

Nomadic Massive, Nomadic Massive, Indie, $16.00
Montreal’s Nomadic Massive has firmly established itself as a group of premier performers and skilled musicians representing an open-minded Hip-Hop which finds its inspiration in the traditions of the past; combining live instrumentation, samples, and a wide array of vocal styles. This multilingual, multicultural, super-group has has also left its mark internationally; initiating socio-cultural exchanges with like-minded artists. As the group's ongoing explorations open up new ways to interpret a musical style that has traditionally been marginalized, the “more” that has always existed in the Hip-Hop movement is revealed in everything that is Nomadic Massive.