“Touched By Eternity: A True Story of
Heaven, Healing, and Angels”
Written by Susan Harris
Published by White Lily Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$19.99 ISBN 9-780994-986948
Rural Saskatchewan
writer Susan Harris wears a number of hats. I've previously reviewed two of her
Christmas alphabet books, but her literary prowess also includes inspirational
and nonfiction work. It's appeared in Chicken
Soup for the Soul, and Sunday School students may have read her biblical
literature in class. Outside of writing, Trinidad-born Harris can be found
presenting on her extraordinary religious experiences, and hosting an
Access7Television series called "Eternity".
In Touched By Eternity: A True Story of Heaven,
Healing, and Angels, Harris explores her greatest passion, Heaven. Indeed, she
claims to have an "obsession about Heaven," and if you read her new
book you'll understand why. In clear, well-written prose, Harris tells the
otherwordly story of her three near death experiences, each occasioned by a health
crisis, and what she felt and observed on the proverbial "other
side". Add anecdotes about angels, a description of fiery Hell, and a few visions,
and you'll also glean why she's dedicated her book to "those who long for
Heaven".
Born into a family of
"old-fashioned Pentecostals," it wasn't uncommon for Harris to attend
revivals where people spoke "in tongues," and the author writes of
her own early ability to speak in tongues: "My English words ceased and
strange words began to flow from my mouth in a foreign language I had not
learned. It was a full-bodied, fluent sound that spouted at first then gushed
like a stream from a rainforest mountaintop." Harris was eleven, and her
own daughter spoke in tongues at age four.
The book begins
dramatically with a desperate phone call to her husband after her teeth began
chattering, three days after a wisdom tooth extraction. I commend Harris for
her ability to make readers feel they're in the room as she slowly drags
herself from her dining room to a day bed in excruciating pain. It's 2005, and she's
about to have her second near death experience. She sees "a spectacular
castle," and writes that "The castle is blue, a luminescent,
glorious, amazing shade that I haven't seen on earth. The sides and edges are trimmed
with gold …" Heaven. And this is the beginning of the "remarkably
ordinary" woman's drive to share her experiences, and "to carry
peace, compassion, and the message that Heaven is gained only through Jesus
Christ" to whomever will listen.
One of the angel
stories is particularly interesting. After Harris and her husband marry at the
Las Vegas Wedding Chapel, they're walking the Strip and get harassed and
followed by a "youth of African-American descent". Suddenly a large
man, "possibly of Mexican descent" with "black shorts that came
down to his knees," appears and the youth halts, "as if he had bumped
into something". Harris later reasons that the protector was an
angel.
Many may think of
death as the ultimate negative experience, but Harris's deep grieving for a return
to the peaceful "Heaven's meadow" of her second near death experience
- while in the Melville Hospital - denotes that it's anything but.
THIS BOOK IS
AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
__________
“Angry Queer Somali Boy: A Complicated
Memoir”
Written by Mohamed Abdulkarim Ali
Published by University of Regina Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$21.95 ISBN 9-780889-776593
Sometimes a single
line succinctly underscores the depths of the valley a person's experienced. Deep
into Mohamed Abdulkarim Ali's memoir, Angry
Queer Somali Boy: A Complicated Memoir, the Torontonian's phrase "the
first day I was homeless for the second time" leaps off the page, and it's
an example of how this first-time writer both lives, and writes. Changes happen
quickly, and the reader finds herself catching her breath.
Ali's memoir was
published as part of the University of Regina Press's series The Regina Collection. These pocket-sized
hardcovers emulate the U of R's motto, "a voice of many peoples," and
"tell the stories of those who have been caught up in social and political
circumstances beyond their control." Born in Mogadishu in 1985, Ali was
removed from his mother's home at age five to join his father and the man's new
family in Abu Dhabi, then relocated to a refugee camp in the Netherlands (sans
Dad). The next move - with his abusive stepmother and her kids - was to Toronto's
"Jane and Finch area," where in school "The relationships
between the white teaching staff and the largely brown and black student body
prepared many of [the students] for the cruel reality of a racist society and
the undermining of [their] abilities."
But uprooting, domestic
physical abuse, school bullying, poverty, wondering how "to be Somali
outside of Somalia," forced "Islamizing," and crime are only
part of the story: effeminate Ali - nicknamed "ballet girl" - also
recognized early in life that he was gay. As one who'd only known violence, the
writer's early sexuality was also fused with pain, and he writes with brutal
candour: "I … took to squatting by the highway and pushing thick branches
in my ass. I kept going until I bled."
After a fight in
the Netherlands with a classmate compounded Ali's "diminished sense of
self," he dived "headfirst, into the world of drugs," and by
thirteen was numbing his life with Valium. He writes that by the time he'd
moved to Canada, he could only observe other youth playing at a public pool: he
"didn't know how to have healthy fun."
So many adjustments
within such a short timeframe. From leaving the rebel-threatened country of his
birth - where he watched wrestling on television while overhearing the screams
from his stepsisters' bedroom as they were being circumcised - to experiencing
the backlash of being a black Muslim post 9/11; from attending Ryerson (he was
"kicked out" after three years) to a suicide attempt and living in a
shelter, where residents had to "Watch out for broken crack pipes on the
piss-soaked floors of the bathroom" … it's not a wonder that the "boy
who felt unwanted by the world" grew into a homeless alcoholic.
But he also became
a writer, praise be, and his "nomadic journey" would be of a
different sort. "Revisionism to cover up our history has been
pervasive," he writes of the immigrant Somali experience. Here's a story
that speaks the truth.
THIS BOOK IS
AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
