Two Reviews: "Books and the City: Psychogeographical Wanderings Around Toronto’s Independent Bookstores" by Annabel Townsend, and “From the Ground Up: An Anthology of New Fiction” edited by Annabel Townsend

“Books and the City: Psychogeographical Wanderings Around Toronto’s Independent Bookstores”

By Annabel Townsend 

Published by Pete’s Press, The Wandering Series

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$24.99  ISBN 9-781069-000996

    

   

It’s entirely wonderful to finish a book and immediately recognize that the author could be your new best friend. Annabel Townsend is a British-born, Regina, SK writer, and her nonfiction title Books and the City: Psychogeographical Wanderings Around Toronto’s Independent Bookstores contains all the elements I require for a wildly successful read: it’s well-written and structured; its author is passionate and clear about her mission; and it opened my mind while delivering a plethora of fun. Huge points also for the adventure of big-city, solo travel; staying in hostels; and using Toronto’s Bike Share program. And, naturally, I share her belief in the “magic” that bookstores (and books) contain.

Books and the City details Townsend’s January 2024 pursuit to find a particular book, Stroll, by Torontonian Shawn Micallef, whom she heard present at the Toronto International Festival of Authors in 2022. Like Micallef, Townsend is a psychogeographer. Psychogeography, she explains, is “a marriage of psychology and geography but with a good dose of creativity and ethnography thrown in.” It’s “a lens through which we can view a place not as a static, lifeless entity, but as a living, breathing organism that shapes and is shaped by the people who inhabit it,” and through “a deliberate act of unplanned wandering” (aka dérive), one can discover her own personal narratives while tapping into the collective consciousness of a place. Trés exciting. 

Stroll is about “wandering aimlessly around Toronto with hand-drawn maps,” and Townsend has emulated this type of adventure, complete with her own colourful hand-drawn maps. She could have ordered the 2010 edition of the recently-reprinted Stroll, but she desired the original, and thus her quest—and her hope to find hope—began. On foot, on a Bike Share bike, and via public transit, the committed writer/bookstore owner wandered—coffee-fueled, and often in the rain—from indie bookstore to indie bookstore.

Entrepreneurial Townsend operated the Penny University Bookstore in Regina for four years. Economics forced her to shutter this indie labour of love—which opened a week after the COVID-19 pandemic kicked off—in the fall of 2024. Books and the City includes the challenge of owning her own bookstore—Townsend doesn’t drive, and she’d bike her book deliveries in Regina, even on days when it was “-28 ̊C with a -41̊ C windchill”; exceptional descriptions re: her discoveries of various indie bookstores in T.O.; her interactions with bookstore managers/staff; and end-of-chapter tallies on “Books bought,” “Copies of Stroll found” and “Coffees consumed”. 

Her ramblings took her from the Toronto Reference Library to Doug Miller Books, where she bought a dystopian horror. “I was having an excellent day and so needed a good dose of gritty depressing futurism to balance it out,” she writes. She adored Queen Books, which was “̒a little bit bonkers,’” and boasted an unrelated-to-anything “waist-height cuddly giraffe in the children’s section.” 

Townsend knows: “A simple book can change your life forever.” Perhaps her fabulous book will change yours. As for me, psychogeography has my name all over it.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

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“From the Ground Up: An Anthology of New Fiction”

Edited by Annabel Townsend 

Published by Anthologies of Pete’s Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$21.99  ISBN 9-781069-000965

    

   

Annabel Townsend loved the “From the Ground Up” theme of Regina’s Cathedral Village Arts Festival (2024) so much, she used it as the theme for an anthology featuring ten Regina area fiction writers. Townsend—a writer, editor, publisher and former bookstore owner—held a “Battle of the Pitches” event at the festival: short story writers were given three minutes to “pitch” a story before a live audience and judges, with the prize being publication in the first-ever anthology by Pete’s Press, From the Ground Up: An Anthology of New Fiction. A few other writers also contributed stories. 

The stories include a futuristic story by well-known, multi-genre author Alison Lohans. The piece, “Crystal Sister,” is set on the planet Terruggia, which contains a “massive crystal lode” that’s being mined. The main character is young Lytha, whose “job was to form and impress images into waiting crystal, which had the capacity to amplify and transmit halfway across a galaxy.” Legend has it that the Terruggian waters are unsafe, so what’s any self-respecting teenager going to do? You can guess.    

The anthology opens with a fantastical dystopian story by Andy Whitman. Creatures the media initially termed eruptions (the beasts are also called Dirtbacks and Oxodillos) are emerging from the earth daily. Whitman writes, “The creatures looked like a muskox with armadillo’s armour, fifty stories tall and half as wide,” and “Where they emerged from their ancient hibernation, they left craters which swallowed skyscrapers.” The destruction caused as these behemoth’s erupt is widespread and apocalyptic, as they “literally moved the world.” The story takes an interesting twist when the protagonist speeds to his parents’ farm—several hours away—for safety and reconciliation, and finds only his twin brother, who doesn’t believe in the “goddamn hysteria”. Then: “Things shifted quickly. The ground trembled and buckled.” Whitman’s skill is evident in descriptive lines like “The concrete sidewalk beneath my shoes sounded like the whole planet grinding its teeth” and “The clouds were fluffy but flat, old ships serenely sailing from one horizon to another.”       

Tricia Saxby’s contributed a realistic story about taking her materialistic and opinionated teenaged sons to work at a soup kitchen. Two stories feature kidnappings—including a financially-desperate bookstore owner’s kidnapping of Margaret Atwood. One can tell how much fun the writer had with this romp, ie: the bookstore owner’s name is Paige Turner. 

The diverse anthology includes a six-chapter novella concerning a downed Cessna and heaps of drug money; a Snow White tale; and a story involving a talking, kleptomaniac cat.   

I clicked on Pete’s Press website to learn more about the publisher: “Pete’s Press is a new, hybrid publisher intent on publishing books that make you think. The Press—named for “the late, great and bookish Cat”—which provides publication of books in various genres, “offers authors a unique blend of traditional and self-publishing advantages,” with a “one-off fee [that] covers editing and proofreading, typesetting and design, printing the books, distribution through global sales platforms and book marketing.” For more, www.petespress.ca. 

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

 

Three Reviews: “Our Grandmothers’ Hands: Repatriating Métis Material Art” by Gregory Scofield; "Sam and the Big Bridge" by Maureen Ulrich, illustrated by Matt Gonya; and "Fierce, Fabulous, and Fluid: How Trans High School Students Work at Gender Nonconformity” by LJ Slovin

“Our Grandmothers’ Hands: Repatriating Métis Material Art”
By Gregory Scofield, Historical Overview by Sherry Farrell Racette
Published by Gabriel Dumont Institute
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$65.00  ISBN 978-1-988011-22-6

In Gregory Scofield’s introduction to Our Grandmothers’ Hands: Repatriating Métis Material Art, the multi-genre Métis author, academic and bead-worker immediately demonstrates his poetic prowess via a description of the said, titulary hands: “I always imagine them as fine-boned birds, taking musical flight over a pattern traced onto velvet, stroud, or hide.” 

This fine writing compelled me to sink into this 245-page treasure trove of photographs, descriptions, and necessary stories about the grandmothers’ beaded artifacts—what Scofield refers to as “grandmother-pieces”—and his years-long efforts to repatriate them from “antique stores and ‘Indian art’ galleries, e-Bay and Etsy, and online auctions”. It was the myriad pieces themselves, he explains, that “guide[d] and educate[d] him” to give voice and honour to these Métis women and their creations during “a time of reconciliation” and “colonial reckoning.” Scofield recalls his Aunty Georgina teaching him—a nicâniskôhpicanisak, or “little ancestor”—to bead at her kitchen table, and recounts his ongoing dedication to learning how to “properly care for historic beadwork and silk embroidery.”  

Scofield’s illuminating introduction is followed by Sherry Farrell Racette’s historical overview, “Looking for Stories: Seeking History in Visual Culture.” Her passion for “revitalizing traditional art forms” and “increasing the recognition and appreciation of contemporary traditional artists and their practices” has required “teasing information from the stitches, chosen materials, and techniques.” Métis art-making predated The Red River Settlement, she writes. Items (ie: beaded cloth firebags, moccasins, mittens, jackets, hats) were produced for the women’s own homes and families, and were also commissioned by or sold to collectors and traders. 

“The combination of movement and intermarriage blurred origins into a style that was distinctly ‘Métis,’” Farrell Racette explains. “The generative actions of beadwork and embroidery were deeply embedded in emotional and spiritual life,” and, she asserts, “the full spectrum of Métis art” encompasses much more than the “Métis five-petal flower.”

It was captivating to proceed through these pages and admire the photographs of the varied work, including pieces created in the Norway House Style, with floral embroidery “characterized by buttonhole stitches” and “red and pink rosettes and snake-like leaves” and the “use of tightly-twisted silk floss.” I tried to imagine the hands that stitched the items. The conversations between women as they worked. It was surprising to learn where individual items were eventually located, ie: men’s gauntlets in Middlesex, England; sleigh mittens in Philadelphia; children’s moccasins (“Smoked moose hide sole, sun-bleached caribou hide vamp embroidered with silk threads in chain stitch …”) in St. Boswell’s, Scotland, artist unknown. 

A beaded garden on a wall pocket, c. 1880-1900. A beaded panel that conjures “the beauty and wonder of a springtime bouquet.” From slippers to gun cases, the images illustrate how the grandmothers possessed the “skill and ability to make even utilitarian pieces beautiful.” 

“Our grandmothers are back into Métis hands and back into the hands of our scholars, historians, artists, and community members.” They are, Scofield writes, “coming home,” and he is “their momentary caregiver, ensuring they are loved and honoured and, above all, respected.”  

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

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“Sam and the Big Bridge” 

Written by Maureen Ulrich

Illustrated by Matt Gonya

Published by Flatlands Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$21.99 ISBN 9781778296529

Multi-genre writer Maureen Ulrich has released a new illustrated softcover for children, and its moving conclusion left me with a lump in my throat. The Lampman-area author is no stranger to the pen: she’s previously published the Jessie Mac Hockey Series of novels; the YA alternative history series, Winds of Change; the middle grade novel Kimeto’s Journey; and a poetry book, Something’s Different, described as “A COVID journal in verse.”

When it comes to writing for young people, Ulrich clearly knows her audience. In her first children’s picture book, Sam and the Big Bridge, the former teacher-turned-author delivers a short tale about two brothers, Sam and Derek, and her initial three words set the stage for the story: “Sam was anxious.” Interestingly, Sam is the elder brother, and he’s concerned that his little brother might get hurt on the playground swing or monkey bars, or that he might leap into the swimming pool “without his waterwings,” or even fail to check for cars when he crosses a street.  Sam even worries in his dreams: his mother says she’s signed the boys up for “Ninja camp,” and that night Sam “dreamed of Ninjas with glittering eyes.” 

Ulrich effectively describes how Sam’s mental anxiety manifests physically via a dry mouth and itchy skin, and when they arrive at the large Ninja park, “Sam’s chest grew tighter when he saw children running and jumping on the huge equipment.” His mother assures him that he can opt out of the day camp, but the boy wants to try the various challenges, and shakily does so, but the rope bridge gets the better of him, and younger Derek asks his brother why he was “screaming” when “Everyone else [at the camp] was having fun.”

The book’s American illustrator, Matt Gonya, conveys Sam’s fearfulness via a strong use of colour and facial expressions. Gonya uses “gestural, digital illustrations” that “are designed to look like ink and watercolour.” The main character’s anxiety is particularly conspicuous when contrasted against the other children at camp, who are running, climbing and smiling. 

Sam is left with “a hard lump” in his stomach. Fortunately, he figures out on his own that he must return to the camp the next day and face his fears, completing the various activity challenges at his own pace, with his highly supportive mother and brother cheering him on. 

I won’t give away the ending of this touching story, but I will say that the book demonstrates how everyone is different, and that it’s okay not to be “a Ninja”—even in an innocuous, playground context—if one isn’t comfortable with what that requires. The ending is resonant and delightful, and it gently shows how confidence can be built step, by step, by step. It also conveys the important message that a mother’s love and pride in her children is unconditional. 

Writing is meant to evoke emotion; if it does, the author has done her job. Congratulations to you, Maureen Ulrich. Your story is indeed a success. 

 

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM

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“Fierce, Fabulous, and Fluid: How Trans High School Students Work at Gender Nonconformity”

Written by LJ Slovin

Published by University of Regina Press

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl

$32.95  ISBN 9-781779-400505

    

      

To write the academic text Fierce, Fabulous, and Fluid: How Trans High School Students Work at Gender Nonconformity, LJ Slovin (the Martha LA McCain Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto) undertook a year-long ethnographical study in a Vancouver high school to explore the experiences of gender-nonconforming youth, who, Slovin found, were “often overlooked in discussions about trans issues, in part due to policies created by well-meaning educators that inadvertently perpetuated a narrow definition of trans identity.”  

Ethnography is the study of people in their own environment through methods including participant observation and face-to-face interviewing. Slovin, a non-binary researcher and Vanier Scholar, writes that in witnessing how six “gender-nonconforming youth navigated their genders … through different spaces and relationships at school,” they attended their grades 9-12 classes, “joined in during their extracurricular activities and clubs, ate lunch with them, attended their performances, and hung out” inside school and out, ie: in cafés. 

Slovin’s work focused on “youth who were not regularly recognized by others as trans,” and these youth identified as “gay, queer, bisexual, pansexual, trans, gender nonconforming, genderfluid, and nonbinary.” However, Slovin discovered that the students they studied were not particularly interested in labels; rather, being “uncategorizable” was part of the point.

How did these teens come to be considered “trans,” and how did they “[negotiate] being misgendered?” How did they manage to “survive and thrive in school?” Slovin uses the word “labour” to describe the youths’ complex efforts re: managing their gender identity, and how this labour often went unnoticed while simultaneously also being “demanded and required of them.” Teacher, administrator and staff support was often observed, but it was “framed within an accommodations approach,” (“the dominant strategy for pursuing trans-inclusivity in Canadian schools”); was always reactive; and relied on the students being visibly trans. 

Slovin argues that the accommodations approach presupposes that “trans identity” is “inherently risky,” and this belief is “an intentional strategy to argue for their protection in schools.” Slovin writes that education, even in liberal schools, “still aspired to socialize youth away from queerness.” The author deduced that trans youth had learned to care for themselves and each other, ie: by using “trapdoors” to escape and have safe places to exist in. These could be real, physical spaces, ie: a “tech booth,” or “fantastical spaces,” like “D&D campaigns”. 

Students in Slovin’s study felt that their “progressive” high school simply paid lip service to initiatives like Pink Shirt Day. Students Eliza and Tamar campaigned for five years for “a multistall, gender-neutral bathroom.” The author argues that East City High—with its “‘Safe space’ stickers”—is not a “diverse and progressive school” and it possesses a “preoccupation with image and optics.”

What Slovin learned through their ethnographical experience is that trans youth are paving their own way, but if their teachers focused less on “risk and concern” for these students and embraced “fostering a celebration of trans and gender-nonconforming youth,” that journey would be a whole lot easier.  

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM