Essays that use memoir in a mode the author describes as “fictionalized nonfiction” (20) to explore migration, (non)belonging, becoming, and the hypocrisies, indignities, and violence of white-supremacist, colonial, multi-cultural Canada. The author was born in Kowloon, Hong Kong, grew up in Edmonton, has lived in and travelled to many parts of Canada, and for many years worked as an art critic; the book draws on all parts of that journey. An impulse buy, and a quick and easy read in some ways, but it packs a bit of a punch too. It made me realize how rarely I’ve encountered non-scholarly Canadian nonfiction dealing with these themes – I’ve encountered them plenty in conversation with people I know in real life, in lots of Canadian scholarly writing, in fiction, and in a range of forms from other countries, but not so often in literary nonfiction from this country. I really appreciated its honest portrayal of the author’s learning journey, particularly around Indigenous peoples and struggles, but more generally too, and her wrestling with the questions of what it means to be on this land. I also appreciated her ability to name her own complicity in a way that felt more genuine and staying-with-the-trouble-ish than the more commonly seen use of such naming as an escape hatch back to innocence. The writing is good, quiet, low-key, and unflinching, though I think to be honest what I was more taken by was a certain kind of rhythm in the feel of the book, in its patterns of the heaviness of the world and the ordinariness of life and haunting and joy and melancholy. Quite good.
Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.