Sci-fi contemporary novella. Sequel to Finna, featuring low-wage precarious retail employees of the same Ikea-esque big-box chain whose stores, because of the bizarre physics of their layout, sometimes connect with parallel worlds. This one begins, according to the author in the Acknowledgments section, from that one “otherwise inoffensive coworker that still somehow manages to earn …
Areej Riaz is one of the key organizers behind Our Climate, Our Stories, a new book that collects essays, stories, and poems related to the climate crisis written by Black, Indigenous, and racialized youth from across Canada. Faith Edem and LJ Prabaharan are both contributors to the volume. Scott Neigh interviews them about the climate …
Science fiction, of the political-intrigue-in-an-interplanetary-empire variety, with a quite sweet and well-done romance at the centre of it. The worldbuilding is nothing special (though I appreciate how gender and sexuality work in this universe) and I suspect a certain kind of genre snob (thank goodness I am not such a person!) might be inclined to …
Thanks to John from the Wabanaki Two-Spirit Alliance for the interview just now about the alliance’s years of work doing education, research, capacity building, and advocacy among Two-Spirit people in Atlantic Canada. Listen for it on Talking Radical Radio soon!
Stephanie Fung is the communications organizer for UNITE HERE Local 40, which represents workers in the hospitality industry in British Columbia. Rajani Tadaka is a hotel worker in Vancouver and a member of Local 40. In the wake of the extensive pandemic-related layoffs in hotels in BC, many employers chose to fire laid off workers …
Weird fantasy. The best thing that I can say about this book is that I’ve never read anything like it before. Unfortunately, when I was about a hundred pages in, I was on the verge of abandoning it. I’m glad I stuck with it, because it grew on me somewhat, but it never managed to …
Matias de Dovitiis is a long-time activist and one of the co-founders of the Canadian Latin America Alliance. Scott Neigh interviews him about Canada’s orientation towards Latin America and about the work of the alliance to, according to their website, support “the development of a relationship between Canada and Latin America that is based on …
Theoretical physics for the lay reader, critique of the institutional and social doing of science, and radical analysis, mixed with memoir. The author is a prof of physics and astronomy who grew up immersed in radical grassroots politics in a Black working-class family in Los Angeles. The book starts with a focus on explaining some …
Vanessa Hartley is 21 years old and an eighth generation Black Loyalist descendent. She is the chair of the South End Environmental Injustice Society (SEED). And she is a resident of Shelburne, a town of about 1200 people on the southwest coast of Nova Scotia. Scott Neigh interviews her about the town, about environmental racism, …
YA contemporary with a sprinkling of the fantastical. Follows a teenage girl – Mexican-American, queer, a high school student, works in her family’s pastry shop and has a knack for knowing the perfect baked good to meet the needs or fulfill the desires of anyone who comes in. At a party at the home of …