About this item
"Quite simply, one of the most beautiful books I have ever read." --Aminatta Forna"Stunning. A precise puncturing of the post-racial bubble." --Nafkote TamiratIn the tradition of Ta-Nehisi Coatess Between the World and Me, acclaimed novelist David Chariandys latest is an intimate and profoundly beautiful meditation on the politics of race today.. I can glimpse, through the lens of my own experience, how a parent or grandparent, encouraged to remain silent and feel ashamed of themselves, may nevertheless find the strength to voice directly to a child a truer story of ancestry.. When a moment of quietly ignored bigotry prompted his three-year-old daughter to ask, "What happened?" David Chariandy began wondering how to discuss with his children the politics of race. A decade later, in a newly heated era of both struggle and divisions, he writes a letter to his now thirteen-year-old daughter. The son of Black and South Asian migrants from Trinidad, David draws upon his personal and ancestral past, including the legacies of slavery, indenture, and immigration, as well as the experience of growing up as a visible minority in the land of his birth. In sharing with his daughter his own story, he hopes to help cultivate within her a sense of identity and responsibility that balances the painful truths of the past and present with hopeful possibilities for a better future.
About the Author
David Chariandy is a Canadian writer and one of the co-founders of Commodore Books. His debut novel Soucouyant was nominated for ten literary prizes and awards, including the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (longlisted) , the 2007 Scotiabank Giller Prize (longlisted) , the 2007 Governor General's Award for Fiction (finalist) , the 2007 ForeWord Book of the Year Award for literary fiction from an independent press ("gold" winner) , the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book of Canada and the Caribbean (shortlisted) , the 2008 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize of the British Columbia Book Prizes (shortlisted) , the 2008 City of Toronto Book Award (shortlisted) , the 2008 "One Book, One Vancouver" of the Vancouver Public Library (shortlisted) , the 2008 Relit Award for best novel from a Canadian independent press (shortlisted) , and the 2007 in Canada First Novel Award (shortlisted) .Chariandy has a MA from Carleton and a PhD from York University. He lives in Vancouver and teaches in the department of English at Simon Fraser University. His second novel, entitled Brother, is forthcoming from McClleland and Stewart.
