Baraka Nonfiction

This wide-ranging collection of essays explores various milestones and landmarks of American music, theatre, dance--and life in general. From Elvis Presley to Kabuki, from dance to destruction, Blank dissects how culture, society and politics have intersected--sometimes for the better, often not. The title essay, written after the events of October 7, 2023, looks back on a three-month residency in Ramallah in 2013 and how this insight and experience has shaped Blank's understanding of both art and conflict. Blank's long career as a working artist in multiple sectors lends this collection a unique authority and searing insight that is both refreshing and much needed. In addition, in an exclusive interview with her partner Ishmael Reed, Blank explains how a curious young Jewish woman from Pittsburgh developed into a committed and eloquent public intellectual.

Two young writers who grew up in the shadow of the huge chimney of a copper refinery in Rouyn-Noranda speak out. They refuse to be lulled by the songs of gold that have silenced the people who built the city and enriched the foundry owners for many decades. They subtly and poetically illustrate the love-hate relationship they maintain with the " piles of slag and copper." This passionate dialogue has hit Quebec bookstores like a tornado and will echo in mining towns across North America. The title is inspired by the Marguerite Duras book Hiroshima Mon Amour and the film by Alain Resnais.

A 32-year-old man diagnosed with mental illness puts an end to his life. Questions spring to mind. Could he have been saved? What health services did he get? Were they sufficient? Helpful? Empathetic? What led to the tragedy? How can it be avoided in the future? Is our mental health system up to modern challenges? Why is it taboo to talk about psychosis, schizophrenia, and suicide? Have antipsychotics developed over the past 70 years helped? Or are they just another straitjacket to keep the mentally ill out of the way? Ferid Ferkovic, the author's son, committed suicide a few days after being refused admission to the psychiatric ward of a Montreal hospital. From the very first symptoms until his tragic end, Ferid and his family dealt with vague and changing diagnoses, antipsychotics with devastating side effects, insensitive and non-empathetic health care professionals, and a shocking lack of information about external resources. They quickly learned that their opinions and ideas were simply unwelcome. For Sadia Messaili, the suicide of her son, who immigrated to Canada with his family at the age of 12, is the starting point in this moving and challenging quest for truth about our failing mental-health system, justice, and above all better ways to rekindle hope for people suffering mental illness and for their families. "Ferid's death was not the end," says Sadia Messaili. "He has fought through me, and the fight is not over!"

Diagnosed with incurable cancer in 2009 with a maximum six-year life expectancy, the author chronicles her journey through traditional and alternative treatments to complete remission. Without rejecting traditional treatment (i.e., chemo or radio therapies), she refused to be an object to be treated by others. Though initially terrified, she was able to move on, insisting on knowing what was going on and why, which required research, adventure (trips to other countries), sadness, humour, serenity, and some very surprising "alternatives," including self-hypnosis, determining the emotional causes of her lymphoma, working with a medium, and the essential need for laughter and hope. Her roadmap could be described as interactive, since newly-diagnosed cancer patients overwhelmed by their situation can adapt her approach to their lives.

The Legacy of Louis Riel provides an overview of the ideas that guided the leader of the Mé tis people. Louis Riel was a prolific writer. Based on a comprehensive review of Riel's writing, the author examines Riel's views on vital subjects, including the term Mé tis, Mé tis identity, "Indians," Jews, Islam, Quebec, French Canadians, the United States, women, liberalism, and Mé tis unity. This exploration of discovery and rediscovery will inspire other academic adventurers and the broad public to investigate other little-known aspects of Riel's 19th intellectual milieu so that we can better understand the man, his times and the momentous events that occurred. The Legacy of Louis Riel helps answer the critical question: "Why does Louis Riel matter?"

A powerful memoir of a Rwandan family's resilience in the face of unimaginable loss during the Rwandan genocide. After All Was Lost tells the story of the Nsabimana family, forever changed by the assassination of their father, the Chief of Staff of Rwanda's Army, and the subsequent genocide. Through the eyes of Alice Nsabimana, the reader witnesses the disintegration of a nation and the enduring strength of a family torn apart. This poignant memoir offers: - An intimate look at Rwandan life before the genocide. - A gripping account of survival against all odds. - A testament to the power of forgiveness and reconciliation. After All Was Lost is a story for those seeking to understand the Rwandan genocide, find inspiration in the face of adversity, and explore the depths of family love and resilience. Discover how the Nsabimana family navigated unimaginable tragedy and rebuilt their lives, offering a message of hope and healing for all.

Summer 2021, the WHO announced that pandemic would end "when the world chooses to end it." Though all necessary public health measures were available, it didn't end. Those measures, used in China, New Zealand, Vietnam, and a few others, were ignored elsewhere. The virus ran riot as half measures were used when hospitals were unable to handle strain. The vaccine turned out to be more mirage than oasis. Poor- and middle-income countries meanwhile experienced a global vaccine apartheid, waiting for crumbs to fall from the rich countries' table, as new, possibly more virulent variants, threatened to emerge. Stephen Gowans investigates why, when all the tools to avert a catastrophe were available, the world failed to prevent the Covid-19 disaster. Examining the business opportunities and pressures that helped shape the world's failed response, he concludes that the novel coronavirus, a killer, had a helper in bringing about the calamity: capitalism, the killer's henchman. He shows how capitalism, its incentives, and its power to dominate the political process impeded the protection of public health.

Born in Hong Kong to unwed parents, Stephanie Chitpin was transported illegally to the Island of Mauritius by Ah Pak, the head nun of a Buddhist temple with the help of Mr. Chui, a benevolent Chinese businessman. Ah Pak raised her as an orphan ward of the temple, Fook Soo Am, known as the Pagoda. Encouraged by Mr. Chui and in spite of Ah Pak's opposition, she did very well at school. The scars incurred by classmates' name calling-bastard, and more-the shame of being an orphan raised in a temple, tragic deaths, and other obstacles did not prevent her from pursuing her education and finishing high school at the age of 16. Although Ah Pak had other plans for her, Mr. Chui stood by her with diplomacy and tact throughout her school years and onto university in Canada on a scholarship. Keep My Memory Safe poetically chronicles life in the temple and in Mauritius, and the move to Canada. This immigration story is totally unique as no other orphaned temple nuns are known to have gone on to acquire a topnotch education and become academics.

People ask themselves why cities exist? Can't there be other ways of organizing life on earth? Given the climate crisis and environmental concerns, how can we justify living in cramped quarters? Cities Matter answers those questions. Though Jane Jacobs is known mainly as an urbanist, Ramsay shows how important an economist she was, particularly with regards to cities and their economic relationships to nations and international trade. He has corralled much of Jane Jacobs' writings on economics, in a palatable and concise format. He also explains classical economic geography, such as central location theory, and Alfred Marshall's economies of agglomeration. Borrowing from Jane Jacobs' approach, he proposes real-life exercises for regular people wishing to compare suburban and urban living conditions, real estate investments, or transport-cost analysis for businesses. The Covid-19 pandemic has prompted some to predict the demise of cities. Will everybody continue to work from home and abandon city centres? Will the bucolic periphery take over from bustling and messy cities? Ramsay responds with a resounding NO, and posits that Jane Jacobs would too.

The Legacy of Louis Riel provides an overview of the ideas that guided the leader of the Mé tis people. Louis Riel was a prolific writer. Based on a comprehensive review of Riel's writing, the author examines Riel's views on vital subjects, including the term Mé tis, Mé tis identity, "Indians," Jews, Islam, Quebec, French Canadians, the United States, women, liberalism, and Mé tis unity. This exploration of discovery and rediscovery will inspire other academic adventurers and the broad public to investigate other little-known aspects of Riel's 19th intellectual milieu so that we can better understand the man, his times and the momentous events that occurred. The Legacy of Louis Riel helps answer the critical question: "Why does Louis Riel matter?"

When it comes to regime change, Ottawa believes the end justifies the means. Canada cuts off aid and illegally sanctions countries to turn the people against popular elected governments. It interferes in other countries' affairs by financing opposition groups and allowing protesters to use its embassy to topple elected leaders. This carefully researched study highlights how Canada took part in the ouster of more than 20 elected governments since 1950.

Alfred Thomas Wood was nothing and everything. One hundred years before the Hollywood film The Great Impostor, Wood, the Great Absquatulator, roved through the momentous mid-19th century events from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to New England, Liberia, Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, Canada, the U.S. Mid-West, and the South. An Oxford-educated preacher in Maine and Boston, he claimed to be a Cambridge-educated doctor of divinity in Liberia, whereas neither University admitted black students then. He spent 18 months in an English prison. In Hamburg in 1854, he published a history of Liberia in German. Later, in Montreal, he claimed to have been Superintendent of Public Works in Sierra Leone. He served the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois as an Oxford-educated DD, then toiled in post-Civil War Tennessee as a Cambridge-trained MD. People who knew him couldn't wait to forget him. In his Foreword, Rapper Webster (Aly Ndiaye) compares Wood to a mid-19th-century Forrest Gump but also to Malcolm X, before Malcolm became political.

In this hard-hitting anthology, Ishmael Reed and Carla Blank have invited 12 informed and accomplished writers and cultural commentators, both women and men, who are rarely heard to comment on the long-standing bigotry on Broadway towards many different ethnic minorities. Contributors are Lonely Christopher, Tommy Curry, Jack Foley, Emil Guillermo, Claire J. Harris, Yuri Kageyama, Soraya McDonald, Nancy Mercado, Aimee Phan, Elizabeth Theobold Richards, Shawn Wong and David Yearsley, in addition to Ishmael Reed and Carla Blank.

It's 1963, Jean-Yves Soucy is 18 and looking for a summer job. He dreams of being a fire warden scanning the boreal forest from a fire tower. But to his dismay he is sent to an equipment depot somewhere between Val-d'Or and Chibougamau in Northern Quebec. His disappointment vanishes when he learns that the depot is located near a Cree community and that he will have two Cree guides, including a man named William Saganash, and his work will involve canoeing through the lakes and rivers of the region. On each encounter with the Crees, on each of the long trips across water or through the bush, Jean-Yves expects to see a new world but realizes he's meeting a different civilization, as different from his own as Chinese civilization. Yet he knows nothing about it. Nor does he understand the nature surrounding them as do his Cree guides-and friends. Jean-Yves Soucy wrote this story because Romeo Saganash, son of William, insisted: "You have to write that, Jean-Yves. About your relationship with my father and the others, how you saw the village. You got to see the end of an era."

At the age of fifteen, Fred Anderson left home and was sucked into the maelstrom of the U.S. southern civil rights movement. He became active with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and other civil rights organization, working with some of the well-known leaders including John Lewis, Bob Moses, Stokely Carmichael, Fanni Lou Hamer and more. As the movement voiced opposition to the Vietnam War and support for liberation movements in Africa and other Third World countries, including Palestine, the FBI targeted it, while military draft boards systemically and disproportionately inducted social activists and poor Blacks, including Fred Anderson. When he refused to go to war, he chose 'Flight to Canada,' where he became Clifford Gaston, the name he went by until the amnesty granted draft dodgers in 1977. Eyes Have Seen: From Mississippi to Montreal is a memoir about embracing the racial and tyrannical crosswinds of Hattiesburg and the south of the 1960's and riding the tailwinds of SNCC, civil rights, anti-Vietnam War activism and reimagining the underground railroad to Canada. ​Little did he know that the internal and public outcomes of the waning Mississippi Freedom

Autoworkers in Oshawa unionized the General Motors plant in Oshawa in 1937 after a bitterly fought strike that pitted them against a rabidly anti-union government, hostile press and GM corporation. It was a major turning point in Canadian labor history. Crucial factors contributing to the strike' s success include the historical background of working-class struggle in the community, patient and courageous prior organizing by Communists, the engaged leadership of rank-and-file GM workers, and the solid support of the United Autoworkers International Union. The author focuses on the voices and actions of rank-and-file workers and on the day-to-day events, many of which have been misunderstood or misinterpreted. He takes down the false narrative the the autoworkers in Oshawa were on their own without support from the UAW\CIO leadership.

Legend would have it that Mussolini put roofs over Italians' heads, developed the economy, had trains running on time, stood up for justice and against the mafia, protected the Jews from Nazi Germany, was a feminist, and put Italy on the map as a respected power. The founder of fascism's only mistake was allying with Hitler. Though this is entirely false, it didn't prevent Antonio Tahani, president of the European Union, from declaring in 2019 that "if we must be honest, he [Mussolini] did positive things to realize infrastructures … he reclaimed many parts of our Italy." In fact, only 6 percent of the improvements referred to were done during the 21 years of fascist rule. Surgically, but with wit, Francesco Filippi demolishes each and every myth that has taken root about Mussolini and fascism in an uplifting handbook for political and intellectual self-defense. No stones are left unturned, including the colonial devastation of Libya and Ethiopia. Though written first for Italians, it is relevant and timely for North Americans. Through a study of Mussolini and Italy, Filippi shows how such legends are built on webs of lie, manipulation of History, and constant uncontested repetition, explaining at the same time why so many people fall victim to the propaganda.

This book is based on the premise that love is not as spontaneous and free as one would have us believe. While it is true that love exists in all human communities, not all communities love in the same way. The words used to speak of love, which simultaneously reveal and censor, inform and sublimate, channel and repress the stirrings of the heart, are chosen according to everchanging social and cultural norms. Love stories or romans d' amour are widely read and appreciated by all classes of society and have been continually revisited and reinvented over time. The capacity for renewal in such a rigidly codified genre is nothing short of amazing, as is the resulting diversity of content. Love Stories Now and Then is the first comprehensive survey of Quebec and French-Canadian romance novels. It tackles questions that everybody asks. What is " love at first sight" ? How do class, nation, religion, and race influence the choice of partners? What are the rules of flirting? What are the limits to expressing one' s desires? What are people' s expectations in marriage? What is the place of sexuality and how does it differ in French and English culture in North America? This book challenges many of our assumptions about romance and offers a compelling glimpse into people' s dreams and fantasies of love over the past two centuries.