Unslumped (for now)
Catching up with (mostly) recent Canadian titles
It's true what they say: if you wanna write, read. And I've found the other way around to also be true. In a year when I've been immobilized by a steady flow of low-grade depression, I've also found myself in The Great Reading Slump™. A slew of unimpressive titles towards the tail end of 2023 and a huge life 180 that left me the worse for wear made 2024 a year of low drive, little reading and even less writing. I spent the better part of the year at a pity party of my own creation, taking photos of every leaf and flowering bush I came into contact with, doomscrolling so far my feeds started over, and mining dopamine (dopamining, if you will) from pastries and micro-interactions with food business owners. I navigated the worst stomach infection of my life plus a not so shabby three new health things that now demand more care to my body than I know how to provide. In brighter moments, I got to travel, sometimes for food, sometimes for family, always for joy. Those moments redeemed the whole year. It's been a quieter, less hectic time, a calm preceding another upheaval, and in times of relative health, I've picked up a few books again. Here are some book thoughts for whoever's still reading as I creep out of this slump, albeit momentarily.
Co-Existence - Billy Ray Belcourt
I've grown into a significant Billy Ray Belcourt stan over the years. After reading A History of My Brief Body a few years ago I knew that whatever he'd be putting down from there on out I'd be picking up. Some might say that his work often feels repetitive - which I can't say I disagree with entirely - but I think he's really found his form in this short story collection. Co-Existence is BRB as we know and love (with his classic sociological commentary interspersed with raunchy queer NDN sex and Ocean Vuong like poetics) but in a more succinct format, with less room to shilly shally, more character and world building, less meandering philosophizing. Every story centers Indigenous love and loneliness in some shape or form and is set largely across the Canadian Prairies. BRB is keeping us fed, with poem collection The Idea of an Entire Life to come out this fall. Stoked!
Death By A Thousand Cuts - Shashi Bhat
On the topic of Canadian short story collections (hey maybe *I've* found my form), this one was an absolute stunner. Shashi Bhat’s zany Instagram captions read as elevated prose and I dream of strewing words together with such clarity and preciseness. I looked by and large for this book, knowing by the cover that it would be a quick favorite, and as any Canadian living out of country will know, it's never easy getting our hands on books published in Canada. The short stories feel interconnected through themes of immigration in the Great White North, insipid dating options as a woman of color, and Brown parent contradictions and misplaced priorities. I especially loved her portrayal of mothers, as deeply flawed individuals yet always the bedrock of the household, dare I say the bedrock of society.
Sucker Punch - Scaachi Koul
To kind of contradict my previous point, I was able to get my hands on this memoir by Kashmiri-Canadian internet comedy extraordinaire very easily as Penguin India also acquired publishing rights, yay! For a measly (by North American standards) 499 rupees at Bangalore’s Champaca (a book that would set me back roughly 40 dollaroonies in Canada what the actual fuck). I devoured this essay collection, a collection that I thought weakened by the middle (she kept going on and on about her divorce in Millennial-style self-deprecating internet speak so much so that it started to read a lot like a Buzzfeed article titled “Pick your top 5 traumas and I’ll guess your zodiac sign”) but solidified again towards the end. Koul is at her best when she's dissecting her parents' idosyncracies, when she's being honest about her pain, when she's being funny without putting herself down at every turn.
Goddess Complex - Sanjena Sathian
Gorgeous cover alert. The novel centers modern motherhood and the sort of Millennial-women-specific tug of war between deciding on having kids or not. Being childfree and roughly the author’s age, this premise spoke to me. Sathian explores crucial CF ideas: the internal back-and-forth, the nagging fear of regret, the slow erosion of community when peers start having kids, the microdosing parenthood by babysitting or doting excessively on a pet, the weird rituals we endure in search of meaning. As most of the book's reviews will attest, the novel takes a bit of a strange turn around the halfway mark and becomes more psychological thriller than lit fic. A pivot that felt so abrupt, I found it hard to trust. Like when Beyonce goes off on a crazy run and you’re scared she won’t land on the right note but she does and it works and it’s near impossible to recreate. Ultimately the novel dances around a deeper exploration of its central themes but it’s done in beautiful and relatable enough prose that you can’t help but want to know how it will end.
On my reading list
Ariel Saramandi’s Portrait of An Island On Fire came out June 19. She's been such a vital voice in the contemporary Mauritian literary landscape, conducting research and publishing work on topics most sidestep. Her searing essay An Education on deep-seated racism in Mauritius rocked the local literati and was at the center of many conversations about race at the height of the pandemic. Her book is sadly but unsurprisingly not being stocked by Mauritian bookstores. Get in touch to order the book directly from her!
has a forthcoming podcast with Ariel which is sure to be a thought-provoking companion piece to the essay collection.Amma by Saraid Da Silva - a magical trip to Sri Lanka revealed unexpected parallels between our cultures and sparked in me a curiosity about their literature. Longlisted for the Women's Prize this year, Amma traces three generations of Sri Lankan women across Singapore, New Zealand, and London as they navigate trauma, migration, and identity.
Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal - I didn’t need to know much else about this book to want to read it other than it having a Mauritian *and* a Canadian character. Fer leker kontan. Will report back in my next newsletter.
Vashish Jaunky’s short story Le Soleil n'est pas encore mort was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize this year! His story, which I’m sure will be chockfull of local insular flair as well as punchy commentary, will be published on adda in the coming weeks. As a reminder, Reena Usha Rungoo’s excellent Dite was the regional winner for Africa in 2024. Fer leker extra kontan.
Tchuss for now,
N