The Diary of Dukesang Wong by Dukesang Wong, translated by Wanda Joy Hoe, edited by David McIlwraith
It was 1885 when the final spike of Canadian Pacific Railroad was hammered into place and to this day the railways, which were built on racist exploitation, are the spine of Canada’s economy. The Diary of Dukesang Wong is the only known first-person account from a Chinese worker who laboured on the hideously dangerous sections of transcontinental railways that spanned North America in the nineteenth century. In sections recovered from Dukesang Wong’s journal, located and translated in the mid-1960s by Wong’s granddaughter Wanda Joy Hoe, the realities of this violent chapter of our nation’s history are revealed.
The Diary of Dukesang Wong restores a lost central voice to a foundational episode in Canadian history—one that changes our understanding of the history it recounts.
Read an excerpt from the book:
Autumn 1881
It is hard, this labouring, but my body seems to be strong enough. The people working with me are good, strong men. There are many of us working here, but the laying of the railroad progresses very slowly. It seems we move two stones a day! And they want this railway built across these high mountains, some two thousand miles! Even over the plains of our homeland, such railways took over a generation to build, so I can imagine these white people will face failed dreams.
I’ve heard there is a need for working men in another city across the water, in loading ships and cutting lumber, but those foreign people will not treat us well. They constantly examine our dwellings, calling them filthy, and in that city they treat our people worse than here, some have said like dogs.
*
I have been honoured today. The Chinese workers have elected me as their spokesman with the contractor, to speak of our good deeds. I am truly surprised that the workers did not choose Chen, since he is more proficient in English. I can speak much better in the learned language of our people, but English is hard to speak. However, I must try to obtain better medicine and food for us to eat. We won’t be strong if we do not have enough food in our stomachs.
***
Jump Scare by Daniel Zomparelli
Jump Scare has no business being this funny. In this 2024 poetry collection, Daniel Zomparelli uses horror movies as a vehicle to explore queer pop culture, the commodification of identity, neurodivergence, and grief. Written in an irreplicable, empathetic, irreverent voice, reading Jump Scare is like hanging out with your wittiest friend.
Raw and skillful, painful and delightful, Jump Scare thinks about how we might position ourselves in these strange, isolating times.
Read an excerpt from the collection’s poem “Don’t Worry It’s Not Loaded”:
I went to the firing range and it turned out to be a gay bar, and every
single gun was not a gun but a gay bar. I immigrated to America
before a civil war broke out and before anyone could bear arms
they were baring ass in a gay bar and they pointed their gay bars at
each other. My neighbour asked us if we were going to get a gay bar,
because there were like fifty thousand gay bars sold in California
during a pandemic and I thought, I just don’t want to own a gay bar.
Well, just not in my home. Imagine if that gay bar went off by accident,
or if someone broke in and used the gay bar against us. I heard gay
bars were not being sold at Walmart anymore. In Canada there are
more rules around gay bars but people definitely still own gay bars.
What if you bought a gun and it turned into a gay bar? You
pulled on the trigger and it just made you wait in line.
***
Grazie by Lucia Frangione
Grazie by Lucia Frangione is a work of literary fiction with a speculative bent. Here, Frangione has penned a gritty and spiritual story of transformation, forgiveness, accountability, and rebirth. When Graziana’s assaulter dies in a car crash, the resulting catharsis lands her in hospital. Her eight-year-old, Hazel, becomes the ward of Grandpa “Grumpy” Herman, while Graziana embarks on a necessary path to healing—a path that includes a pilgrimage to Italy to bike the famous Via Francigena.
Violent and tender, Grazie investigates what it means to feel connection to oneself, one’s family, one’s history, one’s culture, and to existence.
Read an excerpt from the book:
Grazie tapped her legs under the table. They were still there, she still had legs. She could walk down the aisles of a grocery store now. She could scratch items off a list. She swirled her tongue around her teeth. She could think clearly enough to do her banking and fill Lloyd’s tank with gas and talk with Hazel and Herman once a week. The scallions from the vinaigrette stung the sides of her tongue pleasantly. She was getting stronger. She could talk about her mother and make a family recipe and sleep soundly all the way through the night without waking. The pleasant clatter of crockery and cutlery allowed her to take a breath. A bright blue sky opened up in her mind, a sparkling sea, a winding road through cypress trees.
***
The City That Is Leaving Forever by Rahat Kurd and Sumayya Syed
In 2016, as India’s military carries out extrajudicial killings and imposes a lengthy curfew in Srinagar, author Rahat Kurd is forced to cancel her family trip to Kashmir. One of the many things disrupted during this time is Kurd’s plan to meet up with Sumayya Syed, living in Srinagar, whom she’d met at a 2012 presentation and discussion of Sanjay Kak’s film Jashn-e-Azadi. The City That Is Leaving Forever is a five-year exchange of riveting, revealing, and moving communications between Kashmiri poets Rahat Kurd in Vancouver and Sumayya Syed in Srinagar. Between sharing poetics and confiding in each other the details of their lives as Kashmir is subjected to military lockdown, their bond and observations co-build a unique feminist record of a particular moment in time.
These exchanges between two Muslim Kashmiri poets capture a deepening long-distance friendship where the contrasts between daily life in their two cities are notable, but what is shared is unbreakable.
Read an excerpt from the book:
2018-11-29
Dear Sumayya, how are you? Really, I am asking how are
we? How is that part of myself I left in Srinagar – 3:19 PM
2018-12-10
Salam Rahat. 9:41 PM
We are in December. That terrifying, isolating,
heart-eating month of the year. 9:42 PM
Forgive me for never getting back to you. 9:44 PM
I absorb your messages selfishly. 9:45 PM
Feeding off the affection, the connection
that I so desperately crave. 9:45 PM
***
Withrow Park by Morris Panyc
Set in Toronto, Withrow Park by the award-winning playwright Morris Panych centres around three housemates in their sixties, Marion, Arthur, and Janet, who are in a rut so deep it has begun to swallow them. When a new, oddly dressed man arrives in the neighbourhood, it sends shockwaves throughout the housemates’ lives, unearthing anxieties and old tensions, forcing them to be aired out. Then there’s the mystery of the new gentleman himself—is he just a new fellow in the neighbourhood of Riverdale, or something far more esoteric? Withrow Park beautifully showcases Panych’s remarkable wit and prowess at crafting characters.
Withrow Park wryly tugs at anxieties around aging, isolation, and the constantly shifting world around us.
Read an excerpt from the play:
ARTHUR
Look at that sad creature.
MARION
The man?
ARTHUR
No, that whippet. He just wants to go hang out with other dogs,
but no. He’s stuck with some woman on a phone.
MARION
How do you know what he wants?
MARION takes up her book.
ARTHUR
It’s what every dog wants.
MARION
It’s better if you can’t do something you want. Gives you
something to long for. I bet he’s perfectly happy wishing he
could run free but not doing it. And anyway, he doesn’t look
very intelligent. He’d run right into a car.
ARTHUR
Right into a car.
A mantle clock rings five times.
ARTHUR
It’s Janet. Look. She’s over there. She’s – (suddenly alarmed)
talking to him.
MARION
The whippet?
ARTHUR
The man.
***
Behind the Moon by Anosh Irani
In Behind the Moon, an after-hours visit from a stranger to a Mughlai restaurant in Toronto shakes up employee Ayub’s world. Award-winning playwright and novelist Anosh Irani’s play Behind the Moon is an unforgettable three-hander about loss, hope and exploitation, faith, connection, and how to begin again.
Rich with the kind of lived-in, rapid-fire dialogue that invites revisiting, Behind the Moon brings to life unique, fully rounded characters that are sure to stay with readers for a long time.
Read an excerpt from the play:
JALAL: I just want something quick.
AYUB: Here, everything is quick.
JALAL stares at the food on display.
JALAL: It looks so good.
JALAL looks around the restaurant, a bit manic.
AYUB: No, it doesn’t. It used to look good. When I made it. Two days ago.
JALAL: You are the cook?
AYUB: I was the cook. Now I’m the cleaner. Here at the Mughlai Moon, we move in and out of multiple roles with great ease. Anyway, I’m sorry, but we’re closed.
JALAL: But the food’s right there.
AYUB: I know. I’m the one who put it there.
* * *
Thanks to Talonbooks for sharing these can’t-miss titles from their backlist. You can order any of these books through All Lit Up, or click the “Shop Local” button on the book listings to discover them at your local indie bookstore.
