DIVERSITY Reads Podcast Bookclub

Host Coral Santana and Emerging Curator Hana Amani discuss Nikita Gill's The Girl and The Goddess.

Meet Paro. A girl with a strong will, a full heart, and much to learn. Born into a family reeling from the ruptures of Partition in India, we follow her as she crosses the precarious lines between childhood, teenage discovery, and realizing her adult self. In the process, Paro must confront fear, desire and the darkest parts of herself in the search for meaning and, ultimately, empowerment.

Nikita Gill's vivid poetry and beautiful illustrations have captured hearts and imaginations--but in The Girl and the Goddess, she offers us her most personal and deeply felt writing to date: an intimate coming-of-age story told in linked poems that offers a look into the Hindu mythology and rich cultural influences that helped her become the woman she is today.

Content Warning: Discussions of Sexual Assault and Use of Strong Language.

*Unedited live recording*

Host Coral Santana, author Cicely Belle Blain and Vancouver Art Gallery's programmer Stephanie Bokenfohr discuss Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. 

Teeming with life and crackling with energy — a love song to modern Britain and black womanhood. Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years.

Joyfully polyphonic and vibrantly contemporary, this is a gloriously new kind of history, a novel of our times: celebratory, ever-dynamic and utterly irresistible.

This episode is part of the Vancouver Art Gallery's Art Connects Series - live footage available in their facebook page.

Host Coral Santana and author and Critical Indigenous Studies professor Daniel Heath Justice discuss Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves.

In a futuristic world ravaged by global warming, people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America's Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow, and dreams, means death for the unwilling donors. Driven to flight, a fifteen-year-old and his companions struggle for survival, attempt to reunite with loved ones and take refuge from the "recruiters" who seek them out to bring them to the marrow-stealing "factories."

Host Coral Santana and Inuk arts worker Emily Laurent Henderson discuss Michelle Good’s debut novel, FIVE LITTLE INDIANS.

Taken from their families when they are very small and sent to a remote, church-run residential school, Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie are barely out of childhood when they are finally released after years of detention.

Alone and without any skills, support or families, the teens find their way to the seedy and foreign world of Downtown Eastside Vancouver, where they cling together, striving to find a place of safety and belonging in a world that doesn’t want them. The paths of the five friends cross and crisscross over the decades as they struggle to overcome, or at least forget, the trauma they endured during their years at the Mission.

Content Warning: Discussions of drug use, overdose, sexual abuse and colonial trauma.

Host Coral Santana and writer Hope Lauterbach discuss Nnedi Okorafor's Nigerian Fantasy YA novel, AKATA WITCH.

Akata Witch transports the reader to a magical place where nothing is quite as it seems. Born in New York, but living in Aba, Nigeria, twelve-year old Sunny is understandably a little lost. She is albino and thus, incredibly sensitive to the sun. All Sunny wants to do is be able to play football and get through another day of school without being bullied. But once she befriends Orlu and Chichi, Sunny is plunged into the world of the Leopard People, where your worst defect becomes your greatest asset. Together, Sunny, Orlu, Chichi and Sasha form the youngest ever Oha Coven. Their mission is to track down Black Hat Otokoto, the man responsible for kidnapping and maiming children. Will Sunny be able to overcome the killer with powers stronger than her own, or will the future she saw in the flames become reality? (Goodreads)

Host Coral Santana and Activist Indra Hayre discuss Souvankham Thammavongsa's How To Pronounce Knife. 

A young man painting nails at the local salon. A woman plucking feathers at a chicken processing plant. A father who packs furniture to move into homes he'll never afford. A housewife learning English from daytime soap operas. In her stunning debut book of fiction, O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa focuses on characters struggling to make a living, illuminating their hopes, disappointments, love affairs, acts of defiance, and above all their pursuit of a place to belong. In spare, intimate prose charged with emotional power and sly wit, she paints an indelible portrait of watchful children, wounded men, and restless women caught between cultures, languages, and values. As one of Thammavongsa's characters says, "All we wanted was to live." And in these stories, they do--brightly, ferociously, unforgettably. (Penguin Random House)

Host Coral Santana and Community Builder Mikaela Joy discuss Elizabeth Acevedo's novel Clap When You Land.

Camino Rios lives with her aunt in the Dominican Republic, and waits all year for her dad to visit her for the summer. Yahaira Rios lives in New York with her parents, and asks every year if she can go with her dad on his annual business trip. Neither sister knows about the other — until their dad dies in a plane crash leaving New York for the Dominican Republic.

Content Warning: Death, Airplane Crash, Sexual Harassment.

Host Coral Santana and Author Njamba Koffi discuss Dany Laferriere's most celebrated book since How to Make Love to a Negro, The Return.

At age 23, the narrator, Dany, hurriedly left behind the stifling heat of Port-au-Prince for the unending winter of Montreal. It was 1976, and Baby Doc Duvalier's regime had just killed one of his journalist colleagues. Thirty-three years later, a telephone call informs Dany of his father's death in New York. Windsor Laferriere had fled Haiti in the 1960s, fearing persecution for his political activities. After the funeral, Dany plans to return his father to Baraderes, the village in Haiti where he was born. It is not the body he will take, but the spirit.

Content Warning: Mentions of Colonial Destruction and Rape.