What We All Long For

I have been in the sourest of sour moods this week, for a variety of reasons with which I won’t bore you. As much as I want to post a caveat on my blog for everyone to Please Leave Me Alone Until Further Notice, I’m going to try and snap out of the sour mood by posting about something that makes me happy: BOOKS!

Mocha Momma’s recent posts on “Books I Love” have inspired me to write a little about the books *I* love, and why I love them. Sort of hard to think where to start, since the ones that have touched me are not necessarily on the banned book list (it being Banned Book Week!), but are just ones that stuck. By “stuck”, I mean they’re the books that seeped into my skin and my brain and changed me on a deep and personal level. The ones that changed the way I perceive life and people, the ones that gave me feelings I couldn’t shake for days, the ones that woke me up to something profound. The ones I can read forty times and still get something new out of them. I’m pleased to say that a lot of the authors of these books are Canadian. There seems to be something intrinsically dark in these authors, which I suspect comes from the landscape and the winters up here. I think Canadians have that ability to tap into that emotional wasteland of “winter survival mode” when it’s -30 Celcius and dark for 18 hours of the day. The “move forward, because if you stop you’ll freeze to death” attitude. Sort of like Russian authors, I suppose, but different. Somehow, Canadian, eh? ;)

Dionne Brand “What We All Long For”

I was introduced to Dionne Brand’s writing in my first year of University by my Detective Fiction prof. Brand has nothing to do with Detective Fiction, so I’m not sure how this happened? I believe the prof just recommended her to me. At any rate, upon reading a book of her poetry, “Land to Light On”, I was hooked, shaken, breathless by the end. Last year I finally had a chance to go to a reading of hers at Wordfest, and gained an even greater appreciation for her lyrical artistry. I ordered “What We All Long For” in the Spring and it arrived just in time for The Great Chicken Pox Episode of 2006. Good thing I had a week off, because I could NOT put this book down.

The book takes place in Toronto and follows the lives of four friends in their early twenties, as well as a man who was separated from his family as a young child during a flee to freedom. The characters are so rich in their flaws, so emotionally bold and so real that their experiences cut away at you. Brand’s writing is beautiful and tragic, strong, challenging, aching. One of the characters, a young artist, creates an art installment to document what people long for. The theme is rich and destitute, connecting everyone through their desires. What do you long for?

This is one of those books that I want to share with everyone (guess what you’re getting for Christmas?? Heehee) because it’s so relatable. It displays longing as one of those cross-cultural, cross-generational strings that inadvertently tie us together as “humans”, no matter how hard we strike out at each other and ourselves. At times like these, I wish I was a movie director, because I can visualize this book SO clearly, and I want people to KNOW it and read it and feel it like I did, because I think it’s that important.

More books as the week progresses,
Much Love,
~g~