MontréaLisons: Nicholas Dawson’s top-four reads
Nicholas Dawson is a writer, researcher and literary director of Triptych Publishing. He recommends four books that encourage dialogue on inclusion and the fight against racism and discrimination.
His top-four reads
Les enragé·e·s, by Valérie Bah
Éditions du Remue-ménage, 2021
This collection of short stories presents a series of women who, despite experiencing marginalization, racism and humiliation, reject cynicism outright. In what way? By cobbling together a language, a joy and solidarity that allow them to belong fully to a world that too often excludes them.
An Arab Melancholia, by Abdellah Taïa
Semiotexte, 2012
Through three experiences at the crossroads of death and love, the author takes us on his wanderings through North Africa and Europe. The encounters, as ephemeral as they are striking, reveal the plurality and complexity of Arabness, beyond the exoticizing, orientalist and xenophobic clichés.
This Wound is a World, by Billy-Ray Belcourt
Frontenac House Poetry, 2017
This book describes the wounds caused by the violence inflicted on indigenous peoples and queer people; violence that also causes self-hatred. The author prompts readers to not only observe these wounds, but also to caress them, to make them the material of a healing queer eroticism as an indispensable tool for decolonial struggles.
Là où je me terre, by Caroline Dawson
Éditions du Remue-ménage, 2020
This book tells the story of our family’s immigration, from the perspective of little Caro, my older sister. Through the integration of the host country, Caroline proposes a clear feminist project: She ensures that the characters of immigrant women raised in poverty, like our mother, who are so numerous in real life, are more present in the grand narrative of Québec literature.
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