Reading of SKY Lee's Disappearing Moon Café and Denise Chong's

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Reading of SKY Lee's Disappearing Moon Café and Denise Chong's Disrupting the National Frame: A Postcolonial, Diasporic (Re)Reading of SKY Lee’s Disappearing Moon Café and Denise Chong’s The Concubine’s Children Lindsay Diehl University of British Columbia ince its emergence in the 1980s and 1890s, Asian Canadian Stud- Sies has gained recognition as a field of inquiry that could mount a wide- ranging and radical critique of mainstream Canadian history, society, and culture. Originally inspired by the rights-based movements of the 1960s and 1970s, Asian Canadian Studies grew out of community level activism against race and class oppression (Lai 1). Its principal modality has been to construct a “collective self,” or Asian Canadian identity, through which to challenge the representation of Asians as perpetual outsiders or aliens and to rewrite existing Canadian history to acknowledge such racist state policies as the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Japanese Canadian Internment, and the Komagata Maru Incident (Chao 18). In this way, the field has historically unfolded within a nationalist framework, locating the nation- state as the primary interlocutor of the Asian/alien body in Canada and taking up a kind of “strategic essentialism” (Lai 5). Nonetheless, as the field increasingly becomes drawn into the academy, critics have noted some possible limitations of this framework. One such limitation is that the focus on domestic identity politics, and the promotion of citizenship and national belonging as political goals, runs the risk of reinforcing a reduc- tive pluralism which cannot “shake up the systemic historical conditions ESC 42.3–4 (September/December 2016): 99–118 and … ideologies of normativity that have produced racialized subjects and minoritized cultures” (Kamboureli 64). In exploring ways to expand on the Canadian national frame, Lily Cho Lindsay Diehl is has posited that Asian Canadian Studies could be situated more clearly completing a doctorate within a postcolonial, diasporic paradigm. Such a paradigm, she contends, at the University of could generate insights into how the construction of Asian-ness in Canada British Columbia, is deeply connected to Asian-ness elsewhere (188). Indeed, Cho points Okanagan campus. Her out that there is a need to “think about the formation of the Canadian sshrc-funded research state through imperialism and colonialism” and to see Asian Canadian examines Chinese history within a wider, global context of capital and labour migration (188). Canadian literature from Focusing specifically on Chinese Canadian communities, Cho illustrates a postcolonial critical how a “diasporic perspective” can highlight the links between Chinese perspective, engaging migration and British imperialism (186). That is, a diasporic perspective with debates about can consider how early Chinese immigrants to Canada came from South Canadian nationalism, China, where the Opium Wars “had disrupted the local economy [and] settler colonialism, and provid[ed] much of the push for emigration” (Stanley 56). Furthermore, transnationalism. She it can stress how many of these immigrants were indentured workers, has published articles in imported via the coolie trade which burgeoned in British Hong Kong after Postcolonial Text and the Atlantic slave trade went into decline (Peter Li 20). Importantly, then, a Rupkatha. postcolonial, diasporic paradigm can productively complicate the history of Asian Canadians by acknowledging that this history is not only shaped in the Canadian context; rather, it is part of a larger history of imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism. If Cho’s arguments gesture to the benefits of a global, historical, and comparative framework, Larissa Lai’s book, Slanting I, Imagining We, emphasizes the perils of relying too heavily on a fixed notion of Asian Canadian identity. Lai argues that the tactic of strategic essentialism has become seriously problematic due to the pressures of “state incorpora- tion” currently informing Asian Canadian Studies (6). Underlying these pressures is an investment in liberal multiculturalism that reinforces static notions of racial and national difference and works to “recirculate the logic of colonialism in newly embodied forms” (23). This logic becomes all the more insidious in a post-9/11 Canada, where narratives of citizenship, nationalism, and security have become intertwined in ways that repro- duce Orientalist images of Others as unassimilable and anti-democratic foreigners. As Lai points out, the 2010 Maclean’s article entitled “Too Asian” suggests that “the trope of the ‘yellow peril’ ” has been reinvigorated in the national imaginary (Lai 17). The article, which proposes that “white students” feel intimidated by the perceived work ethic of “both Asian Canadians and international students” (Findlay and Köhler 76), not only 100 | Diehl presents a homogenizing construction of Asian-ness but positions it as external to national belonging. Indeed, since the article portrays Canadian- born and newly-arrived Asians as uniformly making “sacrifice[s] of time and freedom [that ‘whites’ are] not willing to make” (76), it exposes a colonial-era East–West binarism that continues to underlie normative conceptions of Canadian identity. In response to the conditions of a post-9/11 Canada, I propose that the politics of reading presented in my article is particularly important. I examine two canonical Chinese Canadian texts—SKY Lee’s Disappearing Moon Café and Denise Chong’s The Concubine’s Children—from a post- colonial, diasporic perspective. Although these two writers are commonly discussed in Asian Canadian Studies, the theoretical approach to their texts is frequently framed by implicit oppositions that privilege a modern Canada over a traditional China. This approach takes its cues from an identifiable plot structure that not only appears in these two texts but in women’s texts more generally in the 1980s and 1990s (Bow 71). As Leslie Bow explains, the recuperative model of feminist criticism, which was influential at that time, promoted the “belief that to restore the gendered … subject’s voice is to restore … her worth” (71). The narrative depiction of a “subject’s movement from silence to voice with a future-oriented, salutary effect on a succeeding generation” was hence a common orga- nizing structure in women’s writing (71). The problem with this structure, however, is that its underlying progressivism requires “women’s oppression to assume an air of pastness” (72). Moreover, when this structure inter- acts with stories of first-generation immigrants and their Western-raised children, it can reify East–West distinctions by projecting Orientalized difference onto the parents and by linking the children’s acculturation with increased freedom and autonomy. That is, it can position the East as backward, repressive, and “excessively genderist,” while also equat- ing the West with modernization, liberty, and self-fulfilment (72). Critics have thus tended to read Disappearing Moon Café and The Concubine’s Children in ways that harmonize the depiction of generational struggles with dominant narratives of Canada’s liberal progressivism. For instance, Mari Peepre comments that the daughter-narrators of these novels are caught between two disparate “realities”—they are “pulled back in time” by the “the extremely oppressive patriarchal rule” of their immigrant- mother’s culture, and “pulled forward … by the seemingly liberal and egalitarian values … of their North American host culture” (81 emphasis added). Likewise, Lien Chao suggests that the novels signal a “coming to voice” of Chinese Canadian women, who have found the courage not Disrupting the National Frame | 101 only to confront the “century-long” history of racism in Canada but also to challenge the “sexism” of “traditional male-oriented Chinese culture” (17, 29). Partly because of their feminist narrative structures, therefore, these novels have been interpreted as expressing a progressive notion of history, one that does not necessarily contest idealistic notions of Canada’s multiculturalism or the colonial binaries of East and West. To be sure, critics such as Roy Miki have observed that one of the reasons these novels have received so much critical attention and “insti- tutional approval” is because they emulate “a genealogical form that mirror[s] the nation’s generational history” (230). Nonetheless, my article calls attention to moments in the novels where the daughter-narrators create distance from, and thus complicate, the underlying feminist devel- opmental structure of the narrative. I argue that these moments destabilize the apparent authority and transparency of the third-person presentation of the family stories, by clarifying that these stories are told from a West- ernized, subjective, and historically-situated perspective. More specifically, these moments foreground the blind-spots, interests, and motivations of the daughter-narrators, undermining the idea that the family stories are complete or accurate and creating openings for intervening dialogue. Therefore, by viewing these novels from a postcolonial, diasporic perspec- tive, my article seeks to shift the focus away from the daughter-narrators’ apparent search for “a new sense of integrated [Chinese-Canadian] iden- tity” (Peepre 80). As my reading hopes to illustrate, it is possible and necessary to place emphasis on the textual moments of ambivalence and elision—moments which generate questions and insights that go beyond the overtly national paradigm the novels appear to uphold. A postcolonial, diasporic
Recommended publications
  • 1967 to 2017 CANADA TRANSFORMED
    FALL / WINTER 2017 1967 to 2017 CANADA TRANSFORMED RANDY BOSWELL DOMINIQUE CLÉMENT VICTOR RABINOVITCH KEN MCGOOGAN NELSON WISEMAN JACK BUMSTED VERONICA STRONG-BOAG JEAN-PHILIPPE WARREN JACK JEDWAB TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 INTRODUCTION MILESTONES, LEGACIES AND A HALF-CENTURY OF CHANGE Randy Boswell 7 HOW CANADIAN BOOMERS SPIRITED THE SIXTIES INTO THE 21ST CENTURY Ken McGoogan 11 “SHE NAMED IT CANADA BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT IT WAS CALLED”: LANGUAGE AND JUSTICE IN CANADA 2017+ Veronica Strong-Boag 15 CANADA’S RIGHTS CULTURE: FIFTY YEARS LATER Dominique Clément 20 AN EVER-CHANGING FACE AND IDENTITY Nelson Wiseman 24 AN UNEXPECTED CANADA Jean-Philippe Warren 28 50 YEARS OF CANADIAN CULTURE: THE ROOTS OF OUR MODEL AND THE BIG, NEW THREAT Victor Rabinovitch 33 HAS THE COUNTRY REALLY CHANGED ALL THAT MUCH IN THE PAST 50 YEARS? Jack Bumsted 36 VIVE LE QUÉBEC LIBRE @ 50: THE RISE AND DECLINE OF QUÉBEC’S INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT, 1967-2017 Jack Jedwab CANADIAN ISSUES IS PUBLISHED BY ASSOCIATION FOR CANADIAN STUDIES BOARD OF DIRECTORS Canadian Issues is a quarterly publication of the Association Elected November 3, 2017 for Canadian Studies (ACS). It is distributed free of charge to individual and institutional members of the ACS. Canadian CELINE COOPER Montréal, Québec, Chairperson of the Board of Directors, Issues is a bilingual publication. All material prepared by Columnist at the Montréal Gazette, PhD Candidate, the ACS is published in both French and English. All other OISE/University of Toronto articles are published in the language in which they are written. Opinions expressed in articles are those of the authors THE HONOURABLE HERBERT MARX and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the ACS.
    [Show full text]
  • Susan Swan: Michael Crummey's Fictional Truth
    Susan Swan: Michael Crummey’s fictional truth $6.50 Vol. 27, No. 1 January/February 2019 DAVID M. MALONE A Bridge Too Far Why Canada has been reluctant to engage with China ALSO IN THIS ISSUE CAROL GOAR on solutions to homelessness MURRAY BREWSTER on the photographers of war PLUS Brian Stewart, Suanne Kelman & Judy Fong Bates Publications Mail Agreement #40032362. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to LRC, Circulation Dept. PO Box 8, Station K, Toronto, ON M4P 2G1 New from University of Toronto Press “Illuminating and interesting, this collection is a much- needed contribution to the study of Canadian women in medicine today.” –Allyn Walsh McMaster University “Provides remarkable insight “Robyn Lee critiques prevailing “Emilia Nielsen impressively draws into how public policy is made, discourses to provide a thought- on, and enters in dialogue with, a contested, and evolves when there provoking and timely discussion wide range of recent scholarship are multiple layers of authority in a surrounding cultural politics.” addressing illness narratives and federation like Canada.” challenging mainstream breast – Rhonda M. Shaw cancer culture.” –Robert Schertzer Victoria University of Wellington University of Toronto Scarborough –Stella Bolaki University of Kent utorontopress.com Literary Review of Canada 340 King Street East, 2nd Floor Toronto, ON M5A 1K8 email: [email protected] Charitable number: 848431490RR0001 To donate, visit reviewcanada.ca/ support Vol. 27, No. 1 • January/February 2019 EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Murray Campbell (interim) Kyle Wyatt (incoming) [email protected] 3 The Tools of Engagement 21 Being on Fire ART DIRECTOR Kyle Wyatt, Incoming Editor-in-Chief A poem Rachel Tennenhouse Nicholas Bradley ASSISTANT EDITOR 4 Invisible Canadians Elaine Anselmi How can you live decades with someone 22 In the Company of War POETRY EDITOR and know nothing about him? Portraits from behind the lens of Moira MacDougall Finding Mr.
    [Show full text]
  • An Official Publication of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English Volume 42 Issue 3–4 Septe
    esc An official publication of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English Volume 42 Issue 3–4 September/December 2016 English Studies in Canada Volume 42 Issue 3–4 September/December 2016 Readers’ Forum: Proliferation 1 Cecily Devereux Introduction: A Large Number of Something: Proliferation, Now 7 A. C. Facundo Proliferations of Omniscience 10 Jason Haslam Proliferation’s Ends 15 Maureen Engel The Space of Simultaneity 18 Rachelle Ann Tan Tinderization of the Academy 22 Linda Quirk Proliferating Ephemera in Print and Digital Media 25 Christian Bök Virtually Nontoxic Articles Vigilance, Rebellion, Ethics 27 Sarah Banting If What We Do Matters: Motives of Research in Canadian Literature Scholarship 65 Erika Behrisch Elce “Dyin’ ain’t much of a livin’ ”: The Ethics of Rebellion in The Outlaw Josey Wales Against the National Grain 81 Karina Vernon To the End of the Hyphen-Nation: Decolonizing Multiculturalism 99 Lindsay Diehl Disrupting the National Frame: A Postcolonial, Diasporic (Re)Reading of SKY Lee’s Disappearing Moon Café and Denise Chong’s The Concubine’s Children Passionate Uncertainties 119 James McAdams “I did a nice thing”: David Foster Wallace and the Gift Economy 135 Gregory Alan Phipps Breaking Down Creative Democracy: A Pragmatist Reading of Race and Gender in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand Interview 159 Caitlin McIntyre and Dana Medoro Spokesvultures for Ecological Awareness: An Interview with Timothy Morton Reviews 175 Benjamin Authers reviews Anne Quéma’s Power and Legitimacy: Law, Culture, and Literature
    [Show full text]
  • Download on the Website Playbacktheatre.Org
    YELLOW EARTH AND FUTURE GENERATION: CORRELATIONS IN BRITISH EAST ASIAN AND ASIAN CANADIAN DRAMA by PARIE PUI YEE LEUNG B.A. (Hons.)., National University of Singapore, 2004 M.A., The University of British Columbia, 2007 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Theatre) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) October 2015 © Parie Pui Yee Leung, 2015 Abstract Since 1995 and 2002, London’s Yellow Earth Theatre (YET) and Toronto’s fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre Company have been producing work under the identity labels of “British East Asian theatre” and “Asian Canadian theatre” respectively. Emerging out of different socio-cultural contexts, the companies have nonetheless produced plays that address similar themes around mixed-race identities, immigration, and the experiences of first- and second- generation East Asians living in Britain and Canada. Despite burgeoning research on Asian Canadian theatre and British Chinese culture—developments that echo the pioneering directions of Asian American theatre scholarship—studies have tended to focus exclusively on cultural work produced by East Asian artists within the national boundaries of America, Canada and Australia. Inspired by two emotionally charged events that I attended in Toronto and in London that drew attention to the parallels between ethno-national theatre produced in different western cultures, this thesis investigates the background, mandates, and key works of two leading theatre companies in order to compare their dramatic strategies. Using data from published and unpublished scripts, published reviews and interviews, archival video where available, and the companies’ press and public material through their websites, this thesis argues that comparing theatre companies across ethno-national contexts can reveal insights about how familiar dramatic strategies such as the absurd, fantastical, spectral, and audience interaction, have additional import in identity-centred work.
    [Show full text]
  • Embracing Change: National Arts Centre 2019-2020 Annual Report
    Zéro Mani Soleymanlou Role Photo © Xavier Inchauspé The National Arts Centre (NAC) is Canada’s bilingual, multi-disciplinary home for the performing arts. The NAC presents, creates, produces and co-produces performing arts programming in various streams — the NAC Orchestra, Dance, English Theatre, French Theatre, Indigenous Theatre, and Popular Music and Variety — and nurtures the next generation of audiences and artists from across Canada. The NAC is located in the National Capital Region on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation Mandate The NAC is governed by the National Arts Centre Act, which defines its mandate as follows: to operate and maintain the Centre; to develop the performing arts in the National Capital Region; and to assist the Canada Council for the Arts in the development of the performing arts elsewhere in Canada. Accountability and Funding As a Crown Corporation, the NAC reports to Parliament through the Minister of Canadian Heritage. Of the NAC’s total revenue, less than half is derived from an annual Parliamentary appropriation, while more than half comes from earned revenue — box office sales, food and beverage services, parking services and hall rentals – and from the NAC Foundation. Each year, the Minister of Canadian Heritage tables the NAC annual report in Parliament. The Auditor General of Canada is the NAC’s external auditor. Embracing Structure A Board of Trustees consisting of 10 members from across Canada, chaired by Adrian Burns, Change oversees the NAC. The President and CEO is Christopher Deacon. The creative leadership team is composed of Heather Gibson (Popular Music and Variety), Brigitte Haentjens (French Theatre), Jillian Keiley (English Theatre), Kenton Leier (Executive Chef), Cathy Levy (Dance), Kevin Loring (Indigenous Theatre), Heather Moore (National Creation Fund) and Alexander Shelley (NAC Orchestra).
    [Show full text]
  • Westwood Creative Artists ______
    Westwood Creative Artists ___________________________________________ FRANKFURT CATALOGUE Fall 2018 INTERNATIONAL RIGHTS Director: Carolyn Forde Associate: Meg Wheeler AGENTS Carolyn Forde Jackie Kaiser Michael A. Levine Hilary McMahon John Pearce Bruce Westwood FILM & TELEVISION Michael A. Levine 386 Huron Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2G6 Canada Phone: (416) 964-3302 ext. 223 & 233 E-mail: [email protected] & [email protected] Website: www.wcaltd.com Table of Contents News from Westwood Creative Artists page 3 – 5 Recent sales page 6 – 7 Fiction Nicole Lundrigan, Hideaway page 10 Raziel Reid, Kens page 11 Alisa Smith, Doublespeak page 12 M.G. Vassanji, A Delhi Obsession page 13 Non-Fiction Sarah Berman, Don’t Call It a Cult page 16 Erin Davis, Mourning Has Broken page 17 Gail Gallant, The Changeling page 18 Don Gillmor, To The River page 19 Stephen J. Harper, Right Here, Right Now page 20 Thomas Homer-Dixon, Commanding Hope page 21 Darren McLeod, Mamaskatch page 22 Tessa McWatt, Shame on Me page 23 Ailsa Ross, The Woman Who Rode a Shark page 24 Poetry Najwa Zebian, The Nectar of Pain page 26 Titles of Special Note Karma Brown, Recipe for a Perfect Wife page 28 Kim Fu, The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore page 29 Thomas King, The Dreadfulwater series page 30 – 31 Manjushree Thapa, All of Us In Our Own Lives page 32 Richard Wagamese, Starlight page 33 Mark Abley, Watch Your Tongue page 34 Darrell Bricker & John Ibbitson, Empty Planet page 35 David Chariandy, I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You page 36 Rae Congdon, GAYBCs page 37 B.
    [Show full text]
  • S:\CAB\Finding Aids\Political and Social Heritage Division\1900
    FONDS DU TRÈS HONORABLE PIERRE ELLIOTT TRUDEAU THE RT. HON. PIERRE ELLIOTT TRUDEAU FONDS MG 26 O 19 Instrument de recherche no 1900 \ Finding Aid No. 1900 SÉRIE DU PERSONNEL STAFF SERIES 1968-1984 Préparé par la Section des archives Prepared by the Political Archives Section, politiques, Division des manuscrits Manuscript Division TABLE DES MATIÈRES/TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ........................................................... ii SUB-SERIES ............................................................... ii -Volumes 1-11: Gordon Ashworth 1983-1984 ................................ ii -Volumes 12-26: Tom Axworthy 1976-1984 ................................. ii -Volumes 27-36: Denise Chong 1982-1984 .................................. ii -Volumes 37-46:David Crenna 1981-1984 ................................... ii -Volumes 47-50:Gilles Dufault 1971-1976 ................................... iii -Volumes 51-75, 283-286 (Electronic Records): Michael Langill 1981-1984 ........ iii -Volumes 76-83: Peter Larsen 1981-1984 .................................... iii -Volumes 84-87: Robert Pace 1982-1984 .................................... iv -Volumes 88-96: Florence Ievers 1982-1984 ................................. iv -Volumes 97-114: Heather Peterson 1982-1984 ............................... iv -Volumes 115-134: Geoffrey O’Brien 1980-1981 ..............................v -Volumes 135-159: Ivan Head 1968-1978 ....................................v -Volumes 160-186: Ted Johnson 1980-1984 ...................................v -Volumes 187-188:
    [Show full text]
  • Perley. Lecturevi
    PERLEY. LECTUREVI Bhat Boy Bhat Boy was born in London, England somewhere in the latter half of the 20th Century. He immigrated to Canada on a steam ship in 1966, and became a naturalized Canadian and grew up in the Nation's Capital with his parents - a cleaning lady and a spy. After a sojourn in Europe in the 80’s too colourful to describe to gallery goers, Bhat Boy returned to Canada to attend the Ontario College of Art disguised as mild mannered Ian Van Lock. His studies included a year in Florence, Italy, where he learnt the technique of the masters. Bhat Boy spends much of his time traveling about with his paintings, selling work in Canada, the United States and Europe. He has had shows in Florence, Toronto, San Francisco, London, New York, Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Ottawa. His work can be found on every continent but Antarctica. Bhat Boy's time is divided between the Nation's Capital where he has executed several public commissions and is founder of "Art in the Park" (an annual arts festival), and London, where pursues his professional carrer. He is an internationally renowned artist, and refers to himself and his work as an Envisionist. Bhat Boy is well known as a community activist and organizer in Ottawa. He has been an active member of the International Society of Art of the Imagination, since 1991. He continues to live and work in Canada’s National Capital. His hobbies include drinking tea, and drawing maps. “Simply Ottawa” series by Jay Anderson, which draws people into scenes with familiar Ottawa landmarks, such as the Champlain Lookout, the Rideau River, Hog’s Back Falls, and Chinatown Stephen Hutchings Stephen Hutchings lives in Ottawa.
    [Show full text]
  • Diaspora and Modernity: the Postethnic Ethos in Denise Chong's
    Diaspora and Modernity: The Postethnic Ethos in Denise Chong’s The Concubine’s Children Smaro Kamboureli University of Guelph Modernity and diaspora have different genealogies, but their ideological, social, and cultural trajectories often converge in significant ways. The social and economic progress that is fundamental to the project of modernity shares the same impetus behind the cross-national mobility characterizing diaspora. Whether they belong in, to use Arjun Appadurai’s terms, “diasporas of hope, diasporas of terror, [or] diasporas of despair” (6), diasporic subjects are impelled to move away from their communities and families by the desire—indeed the need—to improve their living conditions, and help ameliorate the conditions of those staying at home. But the dream of progress at the heart of diaspora does not necessarily emerge from the same philosophical and value systems informing modernity. Diasporic movements are inflected by their distinct geopolitical particularities. Nevertheless, because most diasporic movements see the West as their destination, and because the circumstances that necessitate migration may share a complex relationship with the West’s colonial, political, and economic impact on the mother nation-states, the emancipatory agenda of modernity is often inscribed in the aspirations typifying diaspora. The Enlightenment’s universal principles that determined the course of Western progress translated modernity into a project of, what we may call today, transnational aspirations and objectives. Since its inception, then, modernity has been synonymous with modernization at cross-national levels, a project that saw hegemonic practices and the export of political systems and technological advancements imbricated in each other. This is precisely 363 New Challenges in Language and Literature, FALE/UFMG, 2009.
    [Show full text]
  • Westwood 140764
    Westwood Creative Artists ___________________________________________ FRANKFURT CATALOGUE Fall 2015 INTERNATIONAL RIGHTS Carolyn Forde AGENTS Carolyn Forde Jackie Kaiser Michael A. Levine Linda McKnight Hilary McMahon John Pearce Bruce Westwood FILM & TELEVISION Michael A. Levine 94 Harbord Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1G6 Canada Phone: (416) 964-3302 ext. 223 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.wcaltd.com October 2015 Westwood Creative Artists is looking forward to another phenomenal year of bringing exceptional writers and their works to an international audience. To that end, I would like to draw your attention to some of the outstanding accomplishments and developments that have taken place for our authors over the last few months: Clifford Jackman’s debut, The Winter Family, has been longlisted for the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Published by Doubleday in the US, Heyne in Germany and a “New Face of Fiction” for Random House Canada, The Winter Family was called “sadistic but mesmerizing” by The New York Times Book Review, a “chilling tale” by Publishers’ Weekly, and “a philosophical spaghetti western that doesn’t stint on the tomato sauce, served up with flair” by Quill & Quire. Reviewers have repeatedly put Jackman in the company of Cormac McCarthy and James Carlos Blake, and Amazon chose The Winter Family as a Best Mystery/Thriller/Suspense for the Month of April 2015. Chris Gerolmo, seven- time Academy Award nominated screenwriter of ‘Mississippi Burning’ is writing the film adaptation of The Winter Family. Giller Prize-winner Elizabeth Hay is back and at the top of her game with an irresistible new novel, His Whole Life.
    [Show full text]
  • Westwood 140764
    Westwood Creative Artists ___________________________________________ LONDON CATALOGUE Spring 2020 INTERNATIONAL RIGHTS Director: Meg Wheeler AGENTS Chris Casuccio Jackie Kaiser Michael A. Levine Hilary McMahon John Pearce Bruce Westwood Meg Wheeler FILM & TELEVISION Michael A. Levine 386 Huron Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2G6 Canada Phone: (416) 964-3302 ext. 233 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.wcaltd.com Table of Contents News from Westwood Creative Artists page 2 – 4 Recent sales page 5 – 6 Fiction Caroline Adderson, A Russian Sister page 9 Glenn Dixon, Bootleg Stardust page 10 Zsuzsi Gartner, The Beguiling page 11 Frances Itani, The Company We Keep page 12 Thomas King, Indians on Vacation page 13 Annabel Lyon, Consent page 14 Damhnait Monaghan, New Girl in Little Cove page 15 Non-fiction Stephen Bown, The Company page 17 Allan Levine, Details Are Unprintable page 18 Keith Maillard, Fatherless page 19 Rahaf Mohammed, Rebel page 20 Michael Posner, Leonard Cohen page 21 Titles of Special Note Keith Ross Leckie, Cursed! page 23 Kathryn Nicolai, Nothing Much Happens page 24 Sara O’Leary, The Ghost in the House page 25 Madhur Anand, This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart page 26 Tara Henley, Lean Out page 27 Thomas Homer-Dixon, Commanding Hope page 28 Bruce Kirkby, Blue Sky Kingdom page 29 Liz Levine, Nobody Ever Talks About Anything But the End page 30 Selected client list page 31 Co-agents page 32 March 2020 Welcome to Westwood Creative Artists’ Spring 2020 catalogue! We’re looking forward to another year of bringing exceptional writers and their works to an international audience.
    [Show full text]
  • TOUR the GARDENS of OLD OTTAWA SOUTH by SUSAN LEAH Mark Saturday, July 22 on the Existing Structures
    THE OTTAWA SOUTH COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION REVIEW VOL. 27 No.9 OUR 20TH YEAR MAY 1995 TOUR THE GARDENS OF OLD OTTAWA SOUTH BY SUSAN LEAH Mark Saturday, July 22 on the existing structures. Several included calendar as the day you newly created ponds. Most were works wander through some of the in progress, because when is a garden garden gates of Old Ottawa South. ever finished? Last year's tour, organized by I am now compiling the list of OSCA, was voted a great success by gardens to be opened for the tour and those who chanced the rain showers invite any of you with a special feature and ventured forth with umbrellas and to show off, a successful bed that this tour maps. year may be at its peak, some new OSCA hopes to repeat its success landscaping, an urban farm plot or in July this year, and to be equally anything else you'd like to share with lucky with the weather, although we'll fellow enthusiasts, to call me at have Sunday as the rain date. 730-5347 or Deidre at the Firehall, Last year's visitors particularly 247-4872. enjoyed being able to chat with the We will be selling the tour maps, creators and tenders of the gardens and your entry ticket to the gardens, at The to discuss different plants and garden Old Firehall from 12.30pm. on features, how to overcome design Saturday, July 22. Cost is $10 per problems or what to grow in shady and person, of which 10% will be donated sunny spots.
    [Show full text]