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AFTERWORD Atlantic Books Today
ATLANTIC CANADIAN
MUST-READS Six local book experts select a personal favourite
SONG OF RITA JOE: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A MI’KMAQ POET
Rita Joe Breton Books
Often called the poet laureate of the Mi’kmaq people, Rita Joe writes with such simplicity, honesty, and kindness, that she has made me cry. A residential school survivor who lost her mother as a child, she tells her life story with a directness that can’t help but teach you something. She wrote poetry, she said, hoping she would inspire others to write. “My greatest wish is that there will be more writing from my people, and that our children will read it. I have said again and again that our history would be different if it had been expressed by us.” —Allison Lawlor is the author of six books of nonfiction including Broken Pieces, which was nominated for a 2019 Silver Birch Award by the Ontario Library Association and a 2019-2020 Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award. THE COLONY OF UNREQUITED DREAMS
Wayne Johnston Penguin Random House
After much deliberation and being forced to pick only one, I have to say Wayne Johnston’s The Colony of Unrequited Dreams is my favourite Atlantic book. As a fictional account of an infamous nonfiction character (NL Premier and “Father of Confederation” Joey Smallwood), this book is an epic that canvasses a lifetime of hopes, ambitions and grievous mistakes. The manner in which it combines beauty, darkness and wickedly sharp humour has stuck with me for years. —Bridget Canning is the award-winning author of The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes and Some People’s Children. Her first novel was a finalist for the BMO Winterset Award and was nominated for the 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award. GENERATIONS RE-MERGING
Shalan Joudry Gaspereau Press
Shalan Joudry artfully explores the poetic relationships between generations—Mi’kmaw ancestry, identity, parenthood and traditional teachings. In Generations Re-merging, she draws as much from the landscape as her Elders, as her poems carry a specific vernacular that embraces life, loss and love, endurance and beauty, social and ecological shifts. —Shannon Webb-Campbell is a mixed-Indigenous (Mi’kmaq) settler poet, writer and critic. She is the author of three books, including Still No Word (Breakwater Books). THE INNOCENTS
Michael Crummey Penguin Random House
This is such a painfully tough question, to choose my favourite Atlantic Canadian book. My choice … it is a toss-up, between Lisa Moore’s Something for Everyone, Joan Clark’s An Audience of Chairs and Michael Crummey’s The Innocents. But I have to say … Crummey’s book is my most favourite. The Innocents is a masterpiece that marries language and content in an epic tale that NUMBER 92 | FALL 2020
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