CBC Books recommends these titles in their Winter Reading List for 2021!
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Saga Boy: My Life of Blackness and Becoming
by Antonio Michael Downing
Musician and writer Antonio Michael Downing shares his story in this memoir. Downing was born in Trinidad and raised there by his grandmother until he was 11 years old — after she dies, he is sent to rural Ontario to live with a strict aunt. There, Downing and his brother are the only Black kids in town. Creative and inquisitive, Downing tries to find himself and escape his difficult home life by imagining different personas. But when he hits rock bottom, and finds himself in jail, he knows it is time to build a life for himself for real, and to embrace his heritage instead of trying to escape it.
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Love After the End: an Anthology of Two-spirit & Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction
by Joshua Whitehead
"A bold and breathtaking anthology of queer Indigenous speculative fiction, edited by the author of Jonny Appleseed. This exciting and groundbreaking fiction anthology showcases a number of new and emerging 2SQ (Two-Spirit and queer) Indigenous writers from across Turtle Island. These visionary authors show how queer Indigenous communities can bloom and thrive through utopian narratives that detail the vivacity and strength of 2SQness throughout its plight in the maw of settler colonialism's histories"
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Happy Hour
by Marlowe Granados
It's the summer of 2013, and while New York swelters Isa and Gala scrape and hustle to get by. Among a rotating cast of artists, academics, and bad-mannered grifters, they discover that desires aren't for denying. But as money gets sparse and circumstances grow precarious, the pair struggle to convert social capital into something more tangible.
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Home Body
by Rupi Kaur
"Rupi Kaur constantly embraces growth, and in home body, she walks readers through a reflective and intimate journey visiting the past, the present, and the potential of the self. Home Body is a collection of raw, honest conversations with oneself - reminding readers to fill up on love, acceptance, community, family, and embrace change. Illustrated by the author, themes of nature and nurture, light and dark, rest here"
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Willie: The Game-Changing Story of the NHL's First Black Player
by Willie O'Ree
In 1958, Willie O'Ree stepped on the ice for the Boston Bruins, becoming the first Black player to play in the NHL. For the next 20 years, he would continue to play, facing racist taunts from fans and fellow players. After he retired from playing, he would build an even bigger legacy as an advocate for diversity in sport, helping more than 40,000 kids discover the game he loved. "Willie", a memoir written with journalist Michael McKinley, looks back on O'Ree's life, legacy and career.
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Gutter Child
by Jael Richardson
"Gutter Child" is about a young girl growing up in a world divided: the Mainland, where people of privilege live, and the Gutter, a police state where the most vulnerable reside. A social experiment results in 100 babies born in the Gutter being raised in the Mainland. One of those babies is Elimina Dubois. But when Elimina's Mainland mother dies, she is sent to an academy with rules and a way of life Elimina doesn't understand. (CBC Books)
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The Smallest Lights in the Universe: a Memoir
by Sara Seager
"In this luminous memoir, an MIT astrophysicist must reinvent herself in the wake of tragedy and discovers the power of connection on this planet, even as she searches our galaxy for another Earth. Sara Seager has always been in love with the stars: so many lights in the sky, so much possibility. Now a pioneering planetary scientist, she searches for exoplanets--especially that distant, elusive world that sustains life. But with the unexpected death of Seager's husband, the purpose of her own life becomes hard for her to see. Suddenly, at forty, she is a widow and the single mother of two young boys. For the first time, she feels alone in the universe. As she struggles to navigate her life after loss, Seager takes solace in the alien beauty of exoplanetsand the technical challenges of exploration. At the same time, she discovers earthbound connections that feel every bit as wondrous, when strangers and loved ones alike reach out to her across the space of her grief. Among them are the Widows of Concord,a group of women offering advice on everything from home maintenance to dating, and her beloved sons, Max and Alex. Most unexpected of all, there is another kind of one-in-a-billion match, not in the stars but here at home. Probing and invigoratingly honest, The Smallest Lights in the Universe is its own kind of light in the dark"
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From My Mother's Back: A Journey from Kenya to Canada
by Njoki Wane
Njoki Wane's "From My Mother's Back" takes a look at her childhood living in Kenya where her parents owned a small coffee farm. It explores her African identity and how her upbringing and close relationship with her mother ensured her sense of self as a Black woman.Njoki Wane is a professor at the University of Toronto and a recognized scholar in the areas of Black feminism and African spirituality.
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