Toronto Women's Bookstore
http://www.womensbookstore.com
416-922-8744

1. September TWB Picks
2. New Music
3. New Books

September 2005 TWB Picks: the first five books are 25% off during the month of September

Smoke by Elizabeth Ruth. Penguin, $20.00.
From Ten Good Seconds of Silence to Ten Good Stories in Smoke Rings… Elizabeth Ruth returns triumphantly with a tale of two souls, a burned young man and his aging doctor who was once himself a hellion, finding each other in 1950s small town Ontario . Rich with historical detail and fully-realised characters, this is a novel to savour like the last cigarette in the pack, right down to its moving and surprising final pages. Autographed copies are available! Come & hear Elizabeth Ruth read on Thursday September 29th! See www.elizabethruth.com for more details…

The Walking Boy by Lydia Kwan. Key Porter, $32.95. 8th century China . Chang'an, epicentre of the Tang Dynasty. A time and place of imperial magnificence, religious devotion, great artistry. The centre of an empire. Into this rich and complex world, described elegantly by Lydia Kwa, comes Baoshi, raised in a mountain shack by a hermit monk who sends his pupil on a quest for a lover from his past. But Baoshi, born both male and female, brings his own secret and his own quest to the corrupt but brilliant life of the palace.

A Short History of Indians in Canada by Thomas King. HarperCollins, $24.95. “The Closer You Get to Canada , the More Things Will Eat Your Horses.” Yep. It's Thomas King, master of the bittersweet, laugh-til-you-cry short story. King's trademark ever so slightly surreal take on being Indian in Canada colours every story, like the walls in “The Colour of Walls” that just have too long a memory (and too sharp a sense of humour) to stay white, however many coats of paint they get.

Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World edited by Robyn Ochs & Sarah E. Rowley. $20.99. Full of resources and resourceful, this collection brings together stories from around the world (including countries with emerging LGBTTQ activist communities such as India , China , Cuba , South Africa , Bulgaria and the Philippines ). Poems, stories, meditations, erotic musings, and calls to action cover everything you ever wanted to know about bisexuality from an inclusive and celebratory perspective. changing, changing by Aracelis Girmay. George Braziller, $28.00.

Every so often a book comes along that's so beautiful, so simple and so startling that it defies simple categorisation. changing, changing is not just a children's book, it's a celebration of childhood, a poem in colour and collage, a story of growing up black and falling in love told in vivid images. Children will love its rich imagination & grown-ups will treasure its gorgeous textures.

September new music

The Soul Truth by Shemekia Copeland. Alligator, $20.00 Sassing up classics and serving up hot new tunes, Shemekia Copeland's voice cuts through the bullshit to reach a ground-shaking, soul-stirring truth. There's a verve in the instrumentation and a knowing warmth in the duets that will have you humming these tunes long after the CD stops playing.

Geronimo by Shannon McNally. EMI, $18.95 Shannon McNally is not one for playing safe. Geronimo strides out boldly into the territory defined by Lucinda Williams and stakes one hell of a claim. The title song confronts the racism of country music, showing up the brutal imperialism that lies behind so many cowboy songs. This is music you can think about while you drive & dance to its rhythms.

September new books

Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on Identity, Institutions, & Imperialism by Vivian Namaste. Women's Press, $24.95
Collecting interviews, articles and new work by dynamic scholar Vivian Namaste, this book offers an exhilarating, readable and challenging intervention into the interrelation of transsexual politics and feminism from a Canadian perspective. Namaste's incisive vision is firmly focussed on activism, education and community. TWB is proud to offer an evening reception/conversation with Dr. Namaste on Thursday September 8th - see http://www.womensbookstore.com/namaste.html for more details.

Critical Issues in Anti-Racist Research Methodologies edited by George J. Sefa Dei and Gurpreet Singh Johal. Peter Lang, $47.25 Emerging from OISE/UT's long, proud history of anti-racist scholarship, this collection serves an excellent dual purpose: it offers a primer to basic questions such as “what is anti-racist methodology?” and pushes the boundaries of the discipline that it defines with a series of thoughtful and diverse case studies addressing important areas such as education, spirituality and being an ally.

Race, Gender, & the Politics of Skin Tone by Margaret L. Hunter. Routledge, $33.50 Hunter offers concrete evidence for the persistence of colorism in North America and beyond, resulting in persistent economic advantage for light-skinned women of colour in all areas of their lives while dark-skinned women are viewed as more authentic members of their own racial/ethnic groups. She offers insights into the changing landscape of race and racism and offers suggestions for making change positive.

Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture by Janell Hobson. Routledge, $33.50 Hobson's book begins with Sara Baartman (the “Hottentot Venus”) and traces her legacy in the representations of black women's sexuality in popular culture from Josephine Baker to dancehall videos, exploring theories of reclamation and redefinition in the work of black women artists while pointing to the consistent trivialisation and sexualisation of contemporary black women such as Janet Jackson and Condoleeza Rice in the mainstream media.

Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens & The Making of Modern America by Mae M. Ngai. Princeton , $26.95 Winner of multiple awards for historical scholarship, Ngai's book traces the origin of the ‘illegal alien' in American legal discourse to the 1920s. She chronicles the exact administrative and juridical architecture that supported the construction of racial and ethnic difference through categories of ‘legal' and ‘illegal' aliens, and the effect of this legislated difference on the racism and isolationism that persists in US national policy.

Obsession with Intent: Violence Against Women by Lee Lakeman. Black Rose, $24.99 Lakeman, who has worked at Vancouver Rape Relief, exposes the systemic willed ignorance and suppression of violence against women at all levels of the Canadian justice system, from 911 operators to political decision-makers. Examining a number of high-profile legal cases, she makes a powerful argument for legal and political change to ensure fair treatment of vulnerable citizens.

The Torment of Others by Val McDermid. HarperCollins, $9.99 Award-winning crime writer McDermid is at the top of her game in this new novel that the Hamilton Spectator called “scary as hell.” Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan faces her toughest case yet as a brutal murderer of sex workers appears to be the copycat of a previous case that almost went badly wrong.

A Map of Glass by Jane Urquhart. McClelland & Stewart, $34.99 Unfolding across two centuries, Jane Urquhart's new novel emerges from her familiar territory: the conversations between women and men about love. Told by Sylvia, a contemporary Toronto woman with a shadowed history, the complexities of Ontario 's recent past inform this meditation on loss, secrets and lies, told through Urquhart's customary startling images and haunting prose.

Minaret by Leila Aboulela. Bloomsbury , $31.95 Najwa grew up in Sudan , a daughter of privilege who partied and studied in ignorance of the politics that send her family into exile and disintegration. Alone and increasingly lonely in London , Najwa educates herself about Sudanese politics and Islam, finding friendship with a women's group at the local mosque and with Tamer, the deeply religious brother of her employer. Told in an utterly compelling and timely first-person voice, this novel stands alongside White Teeth and Small Island as an account of the experience of immigrants of colour in Britain .

26a by Diane Elam. Bond Street Books, $29.95 Growing up mixed-race in 1980s London , identical twins Georgia and Bessi create a magical world of their own in their bedroom, 26a Waifer Avenue , which is part Angela Carter and part Salman Rushdie. Defining their own identities from their English and Nigerian heritage, the Hunter girls - Georgia, Bessi, and their sisters Bel and Kemy - are unforgettable characters whose extraordinary love for one another draws the reader into their world.

The Hunt Ball by Rita Mae Brown. Ballantine Books, $34.95 “Sister” Jane Arnold is one of the most unusual detectives around - no surprise, seeing as she comes from the mind of bestselling author and lesbian heroine Rita Mae Brown. When trouble of the dead bodies kind arises at Custis Hall, an exclusive girls' school, Jane finds herself turning to her assistants - the local animals of the lush Virginia countryside - to find a deadly human predator who may be part of her own foxhunting circles…

Belle Moral: A Natural History by Ann-Marie MacDonald. Playwright's Canada Press, $16.95 Before she burst onto the Canadian fiction scene with Fall On Your Knees, Ann-Marie MacDonald was an acclaimed actor and playwright. Belle Moral: A Natural History (premiered in Toronto in an earlier version, The Arab's Mouth, in 1990) is MacDonald's return to the mythic, slapstick, historical, feminist, unruly, brilliant stagecraft that made her name with Good Night Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet. Belle Moral is a Gothic morality tale from the era of Darwin and Freud - but the moral of the story will surprise and delight!

‘da kink in my hair by trey anthony. Playwrights Canada Press, $15.95 Originally staged at the Toronto Fringe Festival. Now in print form, this unforgettable play about the stories of black women is available for all to enjoy, laugh, cry and be touched by. Join TWB as we celebrate the launch of the play on Monday, December 5th.

Alone! Alone!: Lives of Some Outsider Women by Rosemary Dinnage. New York Review, $19.95. Dinnage - an experienced biographer and psychologist - draws together short biographical pieces on a number of extraordinary women, both famous and unknown, who felt themselves to be powerfully alone. She reflects on the meaning of survival, of relationships, of artistic courage, of mental illness, and of gender, to explore what can be learned from loneliness.

Bicycles Locked to Poles by John Glassie. McSweeney's Books, $21.00 This book does just what itsays on the label: it's a collection of photographs, taken in New York City , of bicycles locked to poles. But that simple description cannot convey the alternately funny and sad effect of the images, often of damaged bikes, that seem to form a story about living in a modern city.

Pregnancy Blues: What Every Woman Needs to Know about Depression During Pregnancy by Shaila Kulkarni Misri, M.D. Delacorte Press, $33.00 Dr. Misri offers an accessible and useful account of an often-ignored condition that can affect up to 70% of pregnant women. She cuts through the myths surrounding depression and challenges the stereotypes around women and depression that are prevalent in the medical profession in order to grapple with tough questions about treatment and self-care.

The Granta Book of India edited by Ian Jack. Granta, $19.95 Salman Rushdie, Chitra Banerji and Pankaj Mishra are among the contributors to this varied collection. Serious and light-hearted by turns, each piece offers a different perspective on India , the Indian diaspora, and India 's relations with its neighbours. Alongside pieces by better-known authors is an account of ten years in the life of Viramma, an agricultural worker and midwife in south-east India , as told to Josiane Racine.

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Toronto Women's Bookstore
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