Blood, soil, and memory
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on The British Columbia Review on February 15, 2023. We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (McClelland & Stewart), 2022
$24.95 / 9780771047244 * Over the past six decades, as the People’s Republic of China has turned its brutal invasion and occupation of Tibet into the permanent subjugation of an entire population, generations of Tibetans have experienced profound upheaval and loss from ...
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$24.95 / 9780771047244 * Over the past six decades, as the People’s Republic of China has turned its brutal invasion and occupation of Tibet into the permanent subjugation of an entire population, generations of Tibetans have experienced profound upheaval and loss from ...
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Wandering the haunted city
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on The British Columbia Review on January 14, 2023 Random Walks: New West from the Street
by Alan Haig-Brown White Rock: Image West Productions, 2022
$36.95 / 9780994817525 When I first saw this book available for review, I snapped it up right away. I love going for walks in New Westminster, where I live, and was eager to compare notes with another resident’s experience of the city by foot. Making ...
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by Alan Haig-Brown White Rock: Image West Productions, 2022
$36.95 / 9780994817525 When I first saw this book available for review, I snapped it up right away. I love going for walks in New Westminster, where I live, and was eager to compare notes with another resident’s experience of the city by foot. Making ...
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A catalogue for the ages
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on The British Columbia Review on December 20, 2022 The Bob Dylan Albums 2nd Edition
by Anthony Varesi Montreal: Guernica Editions, 2022
$34.95 / 9781771837590 In the autumn of 1964, a precocious Bob Dylan — who had just released his fourth studio album at age twenty-three — told a writer from The New Yorker that he was moving on from “finger-pointing songs” about what’s wrong with the world, already ...
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by Anthony Varesi Montreal: Guernica Editions, 2022
$34.95 / 9781771837590 In the autumn of 1964, a precocious Bob Dylan — who had just released his fourth studio album at age twenty-three — told a writer from The New Yorker that he was moving on from “finger-pointing songs” about what’s wrong with the world, already ...
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Goaltender, heal thyself
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on The British Columbia Review on November 11, 2022 The Save of My Life: My Journey Out of the Dark
by Corey Hirsch, with Sean Patrick Conboy Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2022
$32.99 / 9781443461092 * It must be hard to write a good topical hockey book these days. The goalposts, as it were, keep shifting on the zeitgeist as Canada’s national sport transforms with every breaking news story. A decade ...
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by Corey Hirsch, with Sean Patrick Conboy Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2022
$32.99 / 9781443461092 * It must be hard to write a good topical hockey book these days. The goalposts, as it were, keep shifting on the zeitgeist as Canada’s national sport transforms with every breaking news story. A decade ...
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Get lost, young man
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on The British Columbia Review on October 25, 2022 Lost in the Valley of Death: A Story of Obsession and Danger in the Himalayas
by Harley Rustad Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Knopf Canada), 2022
$34.00 / 9780735279469 * For some readers, stories like this one are a tempting invitation to satire. There is, after all, much fodder for lampoonery in the cautionary tale of an earnest, young, able-bodied, ...
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by Harley Rustad Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Knopf Canada), 2022
$34.00 / 9780735279469 * For some readers, stories like this one are a tempting invitation to satire. There is, after all, much fodder for lampoonery in the cautionary tale of an earnest, young, able-bodied, ...
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Rapist, your time is up
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on The British Columbia Review on June 26, 2022 Victim: A feminist manifesto from a fierce survivor
by Karen Moe (Vigilance Press, 2022)
$24.99 / 9781647044701 * For any new author seeking a large audience for a polemical work, the self-declared “manifesto” is a risky undertaking. Driven by the urgency of singular purpose, a manifesto in the wrong hands can result in the most artless of writing: self-righteous, tone-deaf ...
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by Karen Moe (Vigilance Press, 2022)
$24.99 / 9781647044701 * For any new author seeking a large audience for a polemical work, the self-declared “manifesto” is a risky undertaking. Driven by the urgency of singular purpose, a manifesto in the wrong hands can result in the most artless of writing: self-righteous, tone-deaf ...
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Oh, the good new hockey game
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on The British Columbia Review on April 18, 2022 Overcoming the Neutral Zone Trap: Hockey’s Agents of Change
by Cheryl A. MacDonald and Jonathon R.J. Edwards (editors) Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2021
$34.99 / 9781772125795 * To anyone who watches the game with a critical eye, it should not come as news that the mainstream hockey establishment suffers from a hyper-defensive gatekeeper mentality. For too long now, the ...
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by Cheryl A. MacDonald and Jonathon R.J. Edwards (editors) Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2021
$34.99 / 9781772125795 * To anyone who watches the game with a critical eye, it should not come as news that the mainstream hockey establishment suffers from a hyper-defensive gatekeeper mentality. For too long now, the ...
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A one-man freedom convoy
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on The British Columbia Review (formerly the Ormsby Review) on February 25, 2022 man@the_airport: How Social Media Saved My Life. One Syrian’s Story
by Hassan Al Kontar New Westminster: Tidewater Press, 2021
$23.95 / 9781777010188 Given the staggering human toll of the civil war in Syria since 2011 — half a million dead, more than six and a half million internally displaced, another five and a half million fleeing ...
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by Hassan Al Kontar New Westminster: Tidewater Press, 2021
$23.95 / 9781777010188 Given the staggering human toll of the civil war in Syria since 2011 — half a million dead, more than six and a half million internally displaced, another five and a half million fleeing ...
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Permanent military rule might just be a fact of life for Burma
Commentary by Daniel Gawthrop posted on straight.com (Georgia Straight) on February 1, 2021 In the face of international outrage over this week’s military coup in Burma, the country’s generals no doubt see a moral advantage they didn’t have in 1990 when they refused to hand over power to the National League for Democracy after losing that year’s elections by a similar landslide: it’s hard to take Western calls for due process seriously when ...
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A Queer Love Story celebrates Jane Rule and Rick Bébout’s platonic intimacy
Review by Daniel Gawthrop published in the Georgia Straight July 26, 2017
A Queer Love Story: The Letters of Jane Rule and Rick Bébout
Edited by Marilyn R. Schuster. UBC, 650 pp, hardcover On October 24, 1994, an arthritic and wheelchair-bound Jane Rule made her long-awaited appearance in B.C. Supreme Court as an expert witness in Little Sister’s bookstore’s epic legal battle with Canada Customs. Rule’s testimony was big news: here was a seldom-seen ...
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A Queer Love Story: The Letters of Jane Rule and Rick Bébout
Edited by Marilyn R. Schuster. UBC, 650 pp, hardcover On October 24, 1994, an arthritic and wheelchair-bound Jane Rule made her long-awaited appearance in B.C. Supreme Court as an expert witness in Little Sister’s bookstore’s epic legal battle with Canada Customs. Rule’s testimony was big news: here was a seldom-seen ...
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