Eileen

Lin has been enjoying Netflix comedy specials and she recommends a number of shows that tackle immigration and cultural translation with humour and panache. Such as Maz Jobrani’s Immigrant, Vir Das’s Abroad Understanding and Losing It, Gabriel Iglesias’s I’m Sorry…

Jackie Lau joins us for a lively conversation. We talk about indie vs. traditional publishing, writing ethnically diverse characters respectfully, writing humour that eschews damaging stereotypes, and having a great sense of place in a story. Margrit watched Outrageous Acts…

Lin has been bingeing The Fosters on Netflix, and she recommends it for broad representation of diversity, in terms of race/ethnicity, gender and sexual identity, as well as disability. It doesn’t hurt that the writers have nailed the dramatic structure,…

Tanya Talaga’s non-fiction book Seven Fallen Feathers illustrates the vicious confluence of racist attitudes and a colonizing culture through the stories of seven indigenous children who died in similar circumstances in Thunder Bay, Ontario. We talk about how much of the…

We revisit Green Book, and discuss how marginalized people—or parts of a marginalized existence—are left out of mainstream stories told from a more privileged perspective. Lin rejoices in the rich conversations about disability at the launch of Care Work: Dreaming…

Lin went to the promisingly titled “Telling Stories in the Age of Historical Amnesia” 2018 Harold Innis Lecture at the University of Toronto, and found it did not live up to the expectations. Charlotte Gray, a highly acclaimed author of…

Hope in trying times. Margrit finds refuge in Thích Nhất Hạnh’s book Happiness that combines meditation practices by the renowned Buddhist monk and activist with anecdotes from his daily life. We chat about the West’s penchant for appropriating spiritual practices like…

Lin liked Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You for its complex and unflinching portrayal of life as a racialized minority in 70’s America. The well-crafted story elicits strong emotions through the interwoven narrative strands that revolve around coping with grief…

Kat Chow of NPR’s Code Switch wrote about using the term “yellow” to describe East Asians in her article If We Called Ourselves Yellow. Lin discusses her unease with the term and its association with disease. From there, a conversation…

Lin talks about how much she loved Green Book, winner of TIFF’s People’s Choice Awards, and its realistically diverse supporting cast surrounding the main story. Margrit tries to learn about North-American middle-graders from Kids Baking Championships, but comes out with…