A convincing case for rejecting the prevailing policies of “assimilation, control, intrusion and coercion” regarding...
A Canadian explores the many misconceptions about her country’s indigenous citizens.
There are about 1.4 million aboriginal people in Canada, representing about 4 percent of its population. Although the country has an official policy of multiculturalism, these citizens still face discrimination, poverty, high unemployment, and stereotypes portraying them as lazy and unsuited to the modern world. In this book, Vowel, a lawyer and member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, explores aboriginal issues from almost every conceivable angle, challenging “myths that have become so rooted in the Canadian consciousness, they are taken as fact and rarely examined” and suggesting alternatives to the policy failures of the past. “So many of what are suggested today as ‘solutions’ have been tried—not only failing, but causing horrific damage along the way,” she argues. The book is essentially a collection of essays about various indigenous-related topics, a polemical approach that can be somewhat dense and wonkish but is leavened by the author’s caustic style and astute insights. For example, an adoption program for indigenous children that began in the 1960s, Vowel writes, “picked up where residential schools left off, removing children from their homes, and producing cultural amputees.” Among the “widespread and pernicious” myths that she addresses are that First Nations people don’t pay taxes (“most Indigenous peoples don’t get tax exemptions”) and are more prone to alcoholism. The author also brings alive the tragedy of the relocation of Inuit families in the 1950s and the killing of their sled dogs by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Inuit saw the slaughter as a way for authorities to force them “to remain in permanent settlements, without the possibility of returning to their traditional way of life,” she explains. Some readers may get lost in the policy details and legal nuances here, but Vowel makes a solid argument in this book.
A convincing case for rejecting the prevailing policies of “assimilation, control, intrusion and coercion” regarding aboriginal people.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-55379-680-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Portage & Main
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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