We are enslaved to the past. So when is it best to forget it?
Tag: Concordia University
Joseph Boyden on his Identity and Origins
Monday at the D.B. Clarke Theatre in the Hall Building on Concordia University campus, Joseph Boyden talked about his identity and origins--both as a writer and a man of mixed Irish-Ojibwe blood. He was accompanied by renowned conversationalist Kate Sterns and Globe and Mail book reviewer Jared Bland, "Who are you?" opened Sterns, a direct …
Cockroach by Rawi Hage
Rawi Hage's unnamed protagonist—an unreliable narrator—fantasizes almost as much as he steals. A poor, starving Middle-Eastern immigrant walking the Montreal winter streets, he sees himself as a cockroach: the lowest of the low, but also crafty and able to survive. His awkwardness around women causes him to undergo what he perceives as a metamorphosis into …
Rawi Hage and What his Work Means to Me
I counted it a significant turn of good fortune that I had just finished reading Rawi Hage's novel Cockroach when it almost won this year's Canada Reads competition (Joseph Boyden's The Orenda took first prize). It took me 5 years to get around to reading it. Nonetheless, this author—whose book I am reviewing Friday—has had …
Matthew Rettino 