Does magic exist in the contemporary world? Charles de Lint's mythic fiction brings supernatural beings into the context of the everyday and Forests of the Heart explores the contact between ordinary people and what he calls Mystery. Bettina and Adelita are sisters, both partly Mexican, partly Indios, and raised by their grandmother to see la époco del …
Tag: music
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
The following is an excerpt from the presentation I made earlier this week for my seminar on (Post)Colonial Geographies with Professor Sandeep Banerjee at McGill University. The young protagonist of Salman Rushdie's children's fantasy novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories asks his father Rashid Khalifa, a great storyteller better known as the Shah of …
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Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje
Before jazz became what it is today, before it was mainstream, Buddy Bolden blew his cornet in the streets of New Orleans. No recording of his music survives. A famous musician in his time, his genius and the threat of vanishing into silence tormented him. The quest Michael Ondaatje undertook in 1976 to discover the …
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Whylah Falls by George Elliott Clarke
For Black History Month, I thought I'd share a Canadian poet whose lush, cadenced verse is like Nova Scotian blues. I'm talking about Whylah Falls by George Elliott Clarke. I read it studying Can lit with Professor Robert Lecker in my last semester at McGill and we had fascinating discussions in class. Some background: Whylah …
Matthew Rettino 