The smallest First Nations Public Library (FNPL) I’ve heard of consists of two shelves. Yes, two shelves, not stacks. Michipicoten First Nation has a FNPL and fewer than 75 on-reserve residents. The largest FNPL is the Six Nations Public Library, where I am the CEO and director of library services; it houses a collection of close to 40,000 items. Yet, despite this collection’s size, two-thirds of that material sits in a shipping container in the parking lot because there is no physical room to store it. Regardless of size, there are many trials and tribulations which this group of libraries experiences. Still, these libraries provide a service—some might argue an essential service—to their communities.

A large majority of Canadians do not think about their libraries. Most cities, towns, and hamlets have one. Of the 133 First Nations reserves in Ontario, only 46 have libraries. In working for a FNPL, I’ve discovered that the majority of non-Indigenous people don’t even realize that First Nation Public Libraries exist. Yet, they do, and some have served their communities for over 60 years.

Two of the very first FNPLs to serve their communities were in geographically opposite regions of Ontario. One was in Northern Ontario, in Moose Factory, which is a Cree community near the coast of James Bay. This library got started in 1959. The other is Six Nations Public Library, located near Brantford, southwest of Toronto. According to librarians in the FNPL system who organized before me, these libraries started a trend and by 1985 there were five FNPLs in Ontario. By 1987, there were over 30, and in 1994 there were 44 First Nation Public Libraries. (At one point, between 1994 and 2002, there were over 50 FNPLs!)

Ontario is quite unique in that it is the only province in Canada to recognize the First Nation Public Libraries via legislation. FNPLs are included in the Public Libraries Act (PLA) of Ontario. This piece of legislation governs all public libraries in Ontario. Despite being recognized within the PLA, funding for FNPLs is paltry at best. This was discussed at a meeting of the First Nation public librarians of Ontario, where it came up that while funding for all public libraries, FNPL included, comes from the Ministry of Heritage, Sport, Tourism, and Culture Industries, funding for FNPLs from the government is quite different and substantially less than funding received by municipal libraries. For example, the First Nation Salary Supplement is $13,000 and the portion of the Public Library Operating Grant of less than $1,000 per year, based on the on-reserve population. Imagine: wages, purchasing new books, paying for hydro, telephone service, maybe the internet, possibly rent, plus a myriad of other bills, all on less than $14,000 annually!

Nonetheless, FNPLs are resilient and full of strength. This is exhibited in their First Nation Public Libraries’ vision statement: “Public libraries provide an essential service to First Nation communities. Our Chiefs and Councils lead our communities in recognizing and supporting our public libraries as vital contributors to growth and change. With current and culturally relevant collections and services, First Nation public libraries welcome all community members and support their needs for access to information, personal empowerment and self-affirmation. In partnership with other community programs, our public libraries contribute to our social and economic well-being by nurturing our spirits, preserving our traditions, cultures, and languages, and encouraging lifelong learning and literacy.”

The reality is that FNPLs exist in a balance between two worlds. On one hand, they must act and offer the materials and services which municipal public libraries offer. On the other, they are hubs for cultural and language revitalization, preserving and promoting our culture. That is to say, FNPLs have dual identities: they represent Canadian cultural norms in terms of their fiction, non-fiction, and other collections, but also act as a doorway to the cultures and traditions of their Nation.

It is through the support and advocacy of agencies like the Ontario Library Association (OLA), Southern Ontario Library Service (SOLS), Ontario Library Service – North (OLS-N), and the Federation of Public Libraries that an increased awareness of FNPLs is taking shape, and there have been some notable movements to further support FNPLs.

However, it has been the First Nations Public Librarians themselves, over the past 60 years, who have advocated for their community libraries, helped to increase literacy rates, and worked hard to increase financial support to maintain and establish new libraries. They have done this by creating a series of committees, under different names, all serving the same purpose: to increase awareness, financial, and other supports of FNPLs and First Nation librarians. At in-person meetings of the First Nations Public Librarians of Ontario and through former First Nations public librarians, I learned that in 1995, the First Nations Library Advisory Committee was formed to further the plight of FNPLs in Ontario. In 2004, First Nation librarians started to fundraise for a representative association: the First Nations Libraries Association (FNLA).

In 2010, a small group of librarians formed the National Aboriginal Public Library Organization (NAPLO) to seek out and secure funding and support for all First Nation libraries (FNPLs are divided geographically, with 29 operating in Northern Ontario, under OLS-N and 18 in Southern Ontario under SOLS. Hence the drive to support all FNPLs.)

First Nation public librarians continue to work to have all people recognize the value of Indigenous ways of knowing and Indigenous knowledge. This mandate was established and grew out of a series of meetings in both Canada and the U.S. The ones I am most familiar with are the National Reading Campaign’s Aboriginal Roundtables which ran annually from 2013 to 2015. At the 2015 Halifax roundtable, the third annual roundtable, the Draft Business Plan for a National Aboriginal Library Association (NALA) was established.

With the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the 94 Calls to Action, First Nation Public Libraries have established partnerships with other cultural memory institutions and are in the process of forming the National Indigenous Knowledge and Language Alliance (NIKLA). Though this organization is in its infancy, it has been a long time in the making. I am excited to be a part of this movement, and to continue the work of all the remarkable FNPL librarians that have come before me. I’m equally excited to help create something that will help retain the voices and knowledge of the past for those who come after me.

Illustration by Awispa

When my daughter was born, I would place tiny dots of sandalwood oil behind her perfect little ears and in the folds of her delicate neck. She was the best smelling baby around; the combination of the natural scent of infant and sandalwood was heady, divine, something you could live in forever. It’s an unusual thing, to perfume babies, something that runs counter to today’s heightened wariness of unnecessary exposure to chemicals (though the perfume oil I used was natural, with no additives or preservatives).

I was born in Khartoum, Sudan, in the late seventies. Almost 20 years later, I landed in Thorncliffe Park, a Toronto neighbourhood. My daughter had the most Toronto birth imaginable, early morning at St. Michael’s Hospital under the pulsating glow of Dundas Square’s neon lights. Sandalwood is ubiquitous in Sudanese culture, used as oil and incense to perfume women’s bodies and homes. Perfuming my daughter was a way to ensure her connection with my cultural heritage and home. I wear sandalwood oil or perfumes with prominent notes of sandalwood, and I imagined that early introduction to these scents would forge a strong bond between my daughter and her maternal heritage.

Smell is one of our strongest senses; it is processed by the part of the brain associated with memory and emotions, as well as the cerebral cortex. Smell memories are more powerful than other types of memories, and perfume marketing capitalizes both on this relationship and our need to be desired. Research has shown that smell is an important part of mother-child bond formation: “Olfactory recognition may be implicated in the early stages of the mother-infant attachment process, when the newborns learn to recognize their own mother’s unique odo[u]r signature.” With the sandalwood that I would place on my daughter and wear myself as I held her, I was intervening in this attachment—consciously choosing to complicate it with my own olfactory memories, my own need for belonging performed and reciprocated within our dyad.

Sudanese culture is profoundly aromatic, with ways and traditions informed by and centred around perfumery. Scent is used to cleanse, maintain health, welcome guests, celebrate, mourn, purify, conjure, and banish spirits. Smells are produced for the home by burning resins (mostly frankincense and mastic) and bakhoor (wood chips that are soaked in scented oil mélanges and then burned in traditional incense holders called mabkharas), and for the body by using oil blends and perfumes. The smells are very strong and very distinct, and back when I lived on a multicultural campus in Muscat, Oman, you could identify the Sudanese houses by smell on celebration days.

I had received the sandalwood oil that I used on my daughter as a gift from a family friend who at the time lived in Mississauga. She had just come back from a trip to Sudan, and I had visited her upon her return. At the time, I was pregnant and as I was leaving her home, she secretively placed the tiny 30 millilitre vial in my hand and whispered: “This is the good stuff, from India. It’s not watered down or artificial.”

Sudanese scent culture is a container for various histories and geographies, with the country’s location and Red Sea ports making it a gateway to north, west, and south Africa. The trade routes are centuries-old, with destinations and origins from India via the Arabian peninsula, up and down the eastern coast of Africa, the entry point to the Saharan caravan routes, connected to the Mediterranean and Europe by the Nile.

Traditional Sudanese products are coveted differently when they come from different places, as the possibility of their acquisition used to mean foreign connections or the money for imports: silks from Japan and Switzerland used for traditional toabs; the red and gold striped fabric from Jordan specifically used during wedding rituals; the Parisienne perfumes of Piver’s Rêve d’or or Roger & Gallet’s Fleurs d’Amour (the latter was discontinued, but bottles can still be found online); and sandalwood from India.

Sometimes, when we leave where we come from, we choose and then exaggerate the rituals that remind us of a romanticized and idealized version of our origins. Smelling of sandalwood was something I associated as being intrinsically Sudanese, and belonging to nowhere else, despite the product’s origins.

And so, I was surprised when, one day, I met up with a South Indian friend for lunch and as she held my baby she proclaimed: “Your daughter smells like home!”

This triggered an exploration into the origins of sandalwood in Sudan, and what this home-connection was for two people from different parts of the world connected through this scent (we also both happen to be geography scholars).

The most desired and expensive form of sandalwood is Santalum album, or white sandalwood, a dry, deciduous forest tree native to southern India. Rising demand for sandalwood led to overharvesting and, in response, the Indian state government started controlling the planting and harvesting of sandalwood. In 2001, the Indian Sandal Act was passed to deregulate planting sandalwood in an attempt to curb the out-of-control smuggling; growers still had to seek permission from the state before harvesting. This again led to an overharvesting of sandalwood and did not resolve the smuggling, so in 2017 the Indian government enforced a prohibition on the export of sandalwood (with the exception of the oil and finished handicraft products made from sandalwood, which are unrestricted). This was mildly enforced until October 2018, when Santalum album was categorised as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

In 2019, Indian customs officials stepped up their vigilance related to the export of sandalwood, which led to the stopping of several Sudanese individuals from leaving India when attempting to board planes with sandalwood. In most cases, the sandalwood had been obtained legally, and the Indian government refers to the problematic demand produced by the grey market in sandalwood trade.

I’ve been collecting these news stories of Sudanese individuals with their kilograms of sandalwood, heading back home. Their names are frighteningly ordinary, strangely familiar. When I was my seven, the age my daughter is at writing, I would watch as my aunts would prepare wood chips to make bakhoor and imagine that any of the women stopped by Indian customs officials could have planned to do the same thing, using the bakhoor to scent their homes in preparation for a wedding or Eid.

We’ve long since run out of that precious white sandalwood oil, and anyway, she now prefers scents that contain lighter florals like orange blossom and rose. I’m curious to see what happens as she grows older, if she’ll continue to associate the smell of sandalwood with her mother and what emotions that may trigger for her.

I’ve spent most of my life living outside of Sudan. Like many others who have grown up away from the countries of their heritage, I spend a lot of time thinking about what my cultural identity means, how and where I perform it. Learning about sandalwood’s Indian origins revealed connections with ritual, tradition, home, and belonging. It also provided an awareness of Sudan’s place in the world that wasn’t western focused. Learning about centuries-old trade routes and cross-cultural pollination helped develop an understanding of the ways in which traditions evolve over place and time. And more recently, how the unintended consequences of human activities threaten ancient rituals as well as ecological diversity.

I haven’t been able to find out when white sandalwood started being traded in Sudan, or how it became a crucial part of our aromatic identity. But its presence in Sudanese culture remains a testament to cross-cultural dialogue and exchange. Through following the ways in which white sandalwood is harvested, cultivated, processed, and transported, new ways of understanding the connections between us unfold.

In North America, many Hollywood stars of Indian descent are household names: Mindy Kaling, Priyanka Chopra, Kumail Nanjiani, Hasan Minhaj, and Scarborough native Lilly Singh. According to YouTubers Colin and Samir, Hollywood has realized that Indians—in North America and India—have the buying power to demand representation on screen.
I think we’ve always known this, but box office smashes like Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians proved the point to executives that people of colour will pay for good entertainment.

So, what does this mean for diasporic Indian viewers? Do we see ourselves being represented? Are our stories being reflected? What I’ve seen is that we are no longer just Apu on The Simpsons, a lonely housewife, a doctor with no voice, or a creepy science geek. Characters who portray us have developed beyond the stereotype and reflect the realities of life in North America as Indians. Moreover, we’ve gone beyond the Sikh, Punjabi-centric depiction of Indian-ness, with writers and stars who are from South India, or who are Muslim. But sometimes I ask myself, how does this even matter?

It wasn’t until I was 18 years old that I first consciously thought about being represented in media, likely because I was raised in Dubai. And though I was educated amongst and friends with British kids, I never sought external validation of my culture—I was surrounded by it in the form of extended family and family friends. I lived in Auckland briefly in my teens and then moved to Toronto for my undergraduate degree. It was 1998 and I was watching Deepa Mehta’s Earth at a film festival in Auckland. This is the second film in the Canadian filmmaker’s trilogy, which also includes Fire (1996) and Water (2005). Actress Nandita Das’s beauty, which is unlike the fair-skinned, overly made-up looks of many Bollywood actresses, caught my attention. But it was the film’s historical-narrative echo of stories both of my grandmothers had told me that had the most impact.

Earth is the story of India’s Partition in 1947, told through the voice of Lenny (Maia Sethna), a Parsi girl living in Lahore. My father is also Parsi—Zoroastrians in India were loyal to the British throughout their rule of India and remained neutral through Partition. Until seeing Earth, every Partition story I had heard was from my maternal grandmother, a Sikh who herself was displaced from the city of Lahore
during Partition.

In the early 2000s I prioritized watching the deluge of films made by diasporic Indian women: Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding (2001), Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham (2002), and Bride and Prejudice (2005). Each release was a big deal, shared with friends at a theatre and with family over the phone. I’d chat with cousins about which character reminded us of which relative and how weddings in the movies compared to real life. Each of these movies represented a version of Indian culture and, in particular, Indian women, which was familiar—urban, educated, liberal, fun, and loud. I felt connected to these representations. It was during a conversation with my maternal grandmother about Monsoon Wedding and Fire that I realized I could come out to her without facing the line, “Indians are not gay.”

In 2005, Mehta’s Water, the conclusion to her trilogy, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). I was angered. For the first time in my life, I felt like I had to explain the sense of autonomy I had been raised with to people around me—to justify my independence and assure them I was not going to be forced into a marriage or shunned if widowed. My anger was directed at Mehta, who herself comes from privilege: why does Mehta always tell stories about oppressed women when she herself does not have that experience? India has a patriarchy problem and this should not be silenced. But why, I wondered, couldn’t she make films which defy the stereotype that all Indian women are oppressed, rather than placate the western gaze?

To make matters worse, Canadian actress Lisa Ray, whose father is Indian and mother is Polish, was cast as the film’s protagonist. The way I see it, women as light-skinned as Ray would probably have been protected from these sorts of practices by wealth and have been shunned inside a mansion, rather than an ashram, which is what happens in the film. To me, this story lacked credibility, though I know it was based on fact and historical practices.

The release of Slumdog Millionaire (2008) at tiff, and its eventual critical success, felt like a global turning point. The film itself felt like a pantomime of poverty in India—a true story, told by a British person lacking cultural nuance and perspective. The popular music from the movie still makes me cringe. Jai Ho! No.

Around the same time, I started paying attention to Mindy Kaling, who by the late 2000s was known for her role as Kelly Kapoor on The Office (2005-2013), as well as a writer on the show. I was never a fan of the show, but when I heard about Season 3’s “Diwali” (November 2, 2006) episode, I was intrigued. Somehow, it sounded subversive, like Kaling clapping back at everyone who expected her to do the representation thing. And as her career has grown she’s written, produced, and directed several shows which have kept clapping back. As Mindy Lahiri in The Mindy Project, she acted as a doctor who wore her brownness only on her skin and in her name. There are no grand displays of culture; this is a character who is brown because the actress is brown, the essence of whiteness coated in brown. And I kind of loved that. Kaling is public with her pride in being both Bengali and Tamil, so it is not self-hate or a lack of relationship to Indian-ness which informs her decisions. Kaling was intentional about making The Mindy Project fun, funny, and entertaining. Rather than writing an Indian character who would make non-Indian viewers feel comfortable through stereotype or cultural celebration, Kaling wrote Dr. Lahiri to be who she wanted her to be.

In a sense, seeing my people and stories about my people in Western media is often unsettling, rather than entertaining. Through the western gaze, even if written by Indians, these stories are designed to either placate by reinforcing stereotypes, or appeal by diluting the substance behind the story. And this is not restricted to Indian-ness. The original L Word didn’t resemble my mid-2000s, mid-20s, lesbian life. But I remember the straight men around me at the time loving it. And I know that Hollywood keeps remaking slave stories because until recently that was the only way they knew how to make a movie with a large Black cast entertaining to white people. It’s a familiar narrative.

Who stars are off-screen matters too, especially when they step into activism.

Priyanka Chopra is the first successful Bollywood-Hollywood crossover star, the actress who recently celebrated her one-year wedding anniversary with Nick Jonas, a member of the pop band the Jonas Brothers. I’m supposed to celebrate her—but I cannot; instead I am ashamed.

I remember a video about when Priyanka Chopra decided to move to America from India and joined the cast of Quantico (2015); she spoke about the role she plays, that of Alex Parish, being created for her and how good Hollywood had been to her. But in 2018 she joined other women in Hollywood speaking up for #EqualPayDay, about how women of colour are not afforded equal treatment to their white and male counterparts, and that she wants to be part of the change in Hollywood. This flip-flop demonstrates political opportunism, a need to get involved with movements and perform solidarity for the sake of her reputation, rather than an actual investment in the eradication of racism and sexism in Hollywood.

In 2019 Chopra came under fire for commenting on India’s military attack on Kashmir, which is currently in a concentration camp-like state. Her February 26, 2019 tweet on the subject demonstrated her support for the attack, all while being a UN Goodwill Ambassador. Later in the year, when a Pakistani woman tried to hold her accountable at a public event, Chopra responded by belittling the woman and describing the woman’s question as “venting.” Chopra looked bad, showing a lack of transparency and integrity. She was perceived as being anti-Muslim and pro-war in the Kashmiri conflict.

This is not who I want representing me, nor how I want to be represented in the media. Closer to home, and in the media in an entirely different way, the representation-of-Indians conversation was at the forefront during the 2019 federal election. Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the ndp, is the first person of colour to lead a party and run for the position of prime minister in Canada. This is supposed to count for something—but what? What has Singh achieved that means we can confidently call him a leader? He is respected for deflecting hate and promoting love when confronted with racism, but it seems Singh is more celebrated for his bespoke suits, colourful turbans, and overall style, than for any political accomplishment in the interest of Canadians or Indigenous people. Being the only person of colour to lead a party just may be his greatest achievement, and that is not enough.

If representation counts for anything, it is for us to be taken seriously, which will only come when we take ourselves seriously, when we operate with integrity and intent, rather than grasp at what is dangled in front of us. Accepting opportunities because they are given is an act of desperation, a role India and Indians had been happy to play for Britain—our most recent colonizer—and the settler nations we have chosen to inhabit. We have been happier to sit silently at the table than to not sit there at all. And stories on the screen are told by writers sitting around a table, sharing ideas. Some,
like Mindy Kaling, have been talented and confident enough to speak up.

Good representation also exists, in the form of two Canadian journalists, Shree Paradkar and Scaachi Koul, who embody their Indian-ness without it wearing them down, or serving as adornment. Both are cultured, critical, and loud; they are talented and secure enough to be vulnerable and speak with purpose. Koul, who was born and raised in Calgary, uses humour as a culture writer to show the reader how different yet valid her perspective is from most of what has been written or seen before. While Paradkar, who was born in India and immigrated to Canada as an adult, uses facts and historical reference to show Canada its failings, as a race and gender columnist for the Toronto Star.

Neither is caught up in curtailing displays of culture to ensure white people maintain comfort, nor in being shocking or provocative. To each, Indian-ness acts as part of their platform, their leverage, their value and awareness of their relationship to whiteness. Both write alongside whiteness, rather than as a response to it.

We must fill the gaps ourselves; if we want to be reflected we must project ourselves as nourished, grown, thinking characters and our stories as those which are entertaining as well as informative. It has been proven that purchasing power and moneyed audiences exist. We deserve to tell our own stories on our own terms rather than for the comfort of executives and white audiences. Seeing oneself on screen is not enough if who you see is empty. Representation is lost if it doesn’t stand for anything.

Illustration by Myriam Wares

I went over to the house the day after Ma told us her news. Vietnamese folk opera was playing in the background, familiar tales of love, betrayal, and misunderstandings.

These lyrical tones and string instruments made up the soundtrack of my childhood. I pulled off my waterproof boots and hung up my puffy faux fur-lined parka. Although we had already passed the vernal equinox weeks ago, winter still held Winnipeg in its icy embrace. I slid my feet into my plastic slippers, while shaking my head. Even though I had moved out, I hadn’t been permitted to take my slippers with me. More out of habit than from a sense of belief, in the living room I stood briefly in front of the altar of my maternal grandparents, stared at their black and white photos, and bowed my head in greeting. The lingering trace of incense singed the back of my throat.

“Ma oi?” I called out.

My mom was in the kitchen, of course. “Kim, why are you here?”

She sat on a low stool in the middle of the ceramic tile floor, newspaper down around her, slightly turned away from me. Even after all these years in Canada and now being in her dream kitchen with a built-in pantry, granite countertops, and stainless-steel appliances, Ma still cooked as she did as a girl in her homeland. On one side a stack of long green banana leaves the length of my arm lay beside her and large bowls of ingredients were on the other. She was wrestling a banana leaf-wrapped bundle between her hands, binding pink plastic string around it. The string was looped around her big toe, a kind of third hand to keep the string taunt and manageable, while she crafted her masterpiece. Tiny plastic threads floated about her like fairy dust.

I stood a few feet away. “I don’t know.”

“Nice surprise. To see you two days in a row without telling you to come over, that never happens.” She didn’t look up.
Her tone was light but there was an edge to it.

I rolled my eyes. Less than a minute and here we go. “Where is everyone?”

“Ba and Vinh are at Chu Tu’s to help with the floors. Hai said something before leaving but I don’t know.”

Of course, my dad and brothers would want to escape, after yesterday. So we were alone.

“Why are you making banh tet now, Ma?” It was a cake made with sticky rice stuffed with yellow bean paste and pieces of pork meat, all wrapped together in banana leaves and boiled.

“I want to. It’s one of my favourite dishes for Tet.”

Because I won’t be around for another Tet. That unsaid statement hung in the air between us.

I closed the distance and sat down cross-legged on the floor beside her. “I remember Lunar New Year a few years ago when we had it here. People brought over wine and champagne and left it out in the snow. It all froze before we could drink it.”

“Yes, Chu Tu was not happy. It was good wine, he said over and over again.” She laughed a little as she spread more sticky rice on banana leaves.

“Or the Tet at Co Sau’s house when baby Michelle was only a few months old and threw up all over Anh’s new red shirt.
She was so chubby back then.”

“Now she’s started swimming lessons your cousin told me last week.” She layered mung bean paste on the sticky rice and added cubes of pork. “Or this year and Co Sau made the che I make and brought it to my house. It was too sweet, ruined.”

I fought the urge to stand up and leave. “Yes, this year.”

We both knew the air had shifted.

Ma paused. “You didn’t eat my banh this past year.”

“Nope.” I looked down at the floor.

A couple months ago, Ma and I were barely speaking but she had still commanded me to be at the family Lunar New Year party. She had forbidden me to bring Jon, even though we had been living together for almost a year.
And I had obeyed. After everything, I still could not fully pull away. Ba hadn’t acknowledged me when I came into the house. Hai punched me on the arm but all Vinh could do was lecture me when we were making up the li xi packages for the younger cousins.

I set out a platter of candied fruits—ginger, coconut—and lotus seeds and roasted watermelon seeds on the living room coffee table. People swarmed around instantly. I started to head back to the kitchen for my next assignment, my head bowed and my gaze fixed on the floor in front of me, playing the demure and dutiful child.

“Kim, come here and talk to me,” Co Vy said in Vietnamese and waved me towards an empty spot beside her. Ma was on
the other side of Co Vy and gave me a look, her lips thin.

Be careful, I winced inside, but respectfully slid over to them.

“Happy New Year,” Co Vy continued in Vietnamese, looking at me with interest. A hair grew out of a dark mole near the bottom of her jaw but it was only visible when she lifted up her chin. That often happened as she liked to tilt her head back to inspect people through the bifocals on the end of her nose.
Her thinning black hair curled at her temples, framing wrinkles that webbed her eyes.

“Tell your daughter she needs to eat more. She’s too skinny.” Co Vy put her hand on Ma’s hand.

Ma replied in Vietnamese, “Oh she’s so grown up now. She makes her own decisions. You’ll see with your own daughter in a few years.” Ma removed her hand from under Co Vy’s.

Why did I need to sit here if they were going to talk about me like I wasn’t even here?

“Your mom says you work so hard. That’s why you’re never here when I drop by.”

“Yes, work.”

I sat quietly for seven more minutes of emotional landmines, half-truths, and avoidance until my mom and her friend turned their attention to another young person, waving them over to take my seat. I faked a stomach ache, and locked myself in my old bedroom, jam-packed with the stuff I had been forbidden to move out. When everyone left, I crept out of the house, my breath frosty and the world a black blanket shimmering with stars, not saying goodbye to anyone in my family.

“You look tired,” Ma said to me, after finishing tying another bundle.

Last night, I had gone back to the apartment I shared with Jon and cried on the bathroom floor, locking the door behind me. Jon stood on the other side, begging me to come out, begging me to let him help me. I turned on the tap to muffle
the sound of my sobs.

“So do you,” I countered.

She almost smiled.

I watched her make more banh and tried to write the memory in my head. The curve in her back as she bent over the leaves. The tension in the plastic string. The bend in her knee as she brought her leg closer to her chest. Her hands, confident and adept with her tools, moved to a medium-paced rhythm. She was relaxed, doing what she loved.

I picked up a leaf and began tearing at it. “Are you scared Ma? Of what’s to come?” It surprised me that question came out of my mouth.

“Of dying? I’m not afraid.”

“Why not?”

“I think of Quan Am and she gives me strength. She turned back from the brink of nirvana to stay on earth to help those that suffer as a bodhisattva. During times of my life when I didn’t think I would be able to bear it, she wrapped me in her arms and told me I wouldn’t be alone.”

I always envied Ma’s faith.

“You talk like you’ve already given up. Is that why you refuse treatment?” I kept tearing the banana leaf.

“No, I’m not ready. I’m not ready to become an ancestor, to cross over, to only be with you in spirit.” She looked past my shoulder, into empty space. “But I have lived long enough to know life doesn’t go the way we plan sometimes. I can only accept what is to come. Remember the story of the mosquito?”

I nodded.

“Tell it back to me then,” she challenged.

I sighed. “There was a beautiful woman in rural Vietnam long ago who died unexpectedly. Her husband brought her back to life by giving her three drops of his blood after a fairy took pity on him. The woman was not content with her humble life and was going to leave her husband for a richer man. The husband told her she could leave but to give him back his three drops of blood. She pricked her finger and squeezed out three drops and then she was transformed into a mosquito. From that day on, she has fed on the blood of humans, trying to get the three drops back to live again.”

Ma nodded, satisfied. “I used to think this story was about the wickedness of women, temptation, like Eve and the apple, Pandora and her box. But it’s about acceptance, the husband accepting his wife’s death, the wife accepting their modest lifestyle.”

“So she was cursed to want something always out of reach.”

“When the moment comes, I will be ready,” Ma said and looked up at me.

My face was hot. I felt the tears welling up and trickling down my cheeks without my consent. My life without Ma. To not see the disapproving look on her face or hear the disappointed tone in her voice and to not know her opinions so I could orient my perspective around hers. The more I wanted to break away, the more I still came back to her. She was my anchor, which was both a comfort and a weight. I started to panic as the realization hit me, delayed after yesterday’s news.

Ma reached out and held my chin between her sticky fingers and looked directly at me. “No tears Kim. Not for me. Not for you. Even if it’s only for today.”

Ma was telling me what to do. Instinctively, I wanted to do the opposite. What would I do once she was gone? Another wave of panic washed over me. She still stared at me, expecting my obedience. It took all my strength to gather my feelings up, fold them and tuck them out of the way. When Ma was satisfied with what she saw in my eyes, she let go of my chin.

“So, what do you want me to do?” I said, trying to move on to another subject.

“Just help me clean up. I’m finishing the last one.”

For the next few hours as we waited for the banh tet to cook, we talked together like we were not Kim and Ma, but like another daughter and her mother, gossiping about family matters, world events, and the future. Would Vinh find a wife? Would Hai ever grow up? Would I find a job I was happy to do? I put aside the memories that separated us, that drove me away from her over the past few years—when I was in university and even before then. We spoke of memories that held us together.

I noticed the skin around Ma’s eyes crinkled when she laughed. I noticed she liked her tea strong and dark, leaving no loose tea leaves at the bottom of her cup. I wrote these memories in my head too. She was tired and had to sit down. Sometimes it was easy to forget she was sick, but sometimes it hung heavy on her.

“What is one of your favourite stories Ma? One that you haven’t told me before.” I had never invited a story from Ma before. She just told them and I had to listen.

“I don’t think I’ve told you about Muc Kien Lien.”

“No,” I said, sipping my tea.

Ma sat up on the couch. “A long time ago, Muc Kien Lien was a boy who lived in Vietnam. He reached enlightenment at a young age and became a disciple of Buddha. But his mother was a wicked woman. When she died, because of the evil life she led, she was sentenced to the worst level of hell and tortured by demons. Muc Kien Lien was a dutiful and loving child so he had to do whatever he could to help her. He asked Buddha what he could do in order for his mother to be released from hell. Buddha told him to hold the ceremony of Vu Lan to pray for his mother’s soul. He did and her sins were pardoned. That was how Mua Vu Lan was started, the Day of Wandering Souls, the day we leave food out for the ancestors. It’s the day wandering souls can safely return home. Souls can be absolved of sin and delivered from hell through the prayers of their living relatives just like Muc Kien Lien’s mother.” Ma took a sip of tea, signalling the end to the story.

I didn’t know what to say.

She added, “It reminds me that children can feel love for their parents, show their parents honour, and help their parents find their way back to the right path. Muc Kien Lien loved his mother even though she was not always good and helped absolve her of her sins.”

Ma reached out to stroke my hair like she had done when I was a little girl and kissed me on my forehead. Light, a ghostly kiss. It was the most affection I had allowed from her since I became a teen.

She didn’t give me a chance to respond. There was nothing she wanted from me in return. I did not have anything to
give her.

“Ba and Vinh will be home soon. Help me with dinner.”
She looked in her pantry full of dried rice noodles, jasmine rice, dried mushrooms, and so much more.

I left that day with two bundles of banh tet and so much more.

Left to Right: Kiersten Holden-Ada, Nicole Maunsell, Su Donovaro, Moka Case, Tiffany Gordon, Julie Hollenbach, Capp Larsen · photo by Mo Phùng

For 15 years, a group of volunteers has been lugging tote bags of books from their library in the north end of Halifax to the women’s side of the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility, or Burnside Jail, in Dartmouth’s Burnside Industrial Park.

The group is Books Beyond Bars, an anti-capitalist, non-hierarchical collective that runs a books-to-prisoners program. Every two weeks, a few members of the 14-person group bring a batch of new books from their offsite library and collect old ones, congregating in one of two meeting rooms on the women’s side. They also run a read-aloud program, where prisoners record themselves reading a story, which members then deliver to a young person in that woman’s life, such as a child, niece, or nephew. They also deliver a copy of the book to the child.

When they can hire an employee in the summer through the Canada Summer Jobs program, the group runs a writing program, too. According to Tiffany Gordon, a PhD student at Dalhousie University who ran the writing workshops during the summers of 2017 and 2018, anywhere from five to 10 people would participate, as well as the on-duty guard, on occasion. They produced a zine comprised of writing from the women in Burnside, Words Without Walls, at the end of both summer sessions.

Dalhousie Legal Aid had been donating some of its basement space to Books Beyond Bars since the group’s inception in 2005. The space served different purposes for different groups: it was an open area with someone’s office in the back, and included a spot where law students working with legal aid would meet and work on cases. Books Beyond Bars had bookshelves in varying states of disrepair lining the walls. While the group was grateful for the space they had, they could only access it when the building was open, which meant they needed special approval to come in on weekends.

Nicole Maunsell, who has a master’s degree in library and information studies, got involved with the group in 2016 as a way to keep doing library work while employed in a different field. Her role at Books Beyond Bars is to keep their offsite library organized. In their space at Dalhousie Legal Aid, there were sections for fiction and various subcategories of non-fiction: First Nations and Indigenous studies; texts on religion and spirituality; dictionaries and writing techniques; Black studies; legal books, and books about prisoners’ rights, among others

In February 2019, the group had to find a new home. A building inspection determined the Legal Aid basement wasn’t safe and needed to close, a fate many Halifax organizations have faced before. Books Beyond Bars required a space big enough to hold its sizeable book collection, and accessible enough to make hauling those tomes in and out as easy as possible. After much searching, the group found their solution: a storage locker. With help from community members, they moved their operations into a north end storage facility outfitted with bookcases and decked out with lights and chairs to make it cozy. Once again, members were able to bring books back and forth from the jail.

Books Beyond Bars takes requests, and many that come in are for fiction. But another common request the group receives is for legal books—texts that might help women prepare for their trials.

“We’re an abolitionist organization, and we look at what we do as solidarity work, not charity work,” says Maunsell. She explains that, to the group, solidarity work looks at systems like capitalism, racism, and ableism, and works to resist them.

Even though the group believes in prison abolition, Gordon thinks Books Beyond Bars can still make an impact from within the carceral system.

“If there are programs that women need, we can still go in and facilitate those, because they’re necessary,” she says.

The work Books Beyond Bars does is an exercise in balance: they must work within the system they’re trying to dismantle. When Gordon ran writing workshops, she wouldn’t bring material concerning prison abolition. “It’s just not the right context for that, right? I’m in a jail, the program is conditional,” she says. “I’m not in there to critique the entire system.”

“It’s work that we’re doing for our community because we all believe in it and believe that it’ll make our communities better,” says Maunsell.

As a child born in the early 1980s and raised by 1990s media, TV taught me one thing: cops are not to be trusted. While we are sold the idea of a hard-working and noble institution of policing through the lens of NYPD Blue, Cops, or even Homicide: Life on the Street, the news taught us a different story. Events like the Rodney King riots in 1992 and the 1994 killing of Anthony Baez showed us a face of the force that was getting hard to ignore. It taught us that maybe, possibly, as the popular-in-activist-circles saying goes, “all cops are bastards,” or, A.C.A.B.

A.C.A.B. is an acronym with a spotty origin. Its roots trace back, in part, to 1970s and 1980s British punk culture. Though, it has been taken on by today’s younger activists, its power reclaimed and repurposed to highlight a frustration felt with an unjust force, which many see as overrun with systemic issues including discrimination against people of colour, the lgbtq2s+ community, and homeless and poor people. But how do we pair the sentiment of A.C.A.B. with modern media portrayals of these same systems in action? How do we show cops on screen in times when we’re left to believe A.C.A.B.? And how do A.C.A.B..-believing folks watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine? Because they, we, do. There’s a familiarity amongst the folks that I spoke to about it: they all love it. I myself am an A.C.A.B. person and I watch it on an almost daily basis. It, quite literally, helps me fall asleep every night.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a show airing on NBC, now in its seventh season. It’s a fictional portrayal of cops in a fictional precinct in Brooklyn, New York. The cast itself is a remarkably diverse group: aside from the white male lead of Jake Peralta, prominent characters in the show consist of captain Raymond Holt, a gay, Black man, Rosa Diaz, a Latina bisexual woman, and Amy Santiago, another Latina woman who is central to the series. The show has tackled issues like racial profiling (season 4 episode 16, “Moo Moo”), the #MeToo movement (season 6, episode 8, “He Said, She Said”), stop-and-frisk policing, LGBTQS2S+ struggles, and toxic masculinity. The police handling these issues in this world are caring, decent people, full of warmth and empathy and the ability to wrap up even the most contentious of issues in a short span of time. So, that all being said, my question is: does Brooklyn Nine-Nine exist in an alternate universe? One where A.C.A. not necessarily B?

I asked people who also call themselves A.C.A.B.-believers how they felt about the show, if they watch and enjoy it, and how they felt about their personal politics concerning police and their ability to enjoy a show set entirely within the confines of the police system.

“I guess I’m able to enjoy Brooklyn Nine-Nine the same way I’m able to live under capitalism at all, just vibing with the cognitive dissonance and laughing at the funny jokes,” a fan, who chooses to remain anonymous, told me via Twitter DM. “Imagine if Brooklyn Nine-Nine had flopped and they heard feedback that it was because people won’t put up with shows painting cops in a good, fun, goofy light and they listened to that feedback and made Firefighters Nine-Nine, Social Workers Nine-Nine, People Working in Public Transit Nine-Nine?” they asked.

“I think most Nine-Nine fans areA.C.A.B. because they represent a utopian vision of the police. It’s what A.C.A.B. peeps want police to be,” said another fan. Which I suspect is a popular opinion among the A.C.A.B-except-the-ones-on-Brooklyn Nine-Nine set that imagine a world with cops in it at all.

I can’t deny this. Speaking from my own experience, part of my ability to enjoy Brooklyn Nine-Nine stems from my ability to see it as somehow disconnected from contemporary sociopolitical attitudes towards police in leftist circles. It’s an alternate universe where cops are whimsical and fun, all the while tackling hard issues, working towards bettering the community, instilling trust in large institutions, and ensuring the safety and well-being of the people above all else. Media is largely an escape from the world around us, perilous and terrifying as it is, and we should all be welcome to imagine a world where the institution we are told to trust as children is as well-meaning as we are led to believe then. A world where all cops are there to help, to listen, to not lead with prejudice. What a world that would be.

Illustration by Diana Bolton

Dearest Fellow Millennial,

Self-care is a sham. There. I said it.

Look, I get it. The modern world is an exhausting one. The workday is basically whenever you’re conscious, home ownership and retirement are but a fantasy, and the spectre of global warming lurks around every corner. We’re also everyone’s favourite bad joke: a pack of entitled babies struggling to do what every generation before us has done—and failing at it.

As we cede more and more to our corporate overlords and become increasingly alienated from each other via technology, it’s understandable that we’ve also become desperate for control over something, anything.

And so, we turn inward, buoyed by media personalities, blogs, Instagram, and trendy New Age philosophy. The answer, we’re told, has been inside of us all along, we just needed to accept it. We are encouraged to distance ourselves from the problems facing those around us and to focus in on our own lives, the state of which is due to our own negative thought processes and poor decision making. We participate in a relentless drive for self-improvement—to become fitter and healthier, to purchase the right ethical products, to read the right books, to stay hydrated—to choose happiness.

But here’s the thing: this push for self-improvement is setting us up for failure.
It creates a need for perfection, for “self-optimization”—a journey without end, and one that will inevitably be disappointing because we, as human beings, are messy and imperfect. It makes us believe that happiness is a tangible thing in our control rather than merely the byproduct of meaningful activity, something that can be sought after and attained like an item at the store.

It also sets up unhealthy comparisons between us and those around us, enabled by the false perfections of social media, creating a void that can only be filled by more and more consumption: more fitness fads, more diets, more self-help guides, more expensive mindfulness classes. It pathologizes sedentary behaviour—sadness, illness, depression,
or anything remotely human—as something bad, something standing in the way of endless productivity.

And perhaps, most importantly, it makes us privilege ourselves over our communities, turning us away from larger systemic concerns and assigning personal blame for our inability to accept things the way that they are.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this cultural shift towards self-care and away from the needs of the community has endangered civil society, creating an erosion of empathy. Citizens complaining about amber alerts, the friction between pedestrians and drivers, the souring relationships between renters and landlords—these are just some examples, but they are part and parcel of a larger philosophy that positions personal comfort and convenience over the welfare of others. Self-care has slowly eroded into selfishness, and it’s a zero-sum game, creating a world where no one person is happy or safe.

We have become so self-absorbed, so apathetic, that we continue to ignore the bigger, more pressing systemic issues, or to stand up to a political status quo that continues to go unchallenged and perhaps isn’t working. We assume that the best we can do is take control of our own lives when we forget how much control we have over the world around us, how much we can accomplish when we just turn up.

So, yes, the world is currently a garbage fire. And maybe the best way to put it out isn’t to drink more water, but to grab a bucket.

Yours in Empathy,

JP Larocque

Inside Vernal Small’s tailor shop, Jamall Caribbean Custom Tailor, near Eglinton and Oakwood. Photos by Sharine Taylor

Living in Toronto means I’m not too far from Jamaica. Not because geography affords proximity, but because the presence of the diaspora has made itself known. Over 200,330 people of Jamaican descent reside in Toronto alone, and that’s evident by the countless restaurants, small businesses, specialty shops, and grocery stores that populate the city. Though people who have migrated from the island have settled all over the country, in the 1970s during a heavy period of migration from the Caribbean, select pockets of neighbourhoods in Toronto were concentrated with people from the region. One of those neighbourhoods was Little Jamaica.

For a few months, when I was around seven years old, I lived right off Trethewey Drive, a street in Toronto’s west end, inside a low-rise, yellow-brick apartment with my mom, aunt, and cousin. Every other weekend, my aunt would drag us to Eglington Avenue West to get her nails and hair done, and over time it became my favourite spot to grab pan chicken cooked in the recognizable repurposed oil drums just like back home. The Little Jamaica community, which stretches from Eglinton Avenue West and Keele Street to Eglinton Avenue West and Marlee Avenue, was known for its vibrant Caribbean community and the proudly Black-owned businesses that once lined its streets. However, due to the almost eight-year, ongoing construction of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, with aims to make travelling between the east and west end of the city easier, the area has been subject to a decline in business, and questions about the preservation of cultural heritage and legacy are being raised.

I began thinking about preservation and archiving. How many first-gens who share complicated hyphenated identities have to explore the histories of where they come from outside our home and native land, have to do so of their own accord, even if those seemingly distant histories are deeply bound up in the Canadian experience. Canada’s 1955 West Indian Domestic Scheme? The Jamaican Maroons in Nova Scotia during 1796? Those histories exist outside of our educational curriculums, and if we’re not aware of our own stories, whose job will it be to pass these narratives on to the generations that come after us?

Last summer, I was granted an opportunity to add to the ways we chronicle our histories. Fabienne Colas, a Montreal-based Haitian actress, asked, “What does it mean to be Black in Canada?” Through the Being Black in Canada program, run through her self-titled foundation, she gave emerging and first-time film directors an opportunity to explore what those answers could be. There was an unshakeable sense of urgency that made me want to focus on Little Jamaica, which had rapidly turned into a neighbourhood that was in a perpetual state of uneasiness and erasure.

I didn’t anticipate my film, Tallawah Abroad: Remembering Little Jamaica, becoming a project that consumed me in the ways that it did. Not because filmmaking was a daunting and challenging feat, but because I knew that, beyond filming, the people who lived, worked, had families, and were part of this community still had to contend with their realities. Despite documenting what this neighbourhood looked like two summers away from its scheduled completion date, people still had rent to pay, people still had mouths to feed, people still needed to survive. The almost eight-year task that has been creating an extended LRT line has entirely depleted the character of a community. What will be left of what we’d made of that space beyond a mural, a stationary roadside plaque, and the renaming of a back alley to Reggae Lane? In the eight months since I’ve filmed, shops have closed, lives have changed, and an important pillar of the community—Ronald “Jimmy” Ashford Wisdom—has died.

This all made me begin to think more about who gets archived in the collective Canadian, or even Toronto, memory. Whose cultural legacy and heritage are etched into our public and national consciousness? Canada touts diversity, by virtue of its immigration policies and the many Black people and people of colour who benefit from them, as its biggest asset. But it simply sees diversity as something to be achieved, a checkmark made to signify completion—and little thought is reserved for thinking about how and what diversity looks like in practice, beyond nation building or adding onto the national mythology. When we’re no longer of use for domestic labour, seasonal agricultural work, or any other surface reasons, are we not still worthy of being remembered?

I’ve discerned that much of the Black experience historically has been living in transit. We were kidnapped from the continent and brought to foreign land by force, through blood, and over hills and valleys too. We seem to be forever engaged in a never ending race towards freedom both literally and metaphorically. And this hasn’t changed from our contemporary realities as we come to know them through the plights and familiar stories of our migration. Though we may leave any area we’re in for an array of reasons, we seem to be a restless people, always running towards or away from something, but always with the ability to recreate home in the most innovative ways. Is it cruel irony that in the case of Little Jamaica, a transit line largely for other people is prioritized over our own sense of belonging? Perhaps.

I realized the process of etching who we are and what we’ve done into a collective national imagination is a bank of knowledge that is to be created by our own hands and powered by our own voices. I mean, who can tell the story of the paradoxical Black experience better than us? We’re made to feel both hyper visible and invisible. Our community is everywhere, but nowhere. We are known and unknown, and maybe that aspect of our identity makes us unique.

Perhaps Canada shouldn’t rest on its diversity and multicultural laurels too much if it means we don’t actively preserve the cultural legacies of the people who colour the nation. When the people who have been responsible for documenting the history of this nation are not intent on honouring the lives of people who have contributed to its tapestry, they take away from the possibilities and power of what could become should those stories be heard. The table’s big enough, and we should have a seat too.