Addy S Race

Addy has worn hearing aids for as long as she can remember. Her mother tells her this makes her special, but now that Addy's in grade six, she'd wants to be special for what she's done. When Addy joins the school running club to keep her best friend, Lucy, company, she discovers she is a gifted runner. Lucy isn't, which is problematic. Further troubles surface when Addy gets paired on a school project with Sierra, a smart, self-assured new classmate who wears a cochlear implant. Addy is surprised to discover hearing loss is all they have in common-and a shared disability is not enough of a foundation for a friendship. True friends support each other, even if they have different passions and dreams. More importantly, Addy comes to understand that she is defined by more than her hearing loss. She has the power to choose how people will see her, and she does.

Biological races do not exist—and never have. This view is shared by all scientists who study variation in human populations. Yet racial prejudice and intolerance based on the myth of race remain deeply ingrained in Western society. In his powerful examination of a persistent, false, and poisonous idea, Robert Sussman explores how race emerged as a social construct from early biblical justifications to the pseudoscientific studies of today. The Myth of Race traces the origins of modern racist ideology to the Spanish Inquisition, revealing how sixteenth-century theories of racial degeneration became a crucial justification for Western imperialism and slavery. In the nineteenth century, these theories fused with Darwinism to produce the highly influential and pernicious eugenics movement. Believing that traits from cranial shape to raw intelligence were immutable, eugenicists developed hierarchies that classified certain races, especially fair-skinned “Aryans,” as superior to others. These ideologues proposed programs of intelligence testing, selective breeding, and human sterilization—policies that fed straight into Nazi genocide. Sussman examines how opponents of eugenics, guided by the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas’s new, scientifically supported concept of culture, exposed fallacies in racist thinking. Although eugenics is now widely discredited, some groups and individuals today claim a new scientific basis for old racist assumptions. Pondering the continuing influence of racist research and thought, despite all evidence to the contrary, Sussman explains why—when it comes to race—too many people still mistake bigotry for science.

How can Canadian educators begin to instill cultural sensitivity and social awareness in elementary and secondary school students? This vital text attempts to answer that question by bringing together literacy scholars and practicing teachers in a unique cross-Canadian exploration of children’s literature and social justice. Through reflection on the experience of teaching with various Canadian texts including picture books, novels, and graphic novels, the contributors behind Challenging Stories create a “pedagogy of discomfort” that will encourage both educators and their students to develop critical literacy skills. The compelling contributions to this collection highlight the complexities of teaching with texts that address issues of discrimination, historical marginalization, colonialism, racial and gender intolerance, sexual orientation, language, and cultural diversity. The authors offer first-hand insight into the possibilities and challenges of implementing curricular and pedagogical changes to promote equity and social justice in the classroom. Featuring the stories of participating teachers and an annotated bibliography of children’s literature, this invaluable resource will prove to be essential reading for current and future educators.

Lori Lansens became one of Canada’s most sought after writers more than a year before her internationally heralded first book, Rush Home Road, would see publication in April 2002. So immediately and passionately was her novel embraced that it was already front-page arts news back in April 2001. Knopf Canada was the first publisher to buy this extraordinary debut novel, but just before the 2001 London Book Fair, Little, Brown US bought the rest of the world rights for a major six-figure sum (for Rush Home Road and the author's yet-to-be-written second novel), and rights have now been sold in numerous countries. The Globe and Mail reported the record-breaking news with full, front-page coverage, and Little, Brown International Rights Director Linda Biagi found herself talking of nothing else in London; she sold Rush Home Road to a further 9 territories with the manuscript still unedited. Biagi likened the book to some of the most important literary achievements of our time, saying, “It’s as if John Irving had written The Color Purple.” Louise Dennys, the Executive Publisher of Knopf Canada, describes it as “a novel of startling beauty and great heart that will immediately find a place within that small, special tribe of books beloved by readers the world over.” The untold story of the descendants of the Underground Railroad Heartbreaking and wise, Rush Home Road tells the life story of Adelaide Shadd, who finds redemption in old age, and Sharla, a five-year-old mixed race girl abandoned to Addy’s care by her white mother. Born in the first decade of the 20th century in Rusholme (inspired by the real town of Buxton), in southwestern Ontario, an all-black community settled by fugitive slaves, Addy Shadd is raped as a teenager and forced to flee the family home. She makes her way on foot to Detroit, where she becomes the housekeeper for an elderly man and his grown son, both of whom develop a crush on her. When misfortune strikes again, she sets off to make a new life for herself in Canada. Thrown off the train at Keating, not far from her birthplace, she meets and eventually marries the train porter, the wonderful Mose, with whom she has a daughter. But when tragedy strikes, Addy is left alone. Now an old woman, she lives a quiet existence in a trailer park near Chatham. Her whole world changes when a young mother asks her to babysit her daughter, as it soon becomes clear that the mother is never coming back. Addy is glad of the company, but not sure if she’s up to the job of mothering this sweet, awkward five-year-old. Nor is she sure how much longer she’ll be around to do so. How she manages is part of the story of this brilliantly captivating novel. Written with verve, grace and unflinching emotional acuity, Rush Home Road is an epic story that explodes our notions of identity, justice, and heroism, penetrating one of our darkest periods with profound insight and humanity. Addy Shadd is a protagonist like no other -- full of quiet, steely bravery and tenderness of heart. This spellbinding novel will leave no reader untouched.

Famously referred to as the "cradle of globalization," the Indian Ocean has received increasing attention from scholars. However, few have examined the 'human' dimensions of the ocean. In this volume, historians, geographers, anthropologists and literary analysts each address a specific human factor in Indian Ocean exchanges.