It’s April again, which means it’s time for all of Canada to read the same eBook again time again. For those of you not in the know, One eRead Canada is when The Canadian Urban Libraries Council / Conseil des Bibliothèques Urbaines du Canada (CULC/CBUC) selects one book and makes it available simultaneously in English and French to all libraries that want to participate. Since they’re electronic formats, everyone reading this post on day one can go to ((((Overdrive or Hoopla)))) and instantly borrow it without having to wait.
We have a physical edition if you need the feeling of dead trees in your hands and dinosaurs burning in your gas tank to pick it up. This year’s book can be read and listened to in its original French, and anglophones like myself can read a copy translated into English. Sorry, English-speaking audiobook lovers. CULC always selects a Canadian author, so joining in the reading makes supporting Canadian content easy. Just read the One eRead Canada book and join the discussion and interviews. The English interview will be on CBC on April 23rd at 7 pm, and the French interview will be the next day, April 24th at 7 pm on Radio-Canada.
Outside of the post’s title, I’ve avoided mentioning this year’s book so far. Was that a Valid way to introduce it?1 Chris Bergeron’s genre-bending speculative fiction, set in a dystopian version of Montreal in 2025, follows a seventy-year-old trans woman as she relates her life story to a powerful AI. Christelle lived her life as a man because, in this world, being trans goes beyond being persecuted by people who can’t mind their own business; it’s illegal.2
The book is auto-fiction, a genre I’ve not had much experience with, but for the uninitiated, that means the author fictionalizes their own life story. Perhaps this is why the book spends more time in the early 2000s up to today than it does in the futuristic, sci-fi setting. So don’t let the sci-fi elements scare you off if that’s not your thing. And especially, don’t let the trans elements scare you off; they’re an integral part of the story, and what is fiction for if not learning about the experiences of others. The more people read and begin learning to understand others who are different, the less likely Christelle’s future is. Fair warning: the book has no chapters, so those like me, prone to thinking3 ‘I’ll just read to the end of the chapter,’ will have some issues.
So you read Valid, participate in the discussion in your chosen language, and something in the book resonated with you. You’re trans and want more books like it. You aren’t trans, but it’s opened your eyes to what trans people go through, and you want to expand your horizons further. Autofiction is your new favourite genre. Chris Bergeron has you covered. That link takes you to a curated list of items by the author of Valid, many of which are on our shelves.
For this post, I’d like to highlight 3 items by two authors, specifically keeping things Canadian, in honour of this being one eRead Canada.
First, I cheat by using an author on the list but not the specific item: From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea by Kai Cheng Thom. After reading Valid, which covers some heavy topics and isn’t always an easy read, it might be nice to sit down with a simple picture book that tells a beautiful tale of acceptance of yourself and others.
Miu Lan is a shapeshifter; they can be anything they want to be and are happiest when they can freely make that choice. However, other children in school find it difficult to relate to a child who can be a boy, a girl, a shooting star, or a fish, just to name a few options. Miu Lan’s mother always supports their mercurial nature, and eventually, they find it in themselves to be who they want to be in front of their peers and find acceptance when they do. Given the nature of the world, is this perhaps too easy of an ending for the child? Some of the Goodreads reviews think so, but to that, I say this is what the world should be and there’s nothing wrong with fiction reflecting that.
The other Kai Cheng Thom book is I Hope We Choose Love. A collection of poetry and essays reflecting on social activism movements today. If nonfiction is more your thing, this is the book in the post for you. It’s still not the book from the list, that’s Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir, but we don’t have a copy of that one.
The final book for this post is Dandelion Daughter by Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay. This is another autofiction book following Gabrielle’s childhood in rural Quebec. Her parent’s marriage falls apart when she’s young, and to make matters worse, she doesn’t know she’s a she’s a she at this point in her life. That discovery doesn’t happen until her adolescence, and certain events force her to realize that she must transition and be her true self. I can see why this one would resonate with Chris Bergeron, and I wonder if the two authors are friends or at least acquaintances.
That’s it for me this month, enjoy taking part in One eRead Canada. I’ll be back in May with a scheduled post written while I’m out of the country. If you’ve followed my post history, that should hint at what it’s about.
1 Sorry, not sorry.
2 This might hit too close to home for some readers.
3 Multiple times
