Bøger udgivet af Baraka Books

It's October 1970 in Montreal, Quebec. Nadine is a trade unionist with the garment-workers union. Twenty years earlier in 1950, at the age of 15, she was banished to a home for unwed mothers. Her baby daughter, whose father is shrouded in secrecy, was given away for adoption without her permission. This prompts her to cut all ties with her mixed Irish and French-Canadian Catholic family whose past is cluttered with secrets, betrayals, incest and violence. She vows one day she will reunite with her daughter. Following the FLQ kidnapping of a British Trade Commissioner and the Quebec Minister of Labour, Ottawa proclaims the War Measures Act and sends the army into Quebec. These staggering political events lay the foundation for a reunion between Nadine and her daughter Lisette, embittered after been bounced from one foster home to another since she was a baby. Lisette and her partner Serge, who is close to the FLQ, need money and see Nadine as a possible source based on information they've gathered about Nadine's family. World Wars I and II, the Great Depression, and the 1970 October crisis provide the backdrop to this family saga spanning some 60 years. Murielle Cyr breaks new ground by telling The Daughters' Story, an unsung, overlooked but intensely passionate tale of women, propelled by their unquenchable need to belong despite oppressive conditions hard to imagine nowadays, and who manage to survive and thrive.

We're never quite sure what made Chloe take a flight to an unnamed country in South America. There she lives in self-imposed exile following a suicide attempt. This series of short vignettes provides a glimpse of Chloe's scattered thoughts as she attempts to adjust to life in a new setting and recover from her depressive episode. Amidst the quirky observational humor of her internal monologue, a story of loneliness emerges as she tries (for the most part unsuccessfully) to form meaningful connections with the people she meets-and does her best to avoid-in her new surroundings. At times biting and sarcastic, at times beautiful and reflective, this debut novel takes an intimate look at depression, with a sharp and witty narrator who rides the line between self-aware and self-deprecating.

Mathieu Poulin brings us an action comedy of a novel, starring big-budget, explosion-happy movie director Michael Bay. What if Bay were, against all odds, a misunderstood genius right up there with the likes of Plato, Sartre, and Nietzsche? What if his films were more than just Baydiocre, high-grossing box-office successes held in low esteem by most movie critics? What if Bad Boys was a film about decolonization? What if The Rock was about failing to be recognized by one's peers? If Armageddon was about a post-human future? And Pearl Harbor was a reflection on the freedom afforded an artist when striving to transform fact into fiction? Poulin takes his hypothesis and runs with it. Bayhem ensues as our leading man sets out in hot pursuit of the truth, finding more questions than answers between epic car chases and sexy love interests. Who are his real parents and why did they abandon him? Who keeps following him? Did someone intentionally try to poison him, aware of his deathly allergy to sesame? And most importantly: What is meaning?

Diagnosed with incurable cancer in 2009 with a maximum six-year life expectancy, the author chronicles her journey through traditional and alternative treatments to complete remission. Without rejecting traditional treatment (i.e., chemo or radio therapies), she refused to be an object to be treated by others. Though initially terrified, she was able to move on, insisting on knowing what was going on and why, which required research, adventure (trips to other countries), sadness, humour, serenity, and some very surprising "e;alternatives,"e; including self-hypnosis, determining the emotional causes of her lymphoma, working with a medium, and the essential need for laughter and hope. Her roadmap could be described as interactive, since newly-diagnosed cancer patients overwhelmed by their situation can adapt her approach to their lives.

As a third-generation logger, a life in the bush is all Joe Adler has ever known. He works, he hunts; he provides. But when a man dies on his watch and his wife abandons their young family for writing school in Toronto, Joe must face the consequences of his hard-living ways. Left alone to care for his seven-year-old daughter, he enlists the help of Jenny Lacroix, the wife of the man whose death he might be responsible for. Resentful and angry, and his conscience over Jenny's husband far from clear, Joe threatens to spiral down the path of fury, booze, and violence that did his father in. What follows is a stunning tale of love and redemption, hatred and forgiveness, set amid the desolate cutovers, crystalline lakes, and rolling black spruce forests north of Lake Superior, and in a small logging town called Black River, once mighty and now derelict, in its final throes of existence. Things Worth Burying is a novel set in a region that is rarely written about-the small resource-based communities that exist along the Trans-Canada Highway and its tributaries, from Sault Ste. Marie to Thunder Bay, the land north of Superior, a land of miners and loggers living a life in the bush-making ends meet, and making do with the rise and fall of market economies that determine so much of their fate. Drawing upon his Northern Ontario upbringing, Mayr brings us a single story pulled from a working-class people who in the face of disappearing jobs and shrinking populations make the difficult choice to stay because the land, the life, is in their blood.

When President Barack Obama demanded formally in the summer of 2011 that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down, it was not the first time Washington had sought regime change in Damascus. The United States had waged a long war against Syria from the very moment the country's fiercely independent Arab nationalist movement-of which Assad and his father Hafez al-Assad were committed devotees-came to power in 1963. Washington sought to purge Arab nationalist influence from the Syrian state and the Arab world more broadly because it was a threat to its agenda of establishing global primacy and promoting business-friendly investment climates for US banks, investors and corporations throughout the world. Arab nationalists aspired to unify the world's 400 million Arabs into a single super-state capable of challenging United States hegemony in West Asia and North Africa and becoming a major player on the world stage free from the domination of the former colonial powers and the US. Washington had waged long wars on the leaders of the Arab nationalist movement-Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, Iraq's Saddam, Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, and Syria's Assads, often allying with particularly violent forms of political Islam to undermine its Arab nationalist foes. By 2011, only one pan-Arabist state remained in the region-Syria. In Washington's Long War on Syria Stephen Gowans examines the decades-long struggle between secular Arab nationalism, political Islam, and United States imperialism for control of Syria, the self-proclaimed Den of Arabism, and last secular pan-Arabist state in the region.

Including material and photographs not included in most of the 100 other books about the champion, Ishmael Reed's The Complete Muhammad Ali is more than just a biography-it is a fascinating portrait of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. An honest, balanced portrayal of Ali, the book includes voices that have been omitted from other books. It charts Ali's evolution from Black Nationalism to a universalism, but does not discount the Nation of Islam and Black Nationalism's important influence on his intellectual development. Filipino American author Emil Guillermo speaks about how "e;The Thrilla' In Manila"e; brought the Philippines into the 20th century. Fans of Muhammad Ali, boxing fans, and those interested in modern African American history and the Nation of Islam will be fascinated by this biography by an accomplished American author.

At a time when austerity is claimed by some to be the only answer to today's economic woes, a close look at the best practices used in Scandinavia is edifying. Decision makers everywhere dispose of ample evidence showing that social determinants have an impact on health and wellbeing. Yet governments develop policies that diverge enormously. Scandinavian countries are often cited as models for their egalitarian social and health policies but are also known to have thriving economies where the gap dividing rich from poor is smaller than elsewhere. Despite quasi mythic status, these policies aimed to combat inequalities in health are neither well known or understood. Policies discussed in Scandinavian Common Sense include education, housing, conciliation of work and family life, daycare, sustainable development and more. For these policies to be part of political debate, be it in Quebec, Canada, the United States or elsewhere, they must be in the public domain. That is the purpose of this book.

The Morrin Centre is at the heart of Quebec City's history. It once housed Quebec's common jail, the Presbyterian-run Morrin College, and the scholarly activities of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec. Today, it is home to the city's main English-language cultural center and library. The colorful stories of each of these institutions reveal unknown aspects of the tumultuous history of Quebec's capital city and bring some of its forgotten characters back to life. This book takes you from the dark prison cells on the building's ground floor to the stately library and college classrooms above it. Did you know that Quebec's first French-language novelist, Philippe Aubert de Gaspe, did time in the jail, that Morrin College admitted women on equal terms with men some sixty years before Universite Laval, or that the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec helped establish Canada's National Archives?

Before the Davie Crockets, the Daniel Boones and Jim Bridgers, the French had pushed far west and north establishing trade and kin networks across the continent. They founded settlements that would become great cities such as Detroit, Saint Louis, and New Orleans, but their history has been largely buried or relegated to local lore or confined to Quebec. In this seminal work, Foxcurran, Bouchard, and Malette scrutinize primary sources and uncover the alliances between early French settlers and voyagers and the indigenous nations.

The Anti-Gallic Letters by Adam Thom was published in 1836 based on Thom's editorials in Montreal Herald written under the pseudonym "e;Camillus"e; in the previous two years. They were never reprinted, despite their importance and above all for the people for whom Thom was the public voice. More than an anti-French, anti-Republican tract, The Anti-Gallic Letters are crucial to understanding how British North America mutated into the Dominion of Canada in 1867.

With war raging in Europe, the Allies worried about advances being made by Germans scientists. The British wanted to get a jump ahead of Hitler and the physicists working for the Third Reich. England was too close to the enemy, so they decided to secretly establish a nuclear research laboratory in Montreal. The best scientists moved to Montreal with two goals in mind: develop an ultra-powerful bomb and find a new source of energy. What started as cooperation with the Americans instead became a race to harness the energy of the atom when Washington launched the Manhattan project. Montreal and the Bomb breathes new life into the exhilarating saga of European scientists secretly developing a strategic nuclear laboratory in the halls of the Universite de Montreal. It's a story peopled by leading figures of modern physics, bold chemists, and scientists accused of spying. The one idea driving them is to master the atom, whatever the result may be.

Alfred Thomas Wood was nothing and everything. One hundred years before the Hollywood film The Great Impostor, Wood, the Great Absquatulator, roved through the momentous mid-19th century events from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to New England, Liberia, Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, Canada, the U.S. Mid-West, and the South. An Oxford-educated preacher in Maine and Boston, he claimed to be a Cambridge-educated doctor of divinity in Liberia, whereas neither University admitted black students then. He spent 18 months in an English prison. In Hamburg in 1854, he published a history of Liberia in German. Later, in Montreal, he claimed to have been Superintendent of Public Works in Sierra Leone. He served the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois as an Oxford-educated DD, then toiled in post-Civil War Tennessee as a Cambridge-trained MD. People who knew him couldn't wait to forget him. In his Foreword, Rapper Webster (Aly Ndiaye) compares Wood to a mid-19th-century Forrest Gump but also to Malcolm X, before Malcolm became political.

Contracting surrogate mothers is no longer marginal. Nor is it secret. Surrogacy is growing rapidly even though no informed debate on the social impacts of its normalization has been conducted. It is even regarded as socially progressive, while those who question it are considered to be opposed to progress. The "e;surrogacy process"e;-commissioning a woman to bear and give birth to a child and then surrender it-is vitiated by its contractual nature, be it in its so-called altruistic form (i.e., no exchange of money) or the straight-forward commercial form. It is an attack on the human dignity and equal gender rights of surrogate mothers, but also a denial of the rights of the contracted child to come, who is so often forgotten in the "e;process."e; Current inconsistent or contradictory legislation has led to a fait accompli approach to the question. It's being done, so let's just regulate it, say its defenders. Other countries that have followed that logic have seen an increase in both demand for surrogates and recourse to shrewd international brokers. In many cases, international simply means the surrogate mother is from a poor country with lax legislation, while the commissioning parents are from rich countries. By examining the "e;surrogacy process"e; and all its implications, Maria De Koninck reaches the conclusion that the best way forward is an international ban on surrogacy.

The next installment in the series, this book follows the young, 17th-century explorer Pierre-Esprit Radisson from North America to France and back, with plenty of excitement along the wayAfter spending two years with his new Iroquois family, Radisson es

This book focuses on the lives and works of two of the very first women of European American ancestry to practice architecture in North America during the 19th century. Mother Joseph du Sacre-Coeur, a Sister of Providence--born Esther Pariseau, in St. Elzear, Quebec--is credited with works built in the present states of Washington, Idaho, Montana, northern Oregon, and in the province of British Columbia. For her contributions, Mother Joseph was honored by the State of Washington as one of two people to represent it in the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington, DC. Louise Blanchard Bethune designed and built works in the Buffalo, New York area. Storming the Old Boys' Citadel follows the evolving histories of two Revival-styled multiuse public buildings considered to be these women's major works. Listed on the United States' National Register of Historic Places, they have both continued to function, with extensive additions and other changes made to each architect's original structure, for the communities where their architects lived. The book addresses issues of lost or hidden North American history.

Quebec's Eastern Townships are home to a higher concentration of artists than anywhere else in Canada. With his starting and finishing point being Frederick Coburn (1871--1960), arguably Canada's best-known painter at the peak of his career, author Nick Fonda sets out to revisit his work and provide new insights and facts into Coburn's life and surroundings. To better understand the man, he also introduces other accomplished artists living and working in the same area-not all landscape painters-who have followed quite unusual paths as they responded to the same muse that moved Coburn a century ago. Based on interviews with neighbors and Coburn aficionados and Nick Fonda's own thorough understanding of the milieu in which Coburn grew up, lived, and worked, Hanging Fred and a Few Others is a lively and fascinating story of an important artist but also a reflection on the role of place-the Eastern Townships-in an artist's life. In addition to being a biography of Coburn, Nick Fonda's book provides brief biographical sketches of other artists including Minnie Gill, Denis Palmer, Mary Martin, Stuart Main, France Jodoin, and Kevin Sonmor.

It's spring, 1963 in the "e;Nickel Capital of the World."e; Nineteen-year-old Jake McCool is about to undergo a rite of passage--his first shift underground in a hard rock mine. But the Cold War is at its height, and Jake is also about to become a reluctant participant in a bitter interunion battle fueled by the global struggle between two ideologies in the wake of the Second World War. So is his girlfriend, Jo Ann Winters. Together the couple are swept up in a web of intrigue; at its center is a terrible secret that will haunt their relationship for the rest of their lives, as their hometown becomes not only one of the world's greatest hard rock mining centers, but also the epicenter of the Cold War in North America. In this fast-paced novel set against the little-known historical backdrop of a true-life battle that included vicious beatings, riots, and worse, author Mick Lowe posits a provocative premise: that the U.S. government sponsored a ruthless covert operation to destabilize a strategic community in the heartland of its closest ally, Canada.

Somewhere between the Sumida River, the Tsukiji fish market, and a contemporary art gallery, Vincent returns from Montreal to Tokyo, where his lover has passed away in tragic circumstances. So begins a sensual and disturbing tale of love and grief, of foxes, artists, and taxidermy.

The fate of North America was sealed on the Plains of Abraham. France and England, historical enemies, faced off in September 1759 Quebec. In this beautifully illustrated album, new light is cast on that decisive battle and on the second but little known battle of 1760, and their legacy.

A serial killer is stalking the streets of Montreal, killing people apparently at random. Gilles and Annie team up to uncover the clues that link all the crimes and ultimately to solve them.

An atmospheric exploration of passivity, loyalty, and literature in times of political upheaval. Firmly entrenched in the literary milieu of the era, this novel carries the reader through shell-shocked streets with suspense and intrigue.

Visceral, surprising and surreal, these twelve stories from David Clerson move from the charged darkness of the woods to the urban underground, while characters set a course to see out the night.

In this hard-hitting anthology, Ishmael Reed and Carla Blank have invited a diverse group of informed and accomplished writers, both women and men, who are rarely heard to comment on the long-standing bigotry on Broadway towards many different ethnic minorities.

It's 1963 Jean-Yves Soucy is 18 and dreams of being a fire warden scanning the boreal forest from a fire tower. But he ends up at an equipment depot. To his delight he is located near the Cree community of Waswanipi. With two Cree guides, including a man named William Saganash, he will be canoeing through the lakes and rivers of the region.

This haunting novel, which unfolds across three timelines set in as many decades, takes the reader on a dark journey through the minds of three women whose pasts, presents and futures are decided by a single encounter on a scorching summer afternoon.

The Paddle Steamer Royal William, built in the Port of Quebec, steamed across the Atlantic from Pictou, Nova Scotia, to Portsmouth, England in 1833. That was the first transatlantic crossing under steam. Ships from the US and Holland have challenged her right to the title. This book shows that the PS Royal William's claim is valid.

It's a long way from a basement apartment in a Montreal suburb to a new life on a fictional planet, but that's the destination our unnamed narrator has set his sights on, bringing readers with him on an off-beat and often hilarious journey.

For Sadia Messaili, the suicide of her son, who emigrated to Canada with his family at the age of 12, is the starting point in this moving and challenging quest for truth about our failing mental-health system, justice, and above all better ways to rekindle hope for people suffering mental illness and for their families.