Books & Book Reviews

Filed under: Books & Book Reviews

Quoting Sue Carter Flinn, reviewing Anna Quon’s new book “Migration Songs” for The Coast:

Anna Quon’s debut novel Migration Songs is a hopeful sign for Atlantic Canadian literature moving beyond the traditional rural stories and recognizing that we don’t all share the same history. Though Quon’s Halifax is a blur—this is really a story about the interior life and struggles of Joan, a jobless 30-year-old loner, who feels out of place in this world: “Inside I am dark and shady, like a copper beech, rattling its leaves in the breeze.” Joan’s fragility is protected by matronly Hungarian neighbour Edna, Joan’s British father, David, a staunch Mao supporter, and her mother Gillian, a Chinese-Canadian immigrant. Quon has already mastered the power of restraint, shrinking her character down in size, quietly living in the shadow of her parents and their stories. A strong debut from a new hopeful voice.

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Read more of Sue Carter Flinn’s great articles

And please…

Buy Anna’s awesome book

Then…

Read all Irked posts tagged “Anna Quon”

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Filed under: Books & Book Reviews, Campaign Watch

Quoting a recent announcement written by editor Susan Burch, Ph.D., published on the History of Disabilty listserv:

On behalf of the advisory board and our publisher (Facts on File), I am pleased to announce the release of the first historical encyclopedia of disability in America. The 3-volume “Encyclopedia of American Disability History” showcases nearly 800 subject entries and includes more than 350 authors. A wide array of primary sources, including letters, interviews, paintings, newspaper clippings, photographs, cartes des visites, pamphlets, speeches, laws, song lyrics, and literary works complement many of the articles. The extensive chronology of significant events in American disability history extends from the colonial period to present day. Throughout the volumes, breakout quotes from “common folks” offer insights into daily lives that typically have remained in the margins of historical study. The bibliography includes hundreds of books, articles, and documents, as well as sections on electronic resources: CDs, DVDs, videorecordings, and Web sites. A digitized version of the encyclopedia will be available in several months. We hope that you will find this a useful tool and encourage institutions, organizations, and libraries to order copies of it. Most major booksellers are offering the encyclopedia. You may also visit the publisher’s website by clicking here. This encyclopedia simply could not have been completed without the hundreds of talented and generous contributors. We offer our deep thanks to everyone who participated in this project.

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NOTE: If you live in Canada, you can buy this historic book AND help support Irked Magazine! We hope you’ll do just that…

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Filed under: Books & Book Reviews

To read a truly beautiful excerpt from Migration Songs, a new novel by Anna Quon, click here (PDF).

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According to Anna’s official website:

It’s well and truly September and the world is starting to show its straggly side, as though it’s been turned inside out. Lots of goldenrod, cicadas and leaves falling. The world is going beautifully bald. I’m getting ready for my poetry workshops for women with disabilities, for the book tour, and trying to start another novel… which is about like I imagine breastfeeding to be…at times lovely, at others painful, unending and occassionally mind numbing. Let me know if there is another, better way…

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And according to her official Twitter account…

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Purchase Migration Songs here and here!

Click here to read Anna’s awesome Irked essays!

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Filed under: Books & Book Reviews

Quoting beavertonvalleytimes.com:

Some kids beg not to go to school. Beaverton mom Marjie Braun Knudsen knows this struggle all too well. Of her four children, two have dealt with issues related to social anxiety. That’s why she partnered with Dr. Jenne R. Henderson, a children’s psychologist, to write the book, “BRAVE: Be Ready and Victory’s Easy.” The book follows a fictional fifth-grader named Danny as he deals with his own trials of social anxiety and models coping strategies to make life seem a lot less overwhelming. Knudsen says she decided to write the book—which came out last year—because when her daughter was struggling with similar issues, she didn’t find any resources that met her needs . . . After realizing that she wanted to write the book, Knudsen starting talking with Henderson, her children’s doctor, about co-authoring the story. They spent several months going through the draft, switching off writing duties almost sentence by sentence (luckily, they have similar writing voices). After the book was completed, they shopped it around to various publishers, who told them to change aspects of the completed book. The authors decided to go a different route. “We realized that if we wanted it to stay how we wanted it, we’d have to publish it ourselves,” Knudsen says.

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“BRAVE” is now available at:

Powell’s

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

& summertimepress.com

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Filed under: Themes, Wheelchairman of the Board, Books & Book Reviews

GaryPresley.com

Twenty years or so ago, my boss built a wonderfully elaborate McMansion near a small fishing pond at the edge of town where we lived then. He loved to walk out after a stressful day, toss in a line, and then toss back the little bluegills or perch that he caught.

I only visited his house once. It was built with a stepped entrance, and I didn’t enjoy the hassle of carrying a ramp. The time I did visit I noticed every bathroom door was 24-inches wide. I wondered aloud, and probably not in a polite way, where he intended to shower, shave, and … if he or his wife broke a leg or were otherwise disabled, even temporarily.

And two decades later, I now have the same problem—and with a house built in 2006! It boggles the mind that contractors continue to build homes without at least one ground level entrance and with bathroom doors wide enough for wheelchairs. It would add no significant cost. Actually, I believe it could be done for the same investment.

Modification for wheelchair access is a different story, probably 10,000 different stories paged with dollar bills even if a person finds a sophisticated contractor. But we are underway, and the house will soon have a ramped front entrance; a patio-door-level deck and ramp-to-surface at the back; a 36-inch door in the second bathroom where a 24-inch now resides; and a true roll-in shower.

Read this post on garypresley.com >>

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Order Gary’s phenomenal book Seven Wheelchairs: A Life Beyond Polio:

Amazon.ca (Irked fundraiser!)

Borders

The University of Iowa Press

Amazon.com

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Filed under: Themes, Blind Visionaries, Books & Book Reviews

If you are in New York on September 10th (i.e. Thursday from 6-8 pm), please join award-winning photographer Jed Fielding at Andrea Meislin Gallery for the opening of his new exhibition Look at me: Photographs from Mexico City—a fascinating, stunning, in-depth pictorial study of blind schoolchildren in Mexico (running until October 17th, 2009).

According to his blog, Jed will be there signing copies of his book Look at me, published by the University of Chicago Press.

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Learn more at jedfielding.com

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Filed under: Books & Book Reviews

Details about Anna’s book tour…after the jump!

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Filed under: Themes, The UpDown Report, Books & Book Reviews

What would it be like to be a physician with a major mental illness? You would have all the challenges of medical practice complicated by moods that swung from high to low and back again. What if you were also struggling to be a husband and a father?

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Filed under: Themes, Deaf Jam, Books & Book Reviews, Irked Videos

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Filed under: Books & Book Reviews

Anna Quon’s first novel to be released Oct. 15!

Anna Quon’s first novel to be released Oct. 15!

Anna Quon’s first novel to be released Oct. 15!

Find out what Anna titled her book after the jump…

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