Lives: Whole and Otherwise
by H Nigel Thomas
These stories of triumph and despair present a gallery of characters, Caribbean immigrants struggling against the odds, as they make their way through the maze of urban life. Set in Montreal, Lives breaks the stereotypes to give us a side of Canada rarely acknowledged. Mary Fellows is a sex-worker organizing a demonstration on St Catherine Street; Margaret is on a perpetual quest for a suitable man, her latest folly a suave, much younger man she brought over from Jamaica; Greta, a domestic help, proudly holds up her son's high school diploma; but can he read it? Lives adds to Thomas's already considerable reputation as a chronicler of black life in Montreal.These stories from Montreal present a gallery of characters, Caribbean immigrants desperate and triumphant, always struggling against the odds, as they make their way through the maze of urban life.Lives breaks the stereotypes to give us a side of Canada rarely acknowledged.Praise for H Nigel Thomas?Behind the Face of Winter:". . . may be the starkest, most distressingly honest, thus unforgettable, account of the Caribbean-Canadian experience yet written . . . a brave and eloquent voice. “ontreal Gazette
close this panelH Nigel Thomas is the author of seven books: three novels, Spirits in the Dark (shortlisted for the QSPELL Hugh MacClennan Fiction Award), Behind the Face of Winter, and Return to Arcadia; a collection of short stories, How Loud Can the Village Cock Crow; a collection of poems, Moving through Darkness; and two works of non-fiction, From Folklore to Fiction: A Study of Folk Heroes and Rituals in the Black American Novel, and Why We Write: Conversations with African Canadian Poets and Novelists. He is a former Montreal high-school teacher and retired professor of US literature at Universit Laval, and now lives in Montreal.
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