Women From Away

CBC Canada Reads starts this week (March 21-24th) and book nerds everywhere are poised for the action! Now a few of us here at Women From Away take this stuff a bit more seriously than others but we love this contest all the same! This year we have a favourite and this post might just be an endorsement of why you should also love "Birdie" by Tracey Lindberg as much as we did. If you haven't read it, I will try to be vague as to avoid spoilers! I also think it is only fair to disclose our admiration for Tracey Lindberg on a personal level as we hold her as a sort of bookclub patron saint; as you'll see from the photo I have framed and prominently displayed beside my bed below.

"Birdie" was suggested by Lacey last year and was voted in during our intensely thorough voting process at our 2nd Annual Retreat. I think part of the draw for the WFA members was our experience reading "Monkey Beach". For many of us it was our first time reading fiction like this and experiencing what we called Concentric Circles. I think that is actually what it is called... but I don't have a reference to credit on that one (maybe a good time for Nicole or Stephanie to jump in here!). Basically, it is the idea of story telling circling around "the point", which allows the writer to include information that doesn't seem immediately related to said point. With "Monkey Beach" this was done through flash backs or the character reflecting back on previous experiences. This is where I think "Birdie" steps it up a notch.

With "Birdie" the main character isn't so much reflecting back or having a flash back, but actually goes back through her experiences and "re-lives" them to a certain degree to tease out facts or memories about herself and help work through her traumatic life experiences. This can make it very difficult for the reader to follow. Literally, I had to read with a notebook to fill in information about certain characters as I went along - which is a practice I have tried to maintain and I highly recommend. 

For me personally, the circular storytelling of "Birdie" brought out certain points more vividly, for example the concept of women taking up "too much space" and the desire to shrink themselves or even disappear, which Birdie did for certain periods of the story. 

For others in the group, the theme of justice came out strongly as well and we did read through this piece by Val Napoleon. There are a few spoilers in here, so I'll leave it to you to read through. 

The thing I love about "Birdie" and why Tracey Lindberg will forever be my imaginary best friend, is that she covered some of the soul crushing experiences of many First Nations, Metis and Inuit people in colonized regions (not unique to just Canada) but did so in a way that allowed readers, in our case a group of readers to react in their unique ways. This is not a story that a) tells you what happened and then b) tells you or shapes how you should feel about the story. Each woman in our group reacted to certain parts, like "Why is there a bird singing all of a sudden!?" or "Where did the ingredients list come from?" or "I can identify with Bernice feeling like she is "too much" in size or space."

In short, I think you should buy and read "Birdie" by Tracey Lindberg and then vote for it in the Canada Reads poll! And then obviously watch/listen to the whole show down in which ever medium works for you! 

**We were slightly crushed to learn that our "Man on the Side" Wab Kinew is no longer hosting this year but considering it is because he has decided to finally make a step towards being Canada's Prime Minister (albeit a few years from now), we will support the change to Gill Deacon as host**