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Related Reading for Sunday, January 26, 2025

Our library in Hewett Centre is open every Sunday after service during Coffee Hour in Hewett Centre, and our Library Team offers related reading lists based on the topic of Sunday service. Here is their list for the upcoming service featuring the IPA Team on Sunday, Jan. 26, 2025 at 11 a.m. All are welcome in Hewett Centre after the Sunday service to check out some books and to have coffee and conversation.

VanU library books related to this Sunday’s sermon:

1. From Bombs to Books: The remarkable stories of refugee children and their families at an exceptional Canadian school, by David Starr, 2011, 371.82 STA [Gift of Ann Foster. From LibraryThing: “As Canada welcomes tens of thousands of Syrian refugees, as well as many others finding their way in Canada, communities across the country are dealing with the challenges of welcoming and integrating them. This is a book about how schools can play a powerful and positive role in the day-to-day lives of refugee families. David Starr has served as the principal at two schools in BC where a majority of the student population comes from refugee families. While the students at Edmonds Community and Byrne Creek Community schools in Burnaby, BC, come from all over the world, many are recent arrivals from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan. In this book, David Starr shares the deeply moving stories of his students, their parents and the staff at Edmonds. He describes the upheavals that many of these families have undergone. He writes about how teachers and other support workers have embraced their students and gone about making a difference in their lives. And he tells the stories of students and their views of their experiences in their countries of origin, as well as at their new schools and in their new communities. … David Starr offers observations on how teachers, principals, support groups and others can contribute to the process of integrating refugee families into Canadian society, and the many lessons he and his colleagues have learned from their experiences.”].

2. Vancouver Dialogues First Nations, Urban Aboriginal and Immigrant Communities, by Zool Suleman, 2011, 305.8 SUL [As shown in a PDF of the book, there’s an introduction by the Rt. Hon. Adrienne Clarkson, the 26th Governor General of Canada of “New Canadians want to know about our Aboriginal peoples because they sense they have a wisdom, knowledge and history which will help immigrants understand Canada as a land with an ancient human history as well as an incredible natural richness. You cannot come to this country and spend time without realizing the important relationship we, the newcomers, can have with the original inhabitants. This can only be enlightening and enriching. The Dialogues Project helps to create these connections in a meaningful, personal way. We need Dialogues across the country!”].

3. Don’t Label Me: How to Do Diversity Without Inflaming the Culture Wars, by Irshad Manji, 2020, 306.44 [Donated by Mary Bennett. From LibraryThing: “… shows that America’s founding genius is diversity of thought. Which is why social justice activists won’t win by labeling those who disagree with them. At a time when minorities are fast becoming the majority, a truly new America requires a new way to tribe out.”].

4. Being Chinese in Canada: The Struggle for Identity, Redress and Belonging, by William Ging Wee Dere, 2019, 971 DER [From LibraryThing: “After the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed in 1885-construction of the western stretch was largely built by Chinese workers-the Canadian government imposed a punitive head tax to deter Chinese citizens from coming to Canada. The exorbitant tax strongly discouraged those who had already emigrated from sending for wives and children left in China-effectively splintering families. After raising the tax twice, the Canadian government eventually brought in legislation to stop Chinese immigration altogether. The ban was not repealed until 1947. It was not until June 22, 2006, that Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologized to the Chinese Canadian community for the Government of Canada’s racist legacy. … the first book to explore the work of the head tax redress movement and to give voice to the generations of Chinese Canadians involved. Dere explores the many obstacles in the Chinese Canadian community’s fight for justice, the lasting effects of state-legislated racism and the unique struggle of being Chinese in Quebec. But Being Chinese in Canada is also a personal story. Dere dedicated himself to the head tax redress campaign for over two decades. His grandfather and father each paid the five-hundred-dollar head tax, and the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act separated his family for thirty years. Dere tells of his family members’ experiences; his own political awakenings; the federal government’s offer of partial redress and what it means to move forward-for himself, his children and the community as a whole. Many in multicultural Canada feel the issues of cultural identity and the struggle for belonging. Although Being Chinese in Canada is a personal recollection and an exploration of the history and culture of Chinese Canadians, the themes of inclusion and kinship are timely and will resonate with Canadians of all backgrounds.”].

5. Following the Brush: An American Encounter With Classical Japanese Culture, by John Elder, 1993, 952.04 ELD [Gift of Sheilah Thompson. Published by Beacon Press. From LibraryThing, re: the book jacket: “… A professor of English, John Elder lived for a year with his family in Kyoto. As a cultural outsider and devoted amateur, Elder brings a distinctive and sympathetic eye to arts and institutions that are, as the author points out, peopled by Japanese who are these days themselves outsiders in an important sense, lovers of pursuits which have been “swirled off into eddies by the velocity of the economic mainstream.”” … We are given an insider’s look at a Japanese elementary school – attended by all three of the author’s children – that is both startling and admiring.” … Elder describes the sisterhood of Kyoto geishas as they “venture out, self-possessed and superbly eccentric, in their errands along the noisy streets of Japan.” And we watch with fascination as Elder is allowed in as the only foreigner to a traditional Go club, where men only pursue “the austere beauty, and the pure competition, of the world’s most demanding game.”” “Elder’s experience as a leading writer on nature leads him also to reflect in other essays on distinctly Japanese attachments to nature and wildness.”].

6. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism, by Robin J. DiAngelo, 2018, 305.8 DIA [From Beacon Press. Signed by the author. From LibraryThing: “… In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people’ (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively”].

7. Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, by Toko-pa Turner, 2017, 155 TUR [From LibraryThing, re: the author’s Website: “We live in one of the most connected times on earth but never before have we been so lonely, so alienated from each other, from ourselves, and from the natural world. Whether this manifests as having difficulty finding community, feeling anxiety about your worthiness and place in the world, or simply feeling disconnected, the absence of belonging is the great silent wound of our times. Most of us think of belonging as a place outside of ourselves, that if we keep searching for, that maybe one day we’ll find it. But what if belonging isn’t a place at all, but a set of skills, or competencies, that we in modern times have lost or forgotten. In Belonging, Toko-pa explores the origins of our estrangement, how that alienation affects the choices we make as individuals, and as a culture, and what are those skills to which we can apprentice ourselves, to restore a sense of belonging in our lives, and in our world.”].