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 the service. Here is their list for the upcoming service, “Returning Home…”, featuring Mei Jia Lam and Jin He, on Sunday, March 15, 2026 beginning 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. The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy, 1995, FIC CHO
From LibraryThing: The Chinese immigrant experience, featuring a girl and her two brothers. The girl is a budding tap dancer, one brother is a weakling, the other a boxer who joins the U.S. Marines. The novel is set in Vancouver, British Columbia, in the years leading to World War II. The anti-Japanese hysteria is also seen through their eyes. A first novel.
2. All That Matters by Wayson Choy, 2004, FIC CHO
From LibraryThing: Maclean’s Winner of the 2005 Trillium Book Award, finalist for the 2004 Giller Prize, and long-listed for the 2006 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, All That Matters is the eagerly anticipated sequel to Wayson Choy’s award-winning first novel, The Jade Peony. Kiam-Kim is three years old when he arrives by ship at Gold Mountain with his father and his grandmother, Poh-Poh. From his earliest years, Kiam-Kim is deeply conscious of his responsibility to maintain the family’s honor and to set an example for his younger siblings. However, his life is increasingly complicated by his burgeoning awareness of the world outside Vancouver’s Chinatown. Choy once again accomplishes the extraordinary: blending a haunting evocation of tenacious, ancient traditions with a precise, funny, and very modern coming-of-age story.
3. Tales from Gold Mountain: Stories of the Chinese in the New World, by Paul Yee, 1989, JFIC YEE
From LibraryThing: A collection of eight stories reflecting the gritty optimism of the Chinese who overcame prejudice and adversity to build a unique place for themselves in North America.
4. Being Chinese in Canada: The Struggle for Identity, Redress and Belonging, by William Ging Wee Gere
From LibraryThing: 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. Disappearing Moon Cafe, by Sky Lee, 1990, FIC SKY
Gift of Nancy Lagey. From LibraryThing: Disappearing Moon Cafe was a stunning debut novel that has become a Canadian literary classic. An unflinchingly honest portrait of a Chinese Canadian family that pulses with life and moral tensions, this family saga takes the reader from the wilderness in nineteenth-century British Columbia to late twentieth-century Hong Kong, to Vancouver’s Chinatown. Intricate and lyrical, suspenseful and emotionally rich, it is a riveting story of four generations of women whose lives are haunted by the secrets and lies of their ancestors but also by the racial divides and discrimination that shaped the lives of the first generation of Chinese immigrants to Canada.
6. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan, 2008, 613 POL
From LibraryThing: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” These simple words go to the heart of food journalist Pollan’s thesis. Humans used to know how to eat well, he argues, but the balanced dietary lessons that were once passed down through generations have been confused and distorted by food industry marketers, nutritional scientists, and journalists. As a result, we face today a complex culinary landscape dense with bad advice and foods that are not “real.” Indeed, plain old eating is being replaced by an obsession with nutrition that is, paradoxically, ruining our health, not to mention our meals. Pollan’s advice is: “Don’t eat anything that your great-great grandmother would not recognize as food.”
7. Refugee Sandwich: Stories of Exile and Asylum by Peter Showler, 2006. 325.21 SHO
Gift of Anne Stuart and Roberta Kirby of the UCV Refugee Committee. From LibraryThing: Every year, about 25,000 people arrive in Canada, claiming to be refugees. All must eventually tell their story to a member of the Immigration and Refugee Board, who will decide whether to accept or reject their claim. But the process has always been politically controversial. Despite the promise of a new life for some, the Board is regularly criticized for its inefficiencies, patronage appointments, and occasional incompetence. Peter Showler, a former Chairperson of the Board, weighs into the debate with his recent book – Refugee Sandwich: Stories of Exile and Asylum. Through thirteen stories, he introduces us to the various participants in the process: board members, government hearing officers, lawyers, interpreters, and of course the refugees themselves.