12 books to read if you loved Canada Reads finalist Life in the City of Dirty Water
Suzanne Simard championed Clayton Thomas-Müller's memoir on Canada Reads 2022
The great Canadian book debate has come to an end for another year. What should you read next? CBC Books has some ideas for you.
Suzanne Simard championed Life in the City of Dirty Water by Clayton Thomas-Müller on Canada Reads 2022.
Thomas-Müller, a member of the Treaty #6 based Mathias Colomb Cree Nation, shares his life story in Life in the City of Dirty Water. The debut memoir incorporates traditional Indigenous wisdom and explores Thomas-Müller's journey from enduring intergenerational trauma as a young boy to finding his path as a climate change warrior.
If you just finished Life in the City of Dirty Water and are looking for a new read, check out these Canadian books that explore similar themes — including identity, healing and trauma and the legacy of colonialism.
A Mind Spread Out On the Ground by Alicia Elliott
Alicia Elliott explores the systemic oppression faced by Indigenous peoples across Canada through the lens of her own experiences as a Tuscarora writer from Six Nations of the Grand River. Elliott examines how colonial violence, including the loss of language, seeps into the present day lives of Indigenous people, often in the form of mental illness. Elliott, who lives in Brantford, Ont., won gold at the National Magazine Awards in 2017 for the essay this book is based on.
A Mind Spread Out on the Ground was on the shortlist for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.
Elliott is a Tuscarora writer living in Brantford, Ont. She was chosen by Tanya Talaga as the recipient for the 2018 RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award.
The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King
One of the most influential books of the last decade, The Inconvenient Indian is a powerful and subversive look at the history of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations in North America. Thomas King time travels back to the 15th century and into the 21st century, reflecting on his own complicated relationship with activism and examining how popular culture has shaped perspectives on Indigeneity.
The book won the 2014 RBC Taylor Prize and is a national bestseller. It was championed on Canada Reads in 2015, and later adapted into an illustrated edition.
Thomas King is a Canadian-American writer of Cherokee and Greek ancestry. His bestselling books include Indians on Vacation, which won the Stephen Leacock Medal for humour, The Back of the Turtle, winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction, Truth & Bright Water, Green Grass, Running Water, and the DreadfulWater mystery series. He has also written a poetry collection, 77 Fragments of a Familiar Ruin. King lives in Guelph, Ont.
The Shoe Boy by Duncan McCue
CBC host Duncan McCue reflects on a life-changing summer on the trapline when he was 17 in this brief memoir. McCue had recently graduated high school with top marks, and was confused about his identity as a half-Ojibwe, half-white teenager. When his father asked if he'd like to take a year off school to hunt, trap and fish in the wilds of James Bay, McCue jumped at the chance and embarked on a five-month trip in the bush led by a man named Robbie Matthew Sr.
Duncan McCue is the host of Cross Country Checkup on CBC Radio, but is currently away from the microphone on a Massey College journalism fellowship. His journalism has received several RTDNA and Jack Webster Awards.
In My Own Moccasins by Helen Knott
Helen Knott is a poet and writer of Dane Zaa, Nehiyaw and European descent. Her memoir, In My Own Moccasins, is a story of addiction, sexual violence and intergenerational trauma. It explores how colonization has affected her family over generations, but it is also a story of hope and redemption, celebrating the resilience and history of her family.
Knott is a social worker and writer who lives in B.C. In My Own Moccasins is her first book. It was longlisted for the 2020 RBC Taylor Prize. She has also contributed to publications like Malahat Review, Chatelaine and The New Quarterly.
Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot
In a series of letters to her partner and late mother, Terese Marie Mailhot revisits old wounds over a long and winding journey to wellness. She describes many of the most difficult moments of her life, from a dysfunctional coming-of-age on Seabird Island in B.C. to losing her son in a custody battle and committing herself to a hospital. There are also triumphs spread throughout this potent, poetic memoir, including acceptance into the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Heart Berries was a finalist for the 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction and the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.
Mailhot is an award-winning writer who teaches at Purdue University. She received the 2019 Whiting Award, given annually to 10 emerging writers, and the inaugural Spalding Prize for Promotion of Peace and Justice in Literature. Heart Berries is her first book. She's also contributed to publications like Guernica, the Guardian and the Los Angeles Times.
Breaking the Ocean by Annahid Dashtgard
Annahid Dashtgard's comfortable life in Iran as part of a mixed-race family was turned upside down in 1979 when the Iranian Revolution happened. Her family fled to small-town Alberta, where she experienced racism and bullying. Dashtgard chose to overcome her past by becoming a political activist and leader. She's the co-founder of the consulting company Anima Leadership, which explores inclusion and representation. Her book, Breaking the Ocean, is both a memoir and a guide to facing discrimination, racism and trauma in society.
Dashtgard is the co-founder of the consulting company Anima Leadership. Breaking the Ocean is her first book.
Black Water by David A. Robertson
David A. Robertson is a member of Norway House Cree Nation, but grew up not knowing much about his Indigenous heritage. His father, Don, grew up on the trapline in northeast Manitoba, but lost his connection to his Indigenous roots, language and culture after his family was moved to a reserve, and Don wasn't allowed to speak Cree at school. David decides to go traplining with his father as an adult, as a way to connect to his own Cree heritage and the land, but to also better understand his father. Black Water is the story of these journeys: a father and son heading into the wilderness, and of a son connecting with his father, but also with heritage and, ultimately, himself.
Robertson is a bestselling writer based in Winnipeg. He has published more than 25 books across a variety of genres, including the Reckoner Rises series of graphic novels, comics Will I See? and Sugar Falls, the novel The Evolution of Alice and bestselling middle-grade series the Misewa saga. He has won two Governor General's Literary Awards with illustrator Julie Flett for their picture books When We Were Alone and On the Trapline. He hosts the CBC Manitoba podcast Kiwew.
Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard
Biologist Suzanne Simard writes about her discoveries around the interconnection and intelligence of the forest in this bestselling book. She lays out evidence that indicate that the trees are indeed whispering to each other — communicating not through the wind, but through the soil. Her scientific memoir, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, describes her life and research.
Finding the Mother Tree was the grand prize winner for the 2021 Banff Mountain Book Competition and a category winner for the mountain environment and natural history award.
Simard is a B.C.-based author and academic who grew up in Canadian forests as a descendant of loggers. She is a professor in the department of forest and conservation sciences at the University of British Columbia. She championed Life in the City of Dirty Water by Clayton Thomas-Müller on Canada Reads 2022.
From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle
Jesse Thistle is a Métis-Cree academic specializing in Indigenous homelessness, addiction and intergenerational trauma. For Thistle, these issues are more than just subjects on the page. After a difficult childhood, Thistle spent much of his early adulthood struggling with addiction while living on the streets of Toronto. Told in short chapters interspersed with poetry, his memoir From the Ashes details how his issues with abandonment and addiction led to homelessness, incarceration and his eventual redemption through higher education.
Thistle is a rising academic and assistant professor at York University. His work has been recognized with the Governor General's Silver Medal and the P.E. Trudeau doctoral scholarship. His first book From the Ashes became a national bestseller and was championed on Canada Reads. The book won the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Nonfiction, an Indigenous Voices Award and the High Plains Book Award.
The Right to Be Cold by Sheila Watt-Cloutier
The Right to Be Cold tells the personal story of acclaimed Inuk activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier. As the Arctic ice recedes, Watt-Cloutier documents the impact that climate change has already had on communities in the far north. The book explores the parallels between safeguarding the Arctic and the survival of Inuit culture. The author also looks back on 25 years of advocacy work, championing the environment on regional, national and international stages.
The Right to Be Cold is a national bestseller and was championed on Canada Reads.
Watt-Cloutier, an Officer of the Order of Canada, is one of the world's most recognized environmental, cultural and human rights activists. She was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, and has served as both Canadian president and international chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council. She's been awarded the Aboriginal Achievement Award, the UN Champion of the Earth Award and Norway's Sophie Prize.
Saga Boy by Antonio Michael Downing
Musician and writer Antonio Michael Downing shares his story in the memoir Saga Boy. Downing was born in Trinidad and raised there by his grandmother until he was 11 years old. He was sent to rural Ontario to live with a strict aunt after his grandmother's death. There, Downing and his brother are the only Black kids in town. Creative and inquisitive, Downing tries to find himself and escape his difficult home life by imagining different personas. But when he hits rock bottom and finds himself in jail, he knows it is time to build a real life for himself and to embrace his heritage instead of trying to escape it.
Saga Boy was shortlisted for the 2021 Speaker's Book Award and longlisted for the 2021 Toronto Book Award.
Downing is a musician, writer and activist who now lives in Toronto. He published his first book, the novel Molasses, in 2010. In 2017, he was named one of five writers to participate in the RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writers Mentorship Program.
Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead
Jonny Appleseed is a novel about a two-spirit Indigiqueer young man who has left the reserve and becomes a cybersex worker in the city to make ends meet. But he must reckon with his past when he returns home to attend his stepfather's funeral.
Jonny Appleseed won Canada Reads 2021, when it was championed by actor Devery Jacobs.
The novel was on the longlist for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the shortlist for the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction and was a finalist for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award. It also won the Lambda Literary Award for gay fiction and has been optioned for a screen adaptation.
Joshua Whitehead is a two-spirit, Oji-nêhiyaw member of Peguis First Nation, currently pursuing his PhD. He is also the author of the poetry collection full-metal indigiqueer and is the editor of the anthology Love After the End. Jonny Appleseed is his first novel. His upcoming book, Making Love with the Land, is a work of nonfiction to be published in August.
