Skip to main content

Congratulations, Karen Connelly!

Karen Connelly won the Orange Prize for New Writers for The Lizard Cage, a beautiful, contemplative (if that adjective can be applied to books) story about a political prisoner and a prison-raised child in Burma (Myanmar). The setting is fascinating, the characters are compelling, and the net effect is uplifting despite the mean and injust situation they find themselves in.

The book grabbed my attention because it was about Burma but I didn't buckle down to read it until a friend of mine who is from Burma mentioned she thought it was really good, and that it spoke to the current political situation.

Though the author is a Canadian, I'm sufficiently convinced she's well-versed enough in her subject to represent it faithfully. She's had a long love affair with that part of Asia, having won the Governor General's award for non-fiction at the record-setting age of 24 for Touch the Dragon, her memoir of a Rotary year spent in Thailand.

The book is permeated with Buddhist thought--which is why contemplative is such an appropriate adjective--but don't let that turn you off. There are many things of value in other religious practice which can enrich the understanding and practice of our own faith.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Our pensions for ICE? Stop it now!

A campaign from LeadNow with a few spicy sentences from me. The CPP is funded by the wages of 22 million people across the country, LeadNow says, and the Investment Board has a responsibility to ensure those savings are not used in ways people fundamentally reject. Dear Mr. John Graham, CEO of CPPIB, and CPPIB board members, I am writing as a contributor to the Canada Pension Plan—one of millions of people whose wages fund this plan and whose future depends on it. This is our CPP, and it must answer to us. I am horrified that CPP investments include companies linked to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In effect, the people who pay into CPP are having their own money used to help fund Trump-era immigration enforcement and the harms associated with it. Canadians are appalled by the actions of ICE. What a betrayal you would use our own money to fund these bullies violating human rights.  CPP is not abstract capital—it is our deferred wages. Contributors should not ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Keep Israeli warmongers out

Dear Mr Carney After promising to follow international law and arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, you lost your nerve and failed to deny him passage through Canadian airspace.  However, you finally spoke up after Minister Ben Gvir's egregious display of sadism. Now you have another chance to keep that backbone tall, standing against genocide, by preventing the representatives of Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries from attending CANSEC in Ottawa on May 27 – 28, 2026.  This request was recently brought to your attention by ICJP and Just Peace Advocates. In their request, they provided significant evidence in support of our position that entry ought to be denied under section 35(1) of the IRPA, on the basis of the companies’ ongoing cooperation with the Israeli military during its alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide perpetrated against the Palestinian people in Gaza since October 7, 2023. Elbit is Israel's largest private defence contractor. Its finan...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bread not bombs

Yesterday, I saw a post from a Dutch antiwar organization: Geen Bommen maar bomen. “Not bombs; trees instead.” I love it.  Today, I saw a campaign from MCC: “bread, not bombs.” So I wrote adapted their letter to write to the prime minister et al.: Sure, money is important, but even more crucial is air to breathe and food to eat.  War makes money for a tiny fragment of human population, but for the vast majority, war means displacement, loss, deprivation and at worst death. Even for those far away from war, like here in Canada, every bomb that drops leaves not only a crater in some distant soil but also further deepens the desperate carbon crisis we are in, which will exact its retribution faster and faster in wildfires, droughts and floods.  That is why I am writing to you today.  Canadians did not vote for war in the 2025 election.  War does not lead to security.  How could the hunger, displacement, and worsening impacts of climate change lead to sec...
Post a Comment
Read more