The books that got us through: Vancouver artists reflect on reads that moved them in 2021
From new releases to classics, here’s what some members of the local arts community were reading this year
AS SOURCES OF inspiration, entertainment, education, distraction, or scintillation, good reads help get us through trying times. Stir reached out to a few of the city’s most respected local artists to hear about the books that stood out for them over the past year—whether the titles were released in 2021 or not, because we all know it can take a while to get our hands on a book we can’t wait to read or to carve out time to curl up with one. Some reads we return to over and over for comfort or wisdom; others have been on our reading list for eons. We simply asked these creatives for a book (or books) that moved them over the past 12 months. Here’s what they had to say.
Cory Weeds
Juno-nominated saxophonist, founder of Cory Weeds’ Cellar Jazz Club and record label The Cellar Music Group, and presenter at Frankie’s Jazz Club.
“Jeremy Pelt is an incredible musician and dear friend, and his book Griot: Examining the lives of Jazz’s Great Storytellers, presented by Jeremy Pelt (Peltjazz, 2021, pictured at top) has come at such an important time. Griot represents the past and the future, and it lifts the voices of the unsung Black jazz musicians who live among us [Paul West, Warren Smith, Bertha Hope, Dr. Eddie Henderson, Larry Willis, René Marie, Lewis Nash, Wynton Marsalis, Peter Washington, Terri-Lyne Carrington, Justin Robinson, Greg Hutchinson, JD Allen, Robert Glasper, and Ambrose Akinmusire]. The stories told by these musicians are both heartbreaking and inspirational. To hear these musicians speak of their trials and tribulations and their triumphs in the face of constant adversity is uplifting. It is a book that I will go back to many, many times.
Corey Payette
Oji-Cree playwright, actor, composer, and director; artistic director of Urban Ink; past artist-in-residence with English Theatre at Canada’s National Arts Centre; and founding artistic director of Raven Theatre whose documentary Stories That Transform Us, created to mark Urban Ink’s 20th anniversary, had its world premiere at VIFF 2021.
“The best book I read in 2021 was On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Random House), by Ocean Vuong. It was released in 2017, but I only got around to reading it this year. Ocean is an acclaimed poet, and before writing this novel wrote mostly poetry. What I loved about his writing was how in moments of chaos his narrative writing would devolve into scattered words of poetry. These words, while unconventional in approach, actually gave me a deeper sense of the frantic thoughts the characters were experiencing and gave me a window into the thought patterns of these complex intergenerational relationships. It is also worth noting that this work is queer—and specifically gay, but not in the way gay relationships are usually told. It is refreshing, surprising, and sweet.”
Jag Nagra
Visual artist, designer, illustrator, and creative director of Punjabi Market Regeneration Collective, who designed a 2021 Diwali-inspired Canucks warm-up jersey that caught the attention of Seth Rogen.
“While I personally haven’t read any adult books all year, we do read to our kids [aged three and one] throughout the day. Our three-year-old has been a book worm since before she was crawling. She used to sit next to her book shelf and flip through the pages of her books reading out loud in gibberish. I don’t know where we got Little Bear and the Wishing Tree by Norbert Landa and illustrated by Simon Mendez (Little Hippo Books, 2020), but our daughter picked it out one day and asked me to read it.
“It’s a book about two sibling bears, one of which gets upset and storms out of the house and decides to spend the night in the tree outside. Each time he gets cold or hungry or afraid of the dark, he finds a blanket, pancakes, and a lantern to keep him warm, fed, and safe. He thinks it’s a magic wishing tree. Little does he know his mother has been watching and secretly delivering all the comforts he needs.
“The first time I read it, I felt all the feelings and confusedly looked at my wife and said “Why didn’t you tell me I would burst into tears??” It’s a tender book about a parent’s love. And maybe a little preview of life with our kids as they grow… Because even when they’re mad at us, we’ll still be protecting them with love.”
Jay Hirabayashi
Dancer, choreographer, executive director of Kokoro Dance, and co-producer (with wife Barbara Bourget) of Vancouver International Dance Festival), whose full-length duet with Bourget, Wabi-Sabi, had its world premiere this past fall.
“I’m currently reading Ruth Ozeki’s The Book of Form and Emptiness: A Novel (Viking, 2021). One of the characters is the book itself, but the main character, so far (I’m on page 95 of 546), is a boy named Benny Oh whose Japanese jazz-clarinet playing father has just been killed by a chicken transport truck. He starts hearing voices that he thinks maybe is his father calling him, but then all the objects, walls, windows, etc. start talking to him. Like the boy, Ozeki has a great imagination. Also finished Kagan Goh’s Surviving Samsara: A Memoir of Breakdowns, Breakthroughs, and Mental Illness (Caitlin Press, 2021). I have been working with Kagan, playing his alter ego, in a workshop development of his play with the same name under the direction of Theatre Terrific’s Susanna Uchatius. Surviving Samsara is Kagan’s autobiographical story of his decades-long struggle with manic depression. It has given me a much better understanding of mental illness and makes me think that all of us have degrees of mental illness. Perhaps only artists have the courage to admit and express their manic sides. I also read a chapter of Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind Beginners Mind: Informal talks on Zen meditation and practice (Shambhala) at the start of my Butoh Zen Jazz dance classes. It’s a book I’ve read again and again since its publication in 1970.”
Barbara Bourget
Dancer, choreographer, artistic director of Kokoro Dance, and co-producer (with husband Jay Hirabayashi) of Vancouver International Dance Festival, whose full-length duet with Hirabayashi, Wabi-Sabi, had its world premiere this past fall.
“As I am a very fickle reader, I find myself jumping from book to book. Right now I am reading the Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas (New Directions) as I love his work. I am delving into a book called Radical Shadows (Bard College Publications Office) that is a collection of essays by artists such as Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Akhmatova, Anton Chekhov plus others and am revisiting Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (Anchor Books). There is also a lovely book called Gods Behaving Badly written by Marie Phillips, published by Vintage Canada in 2008 that I would recommend as it is quite charming and funny.
“Jay [Hirabayashi] often reads to me at night, which is very relaxing and in fact sometimes puts me to sleep.”
Sherry J. Yoon
Theatre creator, curator, and artistic director of Boca del Lupo who rallied a Canada-wide movement of artistic leaders called Stop Asian Hate.
“Paris is a Party, Paris is a Ghost: A Novel [Farrar, Straus and Giroux], by David Hoon Kim: I picked up this book because of the author. Living life with a multi-hyphenated identity, I was curious as to how that would play out in a first-time novel. It’s like [Haruki] Murakami, but Kim’s book is different in how it moves through time and characters, a sense of displacement sourced perhaps from his own understanding of identity and belonging—a personal interest for me being born in Korea and making my life in Canada as an artist. Though this book, I cannot say, is a crowd pleaser, if you can read the book without expectation, be open to the journey and world he opens, no matter what your identity, you might discover the liminal spaces that everyone finds themselves navigating in their life and how that resonates with us all.”
Levi McCachen
Local comedian who has performed at Just For Laughs Northwest, on CBC's Debaters, and at comedy clubs across the country and whose debut album, Illuminati, recently dropped on 800 Pound Gorilla Records. He’s also a filmmaker whose short works have played fests in Vancouver, Toronto, New York, and L.A.
“Moby Dick. I have a bad habit of avoiding film, TV, and books that are lauded as being masterpieces. I usually fall prey to the misguided notion that any media that is ‘good for me’ will be the literary or cinematic equivalent of eating my vegetables. However, after a quarantined year of gorging myself on a literal and metaphorical junk food diet of Oreo's and Tiger King, I felt the need to cleanse my palate with some broccoli. So I decided to read the timeless classic Moby Dick. Now the last ‘classic’ I attempted to read was Anna Karenina, which I’m sure is ‘exemplary’, but on around page 400 when Tolstoy goes into a 50-page screed on 19th-century Russian farming practices and peasant labour relations, getting through it felt like plowing a field under an August Soviet sun. So I was bracing myself for a challenge when I picked up Moby Dick. I was pleasantly surprised when this turned out to be one of the most fun reads of my life.
“Melville weaves such a rich poetic tapestry you can feel the salty water splash you in the face aboard the Pequod under the stern, watchful eye of Captain Ahab or sharing a bed with Queequeg the cannibal in a seaside inn on Nantucket. I found myself desperately wishing I was a sailor in the year 1851, which admittedly could be due to the fact that it’s currently 2021 with all its, ya know, everything, but still. Whereas reading the Russian classics does in fact feel like eating a plateful of carrots and then going to bed at 8:30, Moby Dick felt like eating a large bag of potato chips. I couldn’t put it down until it was done. I give it five stars.
“And I swear I’m gonna finish Anna Karenina, just as soon as I get through the second season of Tiger King.”
Alexis Fletcher
Dance artist, creator. producer, and co-artistic director of he Dance Deck whose new full evening of solo performance, assemble., takes place January 13, 14, and 15 at the Scotiabank Dance Centre
The Book of Longings: A Novel by Sue Monk Kidd (Viking): “This book touched me in a myriad of ways. As an artist, the mastery and power of Monk Kidd’s storytelling, the depth of her research, and her ability to abandon herself to the trajectory of her characters, inspired me to keep growing in my own craft. As a woman, seeing the voices of women uplifted and valued as essential protagonists—the narrators of their own lives—in stories that so often barely mention them in passing, felt vitally important to me. This book highlights many things - both historically and in present day - that work to erase the voices and agency of women. As a mystic, I was enraptured to have this book touch on and delicately bring to life some poignant translations of the Gnostic Gospels/Nag Hammadi library and to imagine through Monk Kidd’s imaginative eyes what spirituality, feminine energy, and female empowerment could have felt like during the time that these lives actually took place.
“I was deeply affected by this book because the story of Jesus and his life, the people he touched and the lessons he taught, are so often presented to us in only the way they have been translated over so many generations and written in the Bible as we know it today. Whether someone identifies as a Christian or not, the biblical stories are deeply ingrained in our society and we all have vastly different relationships to those stories. This bold retelling and work of art contemplates layer after layer of these different interpretations and relationships - bringing to light that it is possible and important and healing to uplift different voices in different ways, and that bringing our female ancestors into the centre of these stories is a profound statement. This book reminded me how important it is to look beneath the accepted definition of things, and how important it is to question why things are the way they are. I was also touched by the humility, care and respect with which she created her character of Jesus and the people closest to him. I think this book is a perfect example of how storytelling at its best both challenges and unites us as human beings, and through hearing the stories of others we can and should reflect upon our own.”
Haley K Turner
Singer-songwriter (in from the dark, recorded at Monarch Studios with Juno-nominated artist Tom Dobrzanski; Ready or Not), mother of two, and passionate advocate for the arts whose most recent single, “Intangible Things (A Hanukkah Song)” captures nostalgic feelings of the holiday season—and, she hopes, the attention of Adam Sandler.
“Sounds from Silence: Reflections of a Child Holocaust Survivor, Psychiatrist and Teacher (Amsterdam Publishers) by Robert Krell: The Vancouver-based author who founded the Vancouver Holocaust Education Center in 1994 was born in Holland and survived the Holocaust in hiding. Dr. Robert Krell went on to become a professor of psychiatry treating Holocaust survivors and their families, along with Dutch survivors of Japanese concentration camps. His life-long work in Holocaust education, human rights and social justice has impacted thousands and thousands of people around the world and his newest book pushes past the silence that so many survivors are unable to break through. History doesn’t owe us anything; it is up to us to make it worth something. Dr. Robert Krell has spent his life doing just that and Sounds from Silence offers the opportunity for readers to do the same.”
“If I Knew Then: Finding wisdom in failure and power in aging (Penguin Random House Canada) by Jann Arden is a wonderfully encouraging and therapeutic guide to showing up in the world as yourself. Sometimes we need people who have come before us, or people who are in the limelight to share the wisdom they have earned along the way. Social media has a way of making everything look perfect, which in turn, often contributes to the downfall of our mental health as a society. But we still have an opportunity to change the course we are on and Jann Arden’s book is a perfect example of how we can do that. Having artists like Arden rip back the curtains and share some of the ups and downs this life has to offer, regardless of one’s personal or commercial success is quite possibly what we need more of. And offering it in a book as opposed to a three and a half minute song was a meaningful way to do that. Although we won’t say no to a new song.
“The incredibly relevant and highly regarded memoir From The Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way (Simon & Schuster) by Jesse Thistle has garnered well-deserved attention since its publication in 2019, becoming the top-selling Canadian book in 2020. Regardless of whether or not you have personally experienced homelessness, drug addiction, abuse, or prejudice you can’t possibly make it through this book without gaining an immense amount of empathy for people you encounter going forward. Canada, let alone the rest of the world, has many stories that never see the light of day. Having the opportunity to hear first hand-from someone who has made it through not just one but many of the emotionally devastating circumstances experienced by so many humans should not be taken for granted. In Canada, homelessness is eight times more likely for Indigenous people. While sharing his compelling story of growing up as a Métis-Cree man navigating homelessness and addiction, Thistle manages to inspire those around him to question what systems are in place that cause harm to current and future members of our communities.”
Alvin Erasga Tolentino
Dancer, choreographer, founder of Co.ERASGA Dance Society who remounted Offering this past fall to mark the company’s 20th anniversary and who produced its first digital dance series, Together/Apart.
“I am a bit behind with my readings and hope to get back soon during the holidays, but if there’s one book to recommend which I have encountered in 2021, it would be Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (Milkweed Editions) by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Insightful, wise, beautifully told and [insight] into ancient Indigenous knowledge that gives an opportunity to reflect, rekindle, and be in touch with nature—how we cohabitate with plants and animals—to shift our perspective and appreciate Earth more deeply, especially in the midst of such a natural crisis we are threatened with right here at home in B.C.”
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