Topics – Society
Human relationships are mediated by complex systems of power and privilege that determine our access and entitlement to health, safety, employment, dignity, home and belonging. As power becomes increasingly concentrated in the dominant classes, divisions and inequality based on race, gender, class, ability, sexuality and religion, among others, are becoming more prominent. These articles look at how these systems of power operate to divide us, and how we can overcome them and work toward a common humanity.
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Letter from the editor
A fond farewell
It was a brisk sunny day in November 2007 when I first bounded up the stairs at Huston House, the historic building in which Briarpatch makes its home, brimming with energy and ideas.
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Sabe
Creative writing contest winner (short fiction)
The house had a makeshift feeling she should have grown out of a long time ago, her scattered belongings littering the floor like residue. She liked to feel as though she could leave at any moment just by throwing a few things into a bag.
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The colony is unwilling to share fire
Creative writing contest winner (non-fiction)
Two worlds overlap, drifting sullenly between clouds and shadows. Only one body desires to consume itself in darkness overnight.
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Vigilante nation
On guard against Canada’s ‘most-wanted’ list
Evidently, the Conservatives’ “most-wanted” list has become a permanent and ongoing means of enlisting public support in the burgeoning business of deportation.
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Not help, but solidarity
Book review
The Silence of Our Friends asks important questions. How are racist attitudes internalized or rejected by children? What does it take to earn the trust of others across boundary lines marked by race privilege? And, how can we make progress in the struggle against oppression?
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Toward sexual self-determination
Book review
What You Really Really Want is a powerful tool for radically transforming how we understand and navigate the complexities of our own sexuality.
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Rising above the dark night of prison
Power, pathology, and the “tough-on-crime” agenda
Residing at the Regional Treatment Centre, a federal penitentiary in Abbotsford, B.C., I am reminded daily of my social identity as a prisoner: living in a cell, interacting with prison staff, obeying the institution’s rules and routines.
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But we do it anyway
Creative writing contest (hometown winner)
I opened my eyes to find the doctor staring at me. I had been dreaming of dragonflies, filling the brightening sky and stretching their wings in the early morning sun.
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experiments in freedom
Honourable mention, creative writing contest (non-fiction)
There is a mass grave here. The broken skins of some of the fruit reveal eyes, nasal cartilage, thumbs.
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Walking papers
Honourable mention, creative writing contest (fiction)
Kelly is tragically reliable. When she is laid off from her government job, she finds another, more lucrative, way to pay the bills.
