
Yutaka Dirks is a tenant rights organizer, journalist and writer whose work can be found in Alberta Views, THIS, rabble.ca, Ricepaper Magazine, the Journal of Law and Social Policy, and elsewhere.
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Magazine
Captain Naphi and the great white mole
The origin of the railsea is unknown. Some say the gods put down the train tracks or that they extruded from the ground like exposed fossils. Others say that the rails were written “in heavenly script, that people unknowingly recited as they travelled.”
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Magazine
A powerful medicine
Indian Horse illuminates Canada’s devastating past in an important contribution to the genre of sport fiction.
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Magazine
The Juliet stories
The simple, graceful prose of the book’s first half is crafted by a careful, knowing heart; Snyder, like Juliet, lived in Nicaragua as a child, when her parents moved there to protest the Contras.
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Magazine
Crime, love, and rebellion: Stories of working-class tragedy
Many of the stories fall within the noir tradition that noted crime author Dennis Lehane defines as working-class tragedy. “In Shakespeare, tragic heroes fall from mountaintops,” he writes. “In noir, they fall from curbs.”
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Magazine
Not help, but solidarity
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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Magazine
Tales of heartbreak, fury and hope
Toronto-based author Kristyn Dunnion dubs herself a “Lady Punk Warrior.” Reading The Dirt Chronicles, her most recent book, one easily grasps the aptness of the moniker.
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Magazine
On to Ottawa in marvelous, meandering prose
In June 1935, hundreds of unemployed men took to the rails in what was dubbed the On to Ottawa Trek. The Time We All Went Marching is the story of one woman on the cusp of change.
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Magazine
From the jaws of defeat
Whether we are planning a short-term campaign or the theoretical work of long-term, widespread and systemic social change, the process of strategy development is the same. To begin developing a winning strategy, we must first ask ourselves: what does victory look like?