Force of Evil: Abraham Polonsky and Anti-Capitalist Noir
Force of Evil Abraham Polonsky The Enterprise Studios, 1948 Years ago I worked in the law office of attorney Leon Despres, former Alderman for Chicago’s Fifth Ward, which comprehends Hyde…
reviews
Escaping the Prism – Fade into Black, by Jalil Muntaqim: Book Review by Phyllis Taub Greenleaf
This book is a powerful tapestry of Scholarship, Activism and Poetry. The Personal with the Political gives this book balance and magnetism! During the time when key leaders of the…
Wormwood and a Shocking Secret of War: How Errol Morris Vindicated My Father, Wilfred Burchett
Wormwood Errol Morris Fourth Floor Productions, 2017 We see a wall with murky brown floral wallpaper and a door with a peephole and the number 1018A. A man is talking…
IndiePicks Magazine Loves The Fatness
Great review in the January 2018 edition of IndiePicks Magazine! Keelan Cavanaugh has been sentenced to a very different kind of prison. Uncomfortably installed at the Calorie Reduction Centre (CRC)…
Alexander Payne’s take on climate change, overpopulation, social inequality, and more
Downsizing Alexander Payne Paramount Pictures, 2017 Alexander Payne’s new film Downsizing, is an uneven, but engaging science-fiction satire that proposes to solve the earth’s ecological and other problems by “downsizing,”…
Roman J. Israel, Esq.: Rebel with a cause
Roman J. Israel, Esq. Directed by Dan Gilroy Sony Pictures, 2017 Dan Gilroy, writer-director of Nightcrawler (2014)—about a ruthless, amoral crime photographer—and now the legal drama Roman J. Israel, Esq.,…
A wake-up call for radical communities
Confronting Injustice: Social Activism in the Age of Individualism Umair Muhammed Haymarket, 2014 Drawing on his years of activism and academic research, Umair Muhammed delivers a compelling case for change…
It’s the economy, stupid!
Washington’s Long War on Syria Stephen Gowans Baraka Books, 2017 The impression of a region teeming with internecine enmities along bewilderingly archaic ethnic and religious lines hampers understanding of the…
Nawrocki’s Displaced/Misplaced exposes plight of migrant workers
Displaced/Misplaced Norman Nawrocki Les Pages Noires, 2017 Norman Nawroki, long a stunningly creative voice from out of Montréal’s anarchist community, combines spoken word with guitar, drum, piano and some very…
Historical foundations of Aboriginal rights
Aboriginal Rights Claims and the Making and Remaking of History Arthur J. Ray McGill Queen’s University Press, 2016 Having long ago established himself as a foremost scholarly interlocutor of Canadian…
Addiction among the middle class
Opium Eater: The New Confessions Carolyn Zwarenstein Nonvella Publishing, 2016 In recent years, my newsfeed has played host to a steady trickle of articles documenting the alarming rise of opioid…
Exploring settler-colonial culture
Settler: Identity and Colonialism in 21st Century Canada Emma Battell Lowman & Adam J. Barker Fernwood Publishing, 2015 Lowman and Barker’s Settler really dwells on the dominant culture in Canada…
First choice for a younger generation
Indigenous Nationhood: Empowering Grassroots Citizen Pamela Palmater Fernwood Publishing, 2015 No doubt for a younger generation of activists, Palmater’s Indigenous Nationhood will be a first choice. Her cadences — and…
Criminal law ejects Indigenous peoples from the frontiers
Fragile Settlements: Aboriginal Peoples, Law, and Resistance in South-West Australia and Prairie Canada Amanda Nettelbeck, Russel Smandych, Louis A. Knafla and Robert Foster UBC Press, 2016 A legal system designed…
One girl’s trauma exposes plight of nations
The Break Katherena Vermette House of Anansi Press, 2016 I received Indigenous author Katherena Vermette’s debut novel, The Break, as a gift over the holiday season. Having heard nothing of…
Mothers of colour challenge white feminism
Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines Edited by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, China Martens and Mai’a Williams Between the Lines and PM Press, 2016 This is an extraordinary book. Its…
How Do you Spell Colonialism? A Review of Hot Docs’s 2017 Opening Film Bee Nation
The article below also appears at POV Magazine, which is providing comprehensive coverage of the Hot Docs festival, including an alternative take on the film reviewed below (by Judy Wolf).…
Review: I Am Not Your Negro
I Am Not Your Negro Raoul Peck Velvet Films, 2016 Now and then, and despite its capitalist and racial biases, our culture throws up something that can speak quite eloquently…
Essays on Indigenous struggles offer both insight and oversight
Blockades or Breakthroughs? Aboriginal Peoples Confront the Canadian State Yale Belange & Whitney Lackenbauer McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015 Canada has a long history of Indigenous resistance to colonialism. A geography…
‘People’s history’ brought to life with voices from vibrant era
A Future Without Hate or Need: The Promise of the Jewish Left in Canada Ester Reiter Between the Lines, 2016 This is a wonderfully dense, rich, descriptive and analytical volume,…