My local Indigo/Chapters bookstore is a place to behold, if one likes to rummage through books. And everything is bright and airy, with books shelved in full view from the front to the back of the store.
It often reminds me of that funny quaint, and authentic, little movie You've Got Mail where Tom Hanks' character, Joe Fox, is about to open a mega bookstore aptly named Fox Books. Joe defends his mega project after an interview misrepresented his words:
I said you could read for hours and no one will bother you. I said we had 150,000 titles. I showed them the New York City section. I said we were a goddamn piazza. A place in this city where people could mingle.Kathleen Kelly, played by Meg Ryan, is about to lose her "Shop Around the Corner" to this conglomerate. Her "neighborhood" book store is a tiny place, which the efficient and diligent Kathleen stacks up for her devoted, but dwindling clientele.
But I like Joe Fox's Fox Books. I like its openness. I like its bigness, and I like that there are all kinds of books, some strange, others stupid, and a few so big I wonder how anyone can carry them out of the store. I wander through the store looking for that one book that I would spend my $20 or $25 on (I've set the limit at $25). I buy books now every couple of months and I look forward to the day when I have opened, read and contemplated all the books that are lying around in various forms of shelving that I have been buying for the past year or so.
I should disclose that this frantic book-buying activity occurred after I moved from Toronto to Mississauga, when I had to "get rid of" about 3/4 of my books, keeping only those I deemed too precious, based on my categorization of: books I loved, books that were classics, books with beautiful covers (and not necessary in that order).
I went again last week, and what a timely visit.There were tables of new books with specific groupings, from Canadian novels to new Canadian novels to novels by "new Canadians." Actually the "new Canadians" table just called itself: Local Writers.
Who are these "local writers?" I was intrigued. Writers from Barrie perhaps?
No. These Chapters folk were serious about their labels. These were Mississauga writers! More reason to find out who they were.
I started to notice something strange as I read the names (and the stories) of these select group of authors. They would be placed, if we could place them under an honest label: Non-White Canadian Literature. And if we could add a sub-label: With Grievances towards White Canadians.
What a collection!
I go through some of the books in this post, but let me digress (perhaps it isn't such a big digression) to recount what happened as I placed these books on the table so that could take a picture of the selection (this is the new way of "writing" things down and store owners don't mind). Then I could look them up at my leisure (at home) and return to buy any I liked.
Here is the image I finally took of the grouping.
But as I almost completed my task I was interrupted by a woman who elbowed herself between me and the books to have a look at what was on the table (my chef d'oeuvre?). I was a startled and moved back a step.
It was a Chinese woman and I could see that she had no interest in what selection was available, but was scouring around for something and not necessarily a book. She was nudging me away to indicate that I had spent too much time on that particular table.
And there are ten other tables to look at! Including all those gift items - nifty pens, colorful diaries, bookmarks with words of wisdom, and even special mugs for those contemplative chapters when sipping coffee seems to help one's cerebral activity.
How rude!
So I nudged back.
"Excuse me. I want to have look" she said in broken, accented English.
"Excuse me. I want to have look" I mimicked - sans accent but with a deliberate grammatical error. I was serious about my task.
She stayed on. I wasn't about to fight her in my favorite bookstore in Mississauga.
Idiots always tire. One just has to wait them out.
And who complains about someone staying too long at a table or with a book in a bookstore?
I suspect she was looking at the book by Anna Yin, "Poet Laureate" of Mississauga, who wrote the adulated "ethnic" story Seven Nights With the Chinese Zodiac, about whom have written here where I've also analyzed one of her poems.
This is what I wrote about Yin after heard her recite a poem during a Remembrance Day ceremony:
Yin['s]...poetry is infused with allusions to China which she left behind for these greener pastures, but a place she will never leave psychically, or even physically. It is an error to think that her predecessor Chinese have assimilated, or melded into the Canadian culture. They are simply carving out their own China, however diluted from the original it may seem, as will she. Her advantage is that she has ample support for this, both from her these long-term Chinese residents and their Chinese-Canadian safe haven, and from the guilt-ridden, "racist" contemporary whites.If the book-seeking Chinese woman were smart enough (or less aggressive with her manufactured entitlements) she could have found dozens of this book shelved in the Canadian Poetry section, as an Chapters/Indigo staff informed me. Or she could have just picked up a Stephen Leacock if she really wanted to now about Canada. But I doubt that learning more about Canada s on her priority list.
And no one blinks that a poem titled "Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac" is considered an "Canadian Poem." Oh yes this poet did win the Mississauga Poet Laureate Prize after all.
Here is the poem that Yin wrote which Canadians find quaint and honest. I just find Yin insincere.
My Accent
It is charming.
I assure you.
I assure myself,
and choose to believe so.
Languages have colors.
I want to show you my tender blue.
But you cut off with fork and knife,
quicker than my chopstick taps.
My accent grows trees,
trails and winding roads
to west coast landscape.
It points to the open sky;
yet clouds are too heavy
and form raindrops.
My papers collect them
then dry in silence.
I have hesitated many times
before I speak;
now it develops teeth.
Even with gaps between,
I decide
…this is my voice.
And, as predicted, a couple of minutes this intruder was gone. I took a deep breath, recaptured my mood before the interruption, took my photo and went to the computer data base to check out these authors.
She fit right in with the kind of immigrants in Canada now: Aggressive, self-centered (and ethno-centered), and ready to "claim" their "rights," which in her case was the right to a table full of books irrespective of who had been there before (and was still there!)
I try hard to find ways in which this "New Canada" could redeem itself, but it gets harder every day.
Cover design for Seven Years with the Chinese Zodiac
The "goat" looks more Indian than Chinese, but it is still exotic.