thebacklistborrower's Reviews (570)

An excellent work of sci-fi. I could hardly put down the book, it just kept me coming back for more intrigue.

from this book I learned more about the slave trade then I ever did in school. From how they were abducted from Africa, to how they lived in the US, to the huge numbers of black loyalists that escaped to Nova Scotia from New York after the American Civil War. The book was hard to read, but I could not have been more glad to have read it. It was very well-written and it keeps you engaged and hopeful. The lead character, Aminata Diallo just makes you want to keep going on, despite all she goes through.

I've never read a book that left me so... depressed? Tired? Exhausted of the total weight of the human condition? Sad? It is hard to explain, but after I finished this book, all I could do was stare at the ceiling and try to comprehend and work through all the pain, suffering, and misfortune in this book, and try to decide if the love, compassion, care, and luck actually balanced it all out. Is it that a small bit of good can outweigh much more bad? Or is it that we should let it outweigh the bad, as there is much more bad than good in this world, and if we focus too much on the bad, we won't be able to stand life? I fell asleep pondering these thoughts and had dreams of misfigured beggars slowly losing everything they had. This book will stay with me, and may even change how I look at things in life. While I'd recommend this book to anybody and everybody, it is emotionally heavy, and I'd warn those same people to be prepared with a lighthearted book lined up after to ease the burden.

This book is full of so much beauty and sadness I'm not sure what to feel. I could not be more happy that this book is on Canada Reads as a book to break barriers, as any book that speaks so frankly about youth drugs, sex, bullying, and conflict, as well as the conflict that society places upon youth struggling with gender and sexual identity deserves to be spoken about and made available. As of now, officially my bid for the winner of Canada Reads.

I think this book should be mandatory reading for Canadians. I leaned so much about the shameful past of our treatment of Canadians-- full citizens born and raise here-- who just happened to have Japanese heritage. It is a dark story that Joy Kogawa shows us through the eyes of a child, interspersed with happiness and beauty.

I wasn't really sure what to think of this book for a long time. The odd, explicit language and absence of normalcy made it hard to get into. However, by the second part (A long letter from F.) sold me on the purpose of the book.