Blogging Librarians

African American Book Review Art African-American librarians are the gateway conservators of our history; their existence in the profession will play a vital role in the 21 st century. I will never forget when I opened up Mildred Taylor’s, “Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry,” I was in the fifth grade. The writer took me into the world of a family who believed in love, perseverance, and faith. It was also the first time that I started to understand what race meant in the United States. An African...Read Full Story

Time out today for a reflection on the way that the internet brings people closer together. No, I'm not talking about FaceBook and Twitter party invitations, which in some cases seem to work amazingly well. On one of the first nice Friday afternoons this year, I was amazed to see hundreds of teenagers headed for Jeanne Mance Park in central Montreal, carrying things to eat and drink. It wasn't anything organized in advance, but the result of someone having the bright idea of suggesting a...Read Full Story

Liberal politicians, provincial or federal, never get my vote--I always go to left of them--and if they're not from a riding around me, I don't pay too much attention to individuals. So I didn't know very much about Claude Bechard, the young star of the Jean Charest Liberals who died on the weekend of pancreatic cancer. A great loss, those who knew him said. And certainly to be snuffed out by that particular form of the disease at 41 is a great sadness. Then among the appreciations of him and...Read Full Story

...but then I didn't expect to do that on June 5, 2007 when started this blog. It was born in a conversation at The Writers' Union of Canada annual general meeting in Vancouver, where I found myself sitting next to Marc Côté of Cormorant Books. He had recently agreed to publish my novel The Violets of Usambara, and during a workshop on the internet and writers, we joked that maybe an African violet blog might be good promotion. Some 1260 posts and nearly 80,000 visitors later, I'm not sure...Read Full Story

Alguns dizem que uma qualidade muito importante pelo escritor é de falar as pessoas de países e sociedades diferentes. O falecido José Saramago teve esta qualidade, com seu pensamento sobre as línguas desmonta. "Hoje, uma língua que não se defende, morre," uma citação de Saramago, é gravada em um dos doze bancos decorados com azulejos criados por artistas plásticos de Montreal de origem portuguesa. Os banco são um passeio literário em rua Saint Laurent que corre no bairro português de...Read Full Story