A book that explores the justice system by an author with lived experience
By Anita Ragunathan
It is widely acknowledged that experiences with the in/justice system are not equal. As a system built on colonial and class violence and for the protection of property, people on the margins of society who come into contact with the in/justice system are often victims of unspeakable brutality. In these harrowing accounts, these authors shine a light on the injustices they faced and share a vision for a future free from practices of carcerality.
Harvesting Freedom by Gabriel Allahdua
In this singular firsthand account, a former migrant worker reveals a disturbing system of exploitation at the heart of Canada’s farm labour system.
When Gabriel Allahdua applied to the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program in Canada, he thought he would be leaving his home in St. Lucia to work in a country with a sterling human rights reputation and commitment to multiculturalism. Instead, breakneck quotas and a culture of fear dominated his four years in a mega-greenhouse in Ontario. This deeply personal memoir takes readers behind the scenes to see what life is really like for the people who produce Canada’s food.
Now, as a leading activist in the migrant justice movement in Canada, Allahdua is fighting back against the Canadian government to demand rights and respect for temporary foreign labourers. Harvesting Freedom shows Canada’s place in the long history of slavery, colonialism, and inequality that has linked the Caribbean to the wider world for half a millennium—but also the tireless determination of Caribbean people to fight for their freedom.
My Road from Damascus by Jamal Saeed - Available on Audible Canada
Jamal Saeed arrived as a refugee in Canada in 2016. In his native Syria, as a young man, his writing pushed both social and political norms. For this reason, as well as his opposition to the regimes of the al-Assads, he was imprisoned on three occasions for a total of 12 years. In each instance, he was held without formal charge and without judicial process.
My Road from Damascus not only tells the story of Saeed’s severe years in Syria’s most notorious military prisons but also his life during the country’s dramatic changes. Saeed chronicles modern Syria from the 1950s right up to his escape to Canada in 2016, recounting its descent from a country of potential to a pawn of cynical and corrupt powers. He paints a picture of village life, his youthful love affairs, his rebellion as a young Marxist, and his evolution into a free thinker, living in hiding as a teenager for 30 months while being hunted by the secret police. He recalls his brutal prison years, his final release, and his family’s harrowing escape to Canada.
While many prison memoirs focus on the cruelty of incarceration, My Road from Damascus offers a tapestry of Saeed’s whole life. It looks squarely at brutality but also at beauty and poetry, hope and love.
Five Little Indians by Michelle Good - Available on Audible Canada
Taken from their families when they are very small and sent to a remote, church-run residential school, Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie are barely out of childhood when they are finally released after years of detention.
Alone and without any skills, support or families, the teens find their way to the seedy and foreign world of Downtown Eastside Vancouver, where they cling together, striving to find a place of safety and belonging in a world that doesn’t want them. The paths of the five friends cross and crisscross over the decades as they struggle to overcome, or at least forget, the trauma they endured during their years at the Mission.
With compassion and insight, Five Little Indians chronicles the desperate quest of these residential school survivors to come to terms with their past and, ultimately, find a way forward.
Solitary by Albert Woodfox
Solitary is the unforgettable life story of a man who served more than four decades in solitary confinement, in a 6-foot by 9-foot cell, 23 hours a day, in notorious Angola prison in Louisiana, all for a crime he did not commit.
That Albert Woodfox survived was, in itself, a feat of extraordinary endurance against the violence and deprivation he faced daily. That he was able to emerge whole from his odyssey within America’s prison and judicial systems is a triumph of the human spirit, and makes his book a clarion call to reform the inhumanity of solitary confinement in the U.S. and around the world.
Remarkably self-aware that anger or bitterness would have destroyed him in solitary confinement, sustained by the shared solidarity of two fellow Panthers, Albert turned his anger into activism and resistance. The Angola 3, as they became known, resolved never to be broken by the grinding inhumanity and corruption that effectively held them for decades as political prisoners. He survived to give us Solitary, a chronicle of rare power and humanity that proves the better spirits of our nature can thrive against any odds.
![Good morning, and happy #MondayMotivation! Lovely quote by @trapmystic speaking on queer joy and what it means to her.
What does queer joy mean to you?
[Image description: green square with a quote from Tanya Turton, author of JADE IS A TWISTED GREEN in white text: Queer joy: it is a manifestation of joy and the exciting feeling to just be alive. An illustration of a man of colour writing in his notebook at a desk. At the bottom of the graphic is a hashtag, #MondayMotivation, and a website, thefoldcanada.org.]
#MotivationMonday #LiteraryFestivals #Fold2023 #DiverseCanLit](https://thefolddev.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed-pro/img/placeholder.png)
