PreviewsIssue 83, Fall/Winter 2023/24
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Numinous Seditions
Interiority and Climate Change
Tim Lilburn
The celebrated poet and essayist investigates aspects of an interiority appropriate to a time and world irrevocably altered by climate change, asking such questions as the following: How will we be under these new conditions? What inner dispositions might sustain and help us bear the new sorrows of the climate crisis? Suggested possibilities include listening, noticing, reading, and stretching our imaginations.
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On Community
Casey Plett
Number 8 in the Field Notes series, this episodic personal essay asks how, and to what socio-political ends, we form bonds with one another. Plett draws on first-hand experiences and looks at phenomena from transgender literature, to Mennonite history, to the rise of nationalism in North America to examine the implications of community as a word, an idea, and a symbol in this illuminating and essential contribution to the larger cultural discourse.
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On Stony Ground
Russländer Mennonites and the Rebuilding of Community in Grunthal
James Urry
This historical ethnographic account of a generation of Mennonites from the Soviet Union – who immigrated to Manitoba during the 1920s following Russia’s revolution and civil war – examines how they adapted to a new land and new neighbours, including other Mennonites, Ukrainians, French Canadians, and Indigenous Peoples.
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On The Road To Abandoned Manitoba
Taking the scenic route through historic places
Gordon Goldsborough
Scientist-historian Goldsborough hits the road in search of adventure and little-known stories from Manitoba’s past, to such places as underground radiation monitoring posts from the Cold War, a remote hydroelectric generating station, cruise ships on the Red River, and the original Trans-Canada Highway.
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Opposite Identicals
A Novel
Deborah Kerbel
Nova and Joule are 14-year-old twins whose scientist parents have moved them to the country on a year-long research assignment. Bookish Nova is happy with the quiet of nature, but Joule is desperate to escape. When Joule’s wish comes true – that is, when she is swallowed up by a mysterious sinkhole under her bedroom floor – Nova has to lead the search for her missing sister.
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Oubliette
Hannah Godfrey
This poignant partial portrait of a daughter and mother is made up of quips and reminiscences, collected scraps of conversations, and quotes from films and books that articulated the anticipatory grief Godfrey underwent during her mum’s last years of life.
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Pinching Zwieback
Mitch Toews
These stories portray small-town Mennonite life with humour and poignancy. Linked by a common community and recurrent characters, the stories show families reconfiguring as necessary, young boys growing to be men, and women learning to be bold in the midst of tight societal expectations.
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Pishtaco: Lord of the Lost Inca Gold
Mark Patton
A mathematician with schizophrenia, Penelope Augusta Gertrude Farquharm sets out on a quest to find the lost city of Paititi, Peru, to destroy the evil shaman Pishtaco, who rules there, and along the way she finds herself trapped in the Amazon rain forest with the voices in her head that have now materialized as human beings.
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Plundering the North
A History of Settler Colonialism, Corporate Welfare, and Food Insecurity
Kristin Burnett, Travis Hay
Burnett and Hay examine the disturbing mechanics behind the origins of Canada’s shameful public health and human rights crisis of food insecurity in the North – the systems of government policies and corporate monopolies that interfere with Indigenous food sovereignties and self-determination.
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Political Activist Ethnography
Studies in the Social Relations of Struggle
Agnieszka Doll (Editor), Laura Bisaillon (Editor), Kevin Walby (Editor)
The contributors of this volume examine how research can produce knowledge for social transformation by using political activist ethnography, a social research strategy that uses political confrontation as a resource and focuses on moments and spaces of direct struggle to reveal how ruling regimes are organized so that activists can fight them.
