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Véhicule Press and Flying Books invite you to a triple book launch!Join us Wednesday November 11 at 6:30pm to celebrate the publication of My Summer Vacation by Zeenat Nagree, Black Satin by Stanley Péan, translated by David Homel, and The Colour of Time, or the Incredible Story of Mary Gallagher by Eric Dupont, translated by Peter McCambridge.
Hosted by Carmine Starnino, the event will feature readings by Zeenat Nagree, David Homel and Eric Dupont.
This event is free and open to all.
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About My Summer Vacation:
An auto-fictional account of a childhood ending in turn-of-the-century India, delivered by an entrancing new voice.
When at year’s end a schoolteacher asks her pupils to write an essay about their vacations over the summer, twelve-year-old Zeenat turns the routine exercise into a daily exploration of her innermost thoughts. It is the dawn of a new millennium, and she’s coming of age in a politically unstable Mumbai that is still resolutely Bombay to her Muslim community. Though the world beyond her window is full of change, Zeenat spends long hours bored inside her family apartment, preoccupied with the cockroaches under the fridge, the pigeon’s nest above the cupboard, the shared toilet in the building, and the American shows on TV. At night, she reads English books in the kitchen as she questions where she fits between languages in this post-colonial society. But as summer drags on, the boredom of her routine gives way to anxieties around the place of women in society, the violence that lurks underneath their daily lives, and the anticipation of childhood’s end.
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About Black Satin:
The elegant portraits in this book, as the author says, “uncover the lives of women jazz artists who have been unfairly neglected, underestimated, even cancelled by the leading historians of jazz–most of them men.” Pianists, singers, composers, harpists, trumpeters, they gave their all to this music born from the experience of Black people in America. Stanley Péan shines a light on fifteen women musicians who may have known their share of glory during their lifetime, but who have since been relegated to the footnotes of jazz history, despite what they brought to it, individually and collectively. In these essays, Ma Rainey, Lillian Hardin Armstrong, Valaida Snow, Hazel Scott, Mary Lou Williams, Bessie Smith, Dorothy Donegan, Dorothy Ashby, Ina Ray Hutton, Clora Larea Bryant, Melba Liston, Jutta Hipp, Shirley Scott, and Geri Allen reclaim their rightful place.
Stanley Péan concludes Black Satin with an essay on abolitionist Harriet Tubman, expanding the book’s field. He states of Tubman, “She died over a century ago, yet she has continued to inspire artists of all backgrounds, working in all disciplines. Though it has been durable, her role as a muse is a neglected aspect of her legacy.”
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About The Colour of Time, or the Incredible Story of Mary Gallagher:
Sightings of the ghost of Mary Gallagher, who was murdered, are reported every six years in Montreal, three days after Quebec’s Saint-Jean-Baptiste holiday…
From the thrills and spills of the Expo 67 World’s Fair to the brothels, taverns, and trained bears of Mary Gallagher’s 19th century Griffintown district of Montreal, The Colour of Time is a larger-than-life saga. One of the hallmarks of Eric Dupont’s writing is the juxtaposition of the supernatural and real worlds—his trademark magical realism. This fabulous trip through time by the author of the bestselling Songs for the Cold of Heart is proof positive that history is no match for destiny, and that all of the future exists in the past.
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Event venue
Flying Books, 784 College St, Toronto, ON M6G 1C6, Canada
Tickets
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.