20 powerful nonfiction books featured on Bookends with Mattea Roach
Looking for a thought-provoking book to read this summer? This list of nonfiction titles featured on the first season of CBC Radio's Bookends with Mattea Roach is a good place to start.
On the show, Roach talks to authors from Canada and around the world.
Here are all the nonfiction titles that sparked the conversation this past year.
My Fighting Family by Morgan Campbell
My Fighting Family is a detailed history of one family's battles across the generations and reckons with what it means to be a Black Canadian with strong American roots. Sports journalist and writer Morgan Campbell traces his family's roots in the rural American south to their eventual cross-border split and the grudges and squabbles along the way. From the South Side of Chicago in the 1930s to the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War to racial tensions in Canada — My Fighting Family is about journeying to find clarity in conflict.
Campbell is an Ontario-based journalist and a senior contributor at CBC Sports. He was a sports writer at the Toronto Star for over 18 years. His work highlights where sports intersect with off-the-field issues like race, culture, politics and business. His memoir My Fighting Family is his first book.
Hope is a Woman's Name by Amal Elsana Alh'jooj
A Bedouin Palestinian activist born in Israel, Amal Elsana Alh'jooj shares her life's story in Hope is a Woman's Name. Starting with her early childhood and spanning her activist career thus far, she shares her fight for justice, peace and equality.
Alh'jooj is a professor at McGill University and a founder of several NGOs including Arab-Jewish Centre for Equality and Economic Empowerment and Cooperation. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 and won the New Israel Fund's Human Rights Award in 2013. She is the founder and executive director of the organization PLEDJ (Promoting Leadership, Empowerment, Development and Justice).
Soft As Bones by Chyana Marie Sage
In Soft As Bones, Chyana Marie Sage shares the pain of growing up with her father, a crack dealer who went to prison for molesting her older sister, and the self-destructive ways with which she coped. By revisiting her family's history, she describes the experience of overcoming generational trauma that began with her grandfather, who was forcibly separated from his family through residential schools and the Sixties Scoop. She reflects on how the traditions of her Cree culture played a crucial role in her healing.
Sage is a Cree, Métis and Salish writer based in Edmonton. Her journalism has appeared in the Toronto Star, Huff Post and the New Quarterly. Sage won first place in the Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest and silver in the National Magazine Awards for her essay Soar. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Columbia University where she taught as an adjunct professor. She also teaches Indigenous youth about cultivating self-love and healing through the Connected North program.
52 Ways to Reconcile by David A. Robertson
52 Ways to Reconcile is a guide for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people who want to take action when it comes to reconciliation — and shows how we can work together on the long road ahead.
Robertson, a two-time Governor General's Literary Award winner and member of the Norway House Cree Nation, has written more than 30 books for both children and adults, including the Misewa Saga series, picture books On the Trapline and When We Were Alone, graphic novel Breakdown, and his memoirs Black Water and All The Little Monsters. He lives in Winnipeg.
The Vinyl Diaries by Pete Crighton
Growing up in the midst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic left Pete Crighton with a huge fear of sex — and he threw himself into music as a way to cope with those anxieties. It wasn't until his 40s that Crighton knew he needed to face his fears and figure out how to live his queer life to the fullest. In his memoir The Vinyl Diaries, he takes readers on this journey — pairing big moments with the music that shaped them.
Crighton works in marketing in the arts and has studied comedy at Second City. The Vinyl Diaries is his first book. He lives in Toronto.
A Physical Education by Casey Johnston
For years, Casey Johnston thought fitness was all about shrinking down. She was terrified of weightlifting and what it would do to her body. Now, she's a writer and fitness advocate with a massive following of fellow lifters. Her book, A Physical Education, tells the story of how stepping into the weight room changed her life — body, mind and heart.
Casey Johnston is a writer and editor from the United States. She writes the advice column "Ask A Swole Woman" for multiple publications and the newsletter "She's a Beast."
Sucker Punch by Scaachi Koul
In Sucker Punch, Scaachi Koul candidly recounts the painful events that turned her life upside down, from her marriage falling apart to her mother's cancer diagnosis and everything in between. With her signature humour, Koul reflects on navigating struggle — shifting from her belief that fighting is the only way out — to exploring when to fight and when to let go in the face of life's unexpected challenges.
Koul is a writer from Calgary who currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her debut book, One Day We'll All Be Dead And None Of This Will Matter, was a New York Times Editors' Choice and a finalist for the Leacock Medal for Humor and the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. She is currently a Senior Writer at Slate and co-hosts the Ambie Award-winning podcast Scamfluencers. Koul also co-hosted the Emmy-nominated Netflix series Follow This, and her work has been published in The New Yorker, This American Life, New York Magazine and The Cut. She has also appeared in documentaries such as Quiet On Set and Pretty Baby.
Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John Green looks into the different ways tuberculosis has been perceived over centuries — and how that shapes who lives and dies from it today.
Green is the author of bestselling young adult novels including Looking for Alaska, The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down. He has won a Printz Medal, a Printz Honor and an Edgar Award. He is the writer and host of the podcast The Anthropocene Reviewed and has worked with his brother, Hank, on video projects like Vlogbrothers and Crash Course. He lives in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Hounds of Love by Leah Kardos
As part of Bloomsbury Publishing's 33 ⅓ series, in which each title dives into a single music album, writer and musician Leah Kardos wrote about Kate Bush's album Hounds of Love in a book of the same name. In it, she explores her connection to the album, its rise to popularity and its resurgence, nearly 40 years later.
Kardos is a senior lecturer in music at Kingston University London, U.K. She is also the author of Blackstar Theory: The Last Works of David Bowie and a musician.
It Must Be Beautiful to be Finished by Kate Gies
When Kate Gies was born without her right ear, plastic surgeons vowed to make her "whole" and craft the appearance of an outer ear. The Toronto author underwent 14 surgeries before the age of 13, many of which failed, leaving permanent scars — both physically and mentally. Gies shares her harrowing experiences and path to accepting her body through poignant vignettes that form her debut memoir, It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished.
Gies is a Toronto-based writer and educator. She teaches at George Brown College. Her writing has been published in The Malahat Review, The Humber Literary Review, Hobart, Minola Review and The Conium Review. She was also longlisted for the 2018 CBC Nonfiction Prize. It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished is her first book and her essay Foreign Bodies will be included in the forthcoming Best Canadian Essays anthology.
Black in Blues by Imani Perry
Imani Perry's latest book, Black in Blues, is an evocative exploration of what the colour blue can tell us about being Black in the United States today — and the extraordinary human capacity to find beauty in the face of devastation.
Perry is an American author, scholar and professor at Harvard University. She's written several other nonfiction books including South to America which won the National Book Award in 2022.
Acme Novelty Datebook: Volume Three by Chris Ware
Acme Novelty Datebook: Volume Three is the third and final instalment of a series that offers readers a look into American cartoonist Chris Ware's personal sketchbooks. Acme Novelty Datebook: Volume Three covers the last 20 years and tells of his journey into fatherhood and the rise of social media.
Ware is the author and illustrator of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, which won the Guardian First Book Award in 2001, Building Stories and Rusty Brown, which was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein award. He has designed 32 covers for The New Yorker and his work has been exhibited in many museums worldwide.
Here After by Amy Lin
Here After tells the powerful love story between Amy Lin and her husband, Kurtis, and how she copes with his sudden death. Lin shares how this loss upended her ideas of grief, strength and memory.
Lin is a Calgary-based writer whose work has been published in Ploughshares. She has also received residencies from Yaddo and Casa Comala. Here After is her first book and was shortlisted for the 2024 Hilary Weston Prize for Nonfiction.
Q&A by Adrian Tomine
Before the Internet, many comic books included a section to send letters to the creators and get insight into their work and their process. When cartoonist Adrian Tomine was growing up, he would send those letters — and now he's answering them. Q&A dives into the questions he most often hears from readers, and responds to them with a combination of words, photos and illustrations.
American cartoonist Adrian Tomine is best known for his series Optic Nerve, his memoir The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist and his work in The New Yorker. He lives in Brooklyn.
Something, Not Nothing by Sarah Leavitt
Following the medically assisted death of her partner of 22 years, cartoonist Sarah Leavitt began small sketches that quickly became something new and unexpected to her — the graphic memoir Something, Not Nothing. The abstract images mixed with poetic text, layers of watercolour, ink and coloured pencil combine to tell a story of love, grief, peace and new beginnings.
Leavitt is a Vancouver comics creator and writing teacher. Her debut book was Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer's, My Mother, and Me.
All Our Ordinary Stories by Teresa Wong
In the graphic memoir All Our Ordinary Stories, Teresa Wong uses spare black-and-white illustrations and thought-provoking prose to unpack how intergenerational trauma and resilience can shape our identities. Starting with her mother's stroke a decade ago, Wong takes a journey through time and place to find the origin of her feelings of disconnection from her parents.
Wong is the Calgary-based author of the graphic memoir Dear Scarlet, which was on the Canada Reads longlist in 2020 and was a finalist for the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. Her work has appeared in The Believer, The New Yorker, McSweeney's and The Walrus. CBC Books named her a writer to watch in 2019.
Everything and Nothing At All by Jenny Heijun Wills
Everything and Nothing At All is an essay collection that discusses Jenny Heijun Wills' quest for belonging as a transnational and transracial adoptee, a pansexual and polyamorous person and a parent with a life-long eating disorder. Drawing on her life experiences, she creates a vision of family — chosen, adopted and biological all at once.
Everything and Nothing At All was nominated for the 2024 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Award.
Wills is a writer born in Seoul and raised in Southern Ontario. Her memoir Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related won the 2019 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Award for Nonfiction and the 2020 Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book. She currently lives in Winnipeg and teaches English at the University of Winnipeg.
The Knowing by Tanya Talaga
The Knowing starts with the life of Tanya Talaga's great-great grandmother Annie Carpenter and charts the violence she and her family experienced for decades at the hands of the Church and the government.
Talaga is a writer and journalist of Anishinaabe and Polish descent. She is a member of Fort William First Nation. Her book Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death and Hard Truths in a Northern City won the RBC Taylor Prize, the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the First Nation Communities Read: Young Adult/Adult Award. Her book All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward was the basis for the 2018 CBC Massey Lectures.
Degrees of Separation by Alison McCreesh
Degrees of Separation blends stories, drawings and sketches that chronicle Alison McCreesh's decade spent living in the North. From being stranded in the High Arctic to raising a baby in a small shack with no running water, the book is a coming-of-age story that recounts the challenges and joys of life living and working north of the 60th parallel.
McCreesh is an artist who currently lives in Yellowknife. She has travelled around the Arctic and sub-Arctic and the theme of contemporary day-to-day life in the North carries through her creative work.
Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley
When American writer Sloane Crosley first met Russell Perreault, he was her boss for a publishing job at Vintage Books. The two became fast friends, both in and out of the office, taking on the literary world and beyond for most of Crosley's adult life. Exactly a month after a break-in shook up Crosley's sense of security, Perreault died by suicide, leaving her with profound pain, confusion and grief. In Grief is for People, Crosley reckons with the grief of losing her best friend using philosophy and art as a framework, writing with her trademark irreverence and honesty.
Crosley is an American writer known for her humorous essay collections I Was Told There'd Be Cake and Look Alive Out There.
