social justice

Herizons: I’m so delighted to be able to chat with you about A Complicated Kindness. I imagine this book took a lot of courage to write. Can you talk about that a bit?

nah-ee-lah and d’bi young are creating sparks with their word sounds. These second- generation dub poets—who are also noteworthy playwrights and actors—rhythmically fan those sparks into flames of resistance against injustice as they burn new pathways toward social liberation.

It’s a typical muggy July afternoon in Vancouver. Inside the Commodore Ballroom—a relic from the ’20s restored to its art deco splendour five years ago—the Indigo Girls’ sound check is dragging.

Amy Ray, the dark-haired Indigo Girl known for her gravelly vocals and edgier songwriting style, is a little frustrated as she runs through the evening’s set list and corrects the levels for the duo’s plethora of stringed instruments.

"Third-wave feminism" is a catchy yet contested term for the ideas and activism of young North American women. Lara Karaian, Allyson Mitchell and Lisa Rundle created an anthology that reflects the issues and experiences of these women. Their book, Turbo Chicks, (Sumach Press, 2001) challenges the image of young women as apathetic, apolitical dupes of an anti-feminist backlash. Instead, the contributors to Turbo Chicks present a lively, intriguing series of opinions and perspectives which are by turns thoughtful, provocative, funny, angry and poignant.

Sunera Thobani's speech at the "Women's Resistance: From Victimization to Criminalization" conference in Ottawa on October 1 2001, provoked a storm of controversy after her remarks were interpreted as blaming the September 11th terrorist attacks on U.S. foreign policy. Canada's Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, described it as a "terrible speech that we are 100 percent against."