The Palm Leaf Fan

From crumbling shops in Chinatown to decaying tanneries in Tangra, this collection of short stories expose us to the sights, sounds, and smells of a marginalized community in post-colonial Calcutta.

We meander into Wong’s Shoe Shop, where a mother arranges a marriage for her six year old daughter. We stop at a school for girls, where the principal singles out students who have large breasts for punishment. We pause by a temple guarded by a billy goat where family drama rages. We rally with politicians while monsoon rain drenches us. We relax under waving palms while the setting sun shimmers over the surface of Tangra fish ponds.

The Palm Leaf Fan's sensitivity and quirky sense of humour will keep you wanting to return to the ghetto, again and again.

On the reading lists for three classes at U of T at Mississauga, York University and Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

Fiction. Toronto: TSAR Publications, October, 2006.

Read an excerpt from "The Fish Pond."

All TSAR publications are available online.

A Kiss Beside the Monkey Bars

A collection by four new writers show what makes Toronto the city it has become.

Sultan Ameerali, born in Toronto to Sri Lankan parents, chronicles the hilarious and shocking absurdities of the "brown man" making do in white Canada through bottom feeder jobs and heartless relationships.

Jennifer Lee, produces wry, low-key tales about living across cultural boundaries, first in southern Ontario, then during a year in China, her parents' homeland.

Kwai Li, takes us to the tiny marginalized community of Chinese in Tangra, a suburb of post-colonial Calcutta, where as a six-year-old she stood watch for the cops as her mother turned a tannery by day into a moonshine operation by night.

Rosa Veltri, the daughter of Italian-born parents in Toronto's west end, writes sparkling and heartbreaking stories of immigrants who struggle for dignity in a hellish suburban fruit market.

Currently used as a text for two third-year writing courses at the University of Toronto at Mississauga.

Sultan Ameerli et al.
Creative non-fiction. Toronto: Life Rattle Press, 2004.
Pp. 217-289.

All Life Rattle publications are available online.

“Recording”

In The Totally Unknown Writers’ Festival 2005: A Celebration of Arnie

Arnie Achtman…writer, teacher, actor, broadcaster, performance artist, friend, son, brother, lover, musician, mentor, loner…the matron of routine, the comic, stabilizer, neutralizer, the easiest to talk to–the hardest to really piss off.
“My favourite place in the whole world—Arnie’s arms. Safe.”
Congas…he made the congas sing. He could find the deepest pocket in a groove.

Arnie Achtman et al.
Creative non-fiction. Toronto: Life Rattle, 2005.
Pp. 31-33.

All Life Rattle publications are available online.

“Howrah Station”

in Will You Still Love Me If I Shave My Head?
Guy Allen, ed., Creative Non-fiction. Toronto: Life Rattle Press, 2003, Pp. 49-56.

Out of print.

"The Fish"
broadcast on CBC Radio, 2000.