| 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. |