#ecwpress

Kingston, Ontario based writer and activist Jamal Saeed, talks to AW’s Lucy Black about his new memoir LB: Thank you for sharing your journey from Damascus to Dubai to your current home in Canada.  Writing your memoir must have necessitated revisiting memories of great pain. Could you share with us how and why you selected some of the scenes that you document so graphically? JS: My pleasure. In…

A book has to be pretty amazing for me to need to buy a final copy after I read the ARC. It has to be a book that I want to reread, recommend to everyone who asks me for a good book recommendation, one that I want to pull quotes from in the future. All of this sums up my feelings for The Light Streamed Beneath It: A Memoir of Grief and Celebration by @shawnhitchins . This book comes out in October this year and which means you can join me in preordering it now, so you have a finished copy in your hands as soon as possible. Thank you fo much to @ecwpress for the gifted ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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Synopsis from the publisher: A lifetime of finding punchlines in his heartache comes to a shuddering stop when comedian and writer Shawn Hitchins loses two great loves, five months apart, to sudden death. In this deeply poignant memoir that combines sober self-portrait with tender elegy, Hitchins explores the messiness of being alive: the longing and desire, scorching-earth anger, raw grief ― and the pathway of healing he discovers when he lets his heart remain open. Never without an edge of self-awareness, The Light Streamed Beneath It invites the reader into Hitchins’s world as he reckons with his past and stays painfully in the present. As he builds an embodied future, he confronts the stories that have shaped him, sets aside his ambition, and seeks connection in what he used to deflect with laughter ― therapy, community and chosen family, movement, spirituality, and an awareness of death’s ever-presence. A heartrending and hope-filled story of resilience in the wake of death, The Light Streamed Beneath It joyfully affirms that life is essentially good, as Hitchins weaves his tale full of tenacious spirit, humor, kindness, and grit through life’s most unforgiving challenges.

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So behind on reviews, so get ready for a lot of review content for the next week or so!

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Thank you so much to @ecwpress and @netgalley for the gifted ALC of Take Back The Tray: Revolutionizing Food in Hospitals, Schools, and Other Institutions by Johsna Maharaj!

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Synopsis from the publisher: A beloved chef takes on institutional food and sparks a revolution with this manifesto, memoir from the trenches, and blueprint for reclaiming control from corporations and brutal bottom lines. “With hard-won insights and deep commitment, Joshna Maharaj takes us on a mouthwatering tour of what our collective food future might be.” ? Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System Good food generally doesn’t arrive on a tray, but Chef Joshna Maharaj knows that institutional kitchens have the ability to produce good, nourishing food, because she’s been making it happen over the past 14 years. She’s served meals to people who’d otherwise go hungry, baked fresh scones for maternity ward mothers, and dished out wholesome, scratch-made soups to stressed-out undergrads. She’s determined to bring health, humanity, and hospitality back to institutional food while also building sustainability, supporting the local economy, and reinvigorating the work of frontline staff. Maharaj reconnects food with health, wellness, education, and rehabilitation in a way that serves people, not just budgets, and proves change is possible with honest, sustained commitment on all levels, from government right down to the person sorting the trash. The need is clear, the time is now, and this revolution is delicious.

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I am a huge believer in the healing power of healthy food. This book was both enlightening and at times frustrating that these institutions, that we should be able to trust to provide healthy food, will go back to unhealthy options when not pressured. This is a great book for anyone who:

-Enjoys foodie reads

-Would like a behind the scenes look at how menu decisions are made in major institutions.

-The progress and road blocks in making healthier options more widely available.

-Loves nonfiction.