Let’s have more of you · Blog post · 49th shelf

We’re so pleased to be able to offer copies of What she said can be given away until the end of October.

Check out our giveaway page to see if you’re in with a chance and check out everything else we have to offer.

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As I sat down to write my latest book, a non-fiction examination of the current state of gender equality in Canada, I heard my editor’s voice in my ear: Let’s have more of you. And I thought: is there more of me? It feels like my skin is on every page. Then I remembered the great memoirs I loved, which had already navigated these tricky waters. Their authors navigated between the personal and the political, between the too much and the not-enough, and came out in one piece. Even better, they had left behind a model of what could be.

Here are some of my favorite memoirs by Canadian women.

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A ghost scattered across the groundby Alicia Elliott

I was on the train when I read A ghost scattered across the groundand I looked up as the cities flashed by. The outside world seemed surreal because I was so absorbed in the stories Alicia Elliott told about her life. I would say there were raw ones, and they are, but that doesn’t convey the art that is evident in the design of these essays, and their connections to each other. I think I almost missed my stop, so read it if you have time. You won’t want to put it down.

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Feeding my motherby Jann Arden

“We’re all a little bit broken. Some of us even rattle when we walk,” writes Jann Arden in this beautiful book, and you can almost hear her voice saying it. She cares for her mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, cooks for her and tries to live in the present – ​​even though the past is always with them. It is such a beautiful, honest book about what we gain and lose in the process of caring for others. There are also great recipes in there, and for someone who loves food, I think that’s a big bonus.

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Being brownby Rosemary Brown

I got this book from the library because I had always been inspired by the life of Rosemary Brown (trained as a social worker, she was the first black woman to hold a seat in a provincial legislature and ran for leadership of a major party). But I wasn’t ready for how fresh and disturbingly contemporary it felt, as Brown talks about the racism and sexism she experienced, and also how she rose above it. Sometimes I would flip back to the copyright page to check when it was published. It was 1989, but unfortunately it could have been yesterday.

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It should be easy to repairThrough Bonnie Robichaud

Before there were legions saying MeToo, there was Bonnie Robichaud. As a cleaner at a Canadian Armed Forces base in the 1970s, a fighter for women’s rights to work in peace and security, and the central figure in a landmark Supreme Court case, Robichaud is a hero in the fight against sexual harassment. Reading her memoir is like hearing Bonnie’s feisty voice in your ear.

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Unbrokenby Angela Sterritt

Gitxsan journalist Angela Sterritt was one of the first people in the media to take the stories of missing and murdered indigenous women seriously. She looks at the ways in which these women’s deaths were dismissed and ignored, and compares these stories to her own experiences of uncertainty and dislocation. I learned so much, not only about our historical (and current) colonial exploitation, but also about how a personal story can illuminate a national tragedy. It’s such a powerful book.

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They said this would be funThrough Eternity Martis

“At times this book is disturbing,” writes Eternity Martis, “and at other times you will laugh.” I don’t know about you, but that’s exactly how I like my memoirs. With a journalist’s eye and a novelist’s pen, Martis explores campus racism, black sisterhood, domestic violence, and navigating the confusing maze of young adulthood. This is a memoir that unfolds like a movie.

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Heroes in my headby Judy Rebick

Judy Rebick, one of the great feminist writers and advocates in Canadian history, tells a shocking personal story: in response to childhood sexual abuse, she developed eleven different personalities. Individual and societal experiences become intertwined as Rebick struggles to understand how her past influences her fight for women’s rights and reproductive justice. The material is disturbing, but the story is one of triumph.

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Beyond reason And chang up my thoughtsby Margaret Trudeau

Read them both, one after the other. You won’t regret it. Two portraits of a fascinating woman at different times in her life, and a country that changes much less than she does.

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Learn more about What she said: conversations about equality

A passionate advocate for gender equality, and one of our most respected journalists, he explores with humor and heart the most pressing issues facing women in Canada today.

The fight for women’s rights would be over. Or, to put it another way: women had to make do with what we were given grudgingly, with the crumbs from the table we had set. For thirty percent of the seats in the Canadian parliament; for five percent of the CEO’s offices; for one-tenth of the salary of male athletes; for the small percentage of sexual violence cases that result in convictions; for weak control over our health and body. “Aren’t we over it yet? No, we’re not over it yet,” writes Elizabeth Renzetti.

In this book, Renzetti draws on her own life story and her years as an award-winning journalist at the Globe and mailwhere her columns followed the trajectory of women’s rights. Powerfully argued, accessible and witty, What she said examines a range of issues: the increasingly hostile world of threats that prevent young women from seeking roles in public life; the use of non-disclosure agreements to silence victims of sexual harassment and assault; the inadequacy of access to health care and reproductive justice, especially as experienced by indigenous and racialized women; the ways in which future technologies should be made more inclusive; the inequality in pay, wealth and savings, and how women have not yet been socialized to be the best financial managers they can be; the unbalanced burden of care, from emotional labor to childcare.

Renzetti, with humor and sympathy, explores the nuance of these issues, so often presented as divisive, to unite women at a time when women must work together to protect their fundamental right to exist fully and freely in the world. What she said is a rallying cry for a more just future.