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Life Before Canada For 85 years JIAS Canada has been helping newcomers to Canada settle and integrate into our communities across the country. But where did those immigrants come from, and why did they leave? Two new books help us answer some of these questions.
Ja, No, Man by Richard Poplak published by Penguin Books Canada
Richard Poplak was born to privilege in a South Africa divided by the Apartheid regime, press censorship and a life where races definitely did not mix. He immigrated to Canada with his family shortly after Nelson Mendela became President and the whole face of the country changed. Ja, No, Man articulates what it was like to live through Apartheid as a white, Jewish boy in suburban Johannesburg. Told with extraordinary humour and self-awareness, Richard’s story brings his gradual understanding of the difference between his country and the rest of the world vividly to life. A startlingly original memoir that veers sharply from the quotidian to the bizarre and back again, Ja, No, Man is an enlightening, darkly hilarious, and, at times, disturbing read.
Out of Line: Growing Up Soviet is Rabbi Tina Grimberg’s story written for children ages 10-12 published by Tundra Books
Tina Grimberg brings colour and perception to a life we think
of as grey, impersonal, and foreboding. She was born in Kiev and
grew up feisty, bright, and funny in a tiny flat with her parents
and her older sister. Her descriptions of life in that grand and
beleaguered city are by turn hysterical and heartbreaking. When Tina
turned fifteen, the government, desperate for foreign wheat, traded
“undesirables” for food, and that meant that many Jewish families
like Tina’s could leave. Until they could leave on the hair-raising
journey she was publicly shamed and cut off, but she never lost her
affectionate and clear-eyed view of her homeland.
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