Literature for Life and CBC Culture Days
The Toronto TD Kids Book Club is a special project that involves Literature for Life programming , facilitated by artist and spoken word poet Jelani Nias (a.k.a. JWyze) and made up of young people from the 
Chalkfarm neighbourhood. On October 1, the club got together as part of the Culture Days Open House at CBC Toronto to discuss the book Burn by Alma Fullerton, and how it relates to their own lives and experiences. Fullerton herself took part in the discussion. Go to the TD Kids Book Corner on the CBC website for more information on the event and to listen to audio clips of the conversation.
Matt Galloway Interviews Jo Altilia on CBC’s Metro Morning
Matt Galloway Interviews Literature for Life's Jo Altilia
On Monday September 26, 2011 at 8:20am, Matt Galloway sat down with founding Executive Director of Literature for Life, Jo Altilia to discuss the charity’s involvement with the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Awards and the missions of the Literature for Life organization.
Jo discusses Literature for Life's involvement in the TD Children's Literature Awards
This Saturday, you will have a chance to meet children from the Literature for Life Chalkfarm Reading Circle. They are taking part in CBC Radio’s TD Kids Book Club. The students will be at the CBC Studios as part of this Saturday’s Open House in Glenn Gould Studio, along with children’s author, Alma Fullerton, to discuss her book, “Burn”.
Click the link to hear the interview: Jo Altilia LIVE on CBC’s Metro Morning
Literature for Life’s Meet & Greet with Sister Souljah.
Join Literature for Life as we host our reading circle programming participants at the Sister Souljah launch and special presentation for her new book Midnight and the Meaning of Love!
Sister Souljah is the author of The Coldest Winter Ever, Literature for Life’s book of entry, offered within the reading circle programming. Since Literature for Life’s inception in 2000, the organization has ordered over 1200 copies of The Coldest Winter Ever, as well as copies of another Sister Souljah book, Midnight.
The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah ever has provided Literature for Life programming participants with a fast-moving, reality-based plot that instantly grabs the attention of the reader as they follow Winter, the book’s main character, through the tough streets of Brooklyn in the 1980s.
Through the narrative we are able to evaluate the role of a mother through Winter’s nameless mother figure. Other themes discussed within our reading circle groups are personal responsibilities, the value of asking for assistance, attributes of a friend, substance abuse, fatherless households, and much more.
Literature for Life is thrilled to finally meet Sister Souljah. The young women we support are equally as thrilled to meet her and to have a chance to have their books signed.
For media inquiries please contact: Tamara Shelly 416-203-9830 x 2
Stay tuned for photos and more about Literature for Life’s Meet & Greet with Sister Souljah.
Discussion: White Lines by Tracy Brown
Question: Born’s mother is protective of her son and watches out for him. She doesn’t condone what he’s doing however at the same time, she accepts his money. Is she a decent role model? And Edna chooses her boyfriends over her daughters, although in the end, she is there for Jada. How would you compare the two mothers? Which is the stronger woman?
Answer: Both mothers love their children. Born’s mother appreciates him so she knows he’s a smart, young man who knows what he’s doing. Even though she doesn’t want him to do what he does, they both know that that’s the only way they can get through. She understands the situation very much.
Jada’s mother is clearly lost and weak, you could tell she wants to be comforted by a man and wants to live as a big happy family. But she thinks about her own happiness before her daughters.
- T’Shante Johnson-Whittaker
Susan McClelland visits Humewood House Reading Circle.
Susan McClelland, internationally recognized journalist and co-author of The Bite of the Mango will be joining our Humewood House Reading Circle as she prepares a piece on Literature for Life for Canadian Living Magazine! We look forward to her joining us as we read the book White Lines by Tracy Brown.
More on The Bite of the Mango
The Bite of the Mango is a book read by Literature for Life’s reading circles (and see here for a response from one of our readers). You can watch the book trailer here. Go here for more information about the book’s author, Mariatu Kamara, and the foundation she has started to provide homes of refuge for abused women and children in Sierra Leone.
From the publisher’s website: As a child in a small rural village in Sierra Leone, Mariatu Kamara lived peacefully surrounded by family and friends. Rumors of rebel attacks were no more than a distant worry. But when 12-year-old Mariatu set out for a neighboring village, she never arrived. Heavily armed rebel soldiers, many no older than children themselves, attacked and tortured Mariatu. During this brutal act of senseless violence they cut off both her hands. Stumbling through the countryside, Mariatu miraculously survived. The sweet taste of a mango, her first food after the attack, reaffirmed her desire to live, but the challenge of clutching the fruit in her bloodied arms reinforced the grim new reality that stood before her. With no parents or living adult to support her and living in a refugee camp, she turned to begging in the streets of Freetown. As told to her by Mariatu, journalist Susan McClelland has written the heartbreaking true story of the brutal attack, its aftermath and Mariatu’s eventual arrival in Toronto where she began to pull together the pieces of her broken life with courage, astonishing resilience and hope.
Quill & Quire called the book “compelling, not to mention gut-wrenching”. This blogger writes, “Yes, this is a sad book, but it’ll also make you laugh, it’ll make you angry, it’ll break your heart and make you cry but above all, it’ll make you hopeful.” According to the Toronto Public Library’s Teen Librarian, The Bite of the Mango is an “emotionally stirring, beautiful, and hopeful book”.
A review on the website Access Africa states: “Although the violence of the book may make teachers think twice about using it, this is an honest and true story told without glamour or artifice. In a time when Americans students watch the made-up violence of CSI and 24, teachers would do well to teach them about how people respond to real-life horrors going on not so far away.”
What is Jo Altilia reading?
In her recent interview with the website She Does the City, Literature for Life’s Executive Director Jo Altilia shared some of her own reading experiences: “When I was a teenager, I was influenced by Dune (Frank Herbert), Siddhartha (Herman Hesse) and Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte). These books opened up the world of reading to me and the ideas they presented through narrative engaged me on a creative and intellectual level.
More recently I have been most influenced by Blindness (Jose Saramago), Paradise (Toni Morrison), The Red Tent (Anita Diamant), the Book of Negroes (Lawrence Hill), The Birth House (Ami McKay) and A Hundred Years of Solitudes (Gabriel Garcia Marquez).
I usually have two or three books on the go….I just finished reading Room (Emma Donoghue) and The Help (Kathryn Stockett) and am now on to Far to Go (Alison Pick).”
Mini Interview with Reading Circle Facilitator Desi Di Nardo
Credit: Rick O'Brien
Question: What factors do you keep in mind when choosing which books you’ll be using in your reading circles? What makes a successful book for the circles, and is there anything that the less successful books have incommon? What book have you discovered the most from through your participants’ responses?
There are indeed key factors I try to take into consideration when selecting the books we read at the June Callwood Centre. Certainly, a bias on my part influences choice as I feel it is important to expose the group to books with a more literary slant no matter how simple the story line or narrating seems to be. However, I know to remain cognizant and sensitive to age, background, and reading ability when making that decision. The books should be able to touch the girls in a way that allows them to examine their own situations and empower them with the tools and motivation necessary to continue reading further books based not only on plot and character development but also out of the sheer simple pleasure they derive from reading aloud and the thought-provoking discussions which emerge from the reading circle.
I feel the books which are accepted and read with zeal are typically ones which portray a strong yet ‘fallen’ female protagonist, usually relayed in first person perspective so the girls are able to penetrate the mind and feelings of the character(s). There tends to be obstacles they themselves have personally encountered or are currently experiencing and often the struggle or conflict is resolved in a way that is accessible to the reader and illustrates how that character is redeemed or salvaged in a manner the girls can relate and/or aspire to.
The books which have proved most successful and engaging are Leslie’s Journal by Allan Stratton, The Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara, The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill, and (my personal favourite) A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.
-Desi Di Nardo
On hope and catharsis in Allan Stratton's Chanda's Secrets
June Callwood Centre
Facilitator: Desi Di Nardo
Currently reading: Chanda’s Secrets by Allan Statton
When asked about the symbolism of the stork for Chanda, the girls reflected on objects or places which held great value for them and also contemplated images/scenes which were cathartic and hopeful.
Mariyah Piler writes:
As I return home from a long journey
from the deep abyss
I lay quietly to embrace my thoughts
So soft and warm, like a cloud in the
sky
Where can I go to free my thoughts?
I go to the place that warms my
heart.
Taylor Partridge:
I sit in my bedroom
listening to my thoughts
I think of my old life
and my new life now
How can it change so much?
Jennelle Lepine:
I sit in my bedroom and let everything go.
There’s no one there for me to talk to
-or fight with.
It’s just me. For once.
A place where I can go to relax.
Helena Shimirimana:
I’m in my room.
Looking at the beautiful birds.
Hearing my voice being called by an angel.
What a beautiful day!
Looking at the beautiful stars!
What a day…
On hope and catharsis in Allan Stratton’s Chanda’s Secrets
June Callwood Centre
Facilitator: Desi Di Nardo
Currently reading: Chanda’s Secrets by Allan Statton
When asked about the symbolism of the stork for Chanda, the girls reflected on objects or places which held great value for them and also contemplated images/scenes which were cathartic and hopeful.
Mariyah Pilon writes:
As I return home from a long journey
from the deep abyss
I lay quietly to embrace my thoughts
So soft and warm, like a cloud in the
sky
Where can I go to free my thoughts?
I go to the place that warms my
heart.
Taylor Partridge:
I sit in my bedroom
listening to my thoughts
I think of my old life
and my new life now
How can it change so much?
Jennelle Lepine:
I sit in my bedroom and let everything go.
There’s no one there for me to talk to
-or fight with.
It’s just me. For once.
A place where I can go to relax.
Helena Shimirimana:
I’m in my room.
Looking at the beautiful birds.
Hearing my voice being called by an angel.
What a beautiful day!
Looking at the beautiful stars!
What a day…