Boycotting all U.S. books

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I'm not quite at the point of boycotting all U.S. books, but these days I often consider it, and at the very least feel compelled to celebrate the books I like from so-called Canada: Some Favourite Canadian Books


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Favourite Political Novels

Someone on social media asked for people's favourite political novels (their recommendation was Comrade Papa by GauZ, which I now need to read.) It got me thinking, and I came up with this list (since, as everyone knows, I really do love lists):

Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072 – Eman Abdelhadi and M. E. O'Brien
Diego Garcia – Natasha Soobramanien & Luke Williams
American Abductions – Mauro Javier Cárdenas
ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines – Sesshu Foster & Arturo Ernesto Romo
I Hotel – Karen Tei Yamashita
M Archive – Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Clandestine Occupations: An Imaginary History – Diana Block
The Unseen – Nanni Balestrini (translated by Liz Heron)
The Vanquished – César Andreu Iglesias (translated by Sidney W. Mintz)
Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow – Michiko Ishimure (translated by Livia Monnet)
American War – Omar El Akkad



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Some Favourite Canadian Books

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When I'm in Europe I'm often asked to recommend Canadian books I like and generally can never think of any off the top of my head. When I read Oscar of Between, I was really blown away by it, and somehow it inspired me to make this (obviously really subjective) list. As is my habit, it is in no particular order. I think the list might get a bit longer in the days, months or years to come... (Edit: as I hope we all already know: so-called "Canada", stolen land, resource-devouring colonial construct, which I am both against and benefit from.)


Prose
Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies – Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Islands of Decolonial Love – Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Oscar of Between – Betsy Warland
Bloodroot – Betsy Warland
Accordéon – Kaie Kellough
Dominoes at the Crossroads – Kaie Kellough
Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) – Hazel Jane Plante
We, Jane – Aimee Wall
Prophetess – Baharan Baniahmadi
Half-Bads in White Regalia – Cody Caetano
Subterrane – Valérie Bah
All Hookers Go To Heaven – Angel B.H.
Koh-i-Noor – Michael Eddy
Desperada – Sofia Mostaghimi
Wavering Futures – Kawai Shen
The Abduction of Seven Forgers – Sean Dixon
May Our Joy Endure – Ève Lambert (Translated by Donald Winkler)
nîtisânak – Jas M. Morgan
From the Archives of Vidéo Populaire – Anne Golden
Our Lady of Perpetual Realness & Other Stories – Cason Sharpe
You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked. – Sheung-King
Salt Fish Girl – Larissa Lai
This Is How You Lose the Time War – Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars – Kai Cheng Thom
Antigone Undone – Will Aitken
The Subtweet – Vivek Shraya
Sitting Shiva on Minto Avenue, by Toots – Erin Moure
Swallowed – Réjean Ducharme (Translated by Madeleine Stratford)
Listening for Jupiter - Pierre-Luc Landry (Translated by Arielle Aaronson and Madeleine Stratford) 
The Obituary – Gail Scott
American War – Omar El Akkad
Little Fish – Casey Plett
Canadian Healing Oil – Juan Butler
Ethics Of Luxury – Jeanne Randolph
The Well-Dressed Wound - Derek McCormack
The Baudelaire Fractal – Lisa Robertson
Pandora - Sylvia Fraser
Saudade: The Possibilities of Place - Anik See
Smoke Show - Clint Burnham


Poetry
Zong! – M. NourbeSe Philip
knot body – Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch
The Good Arabs – Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch
Prison Industrial Complex Explodes – Mercedes Eng
cop city swagger – Mercedes Eng
The Garbage Poems – Anna Swanson
Thou – Aisha Sasha John
Dream Rooms – River Halen
Baby Book – Amy Ching-Yan Lam
Bodymap – Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Wet Dream – Erin Robinsong
Aqueous – Nathanael Jones
Debbie: An Epic – Lisa Robertson
The Sorrowful Canadians & Other Poems - Wilfred Watson



[I have also made two others lists: Some Favourite Books and Favourite Political Novels.]



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Some Favourite Books

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Fiction
LOTE – Shola von Reinhold
Diego Garcia – Natasha Soobramanien & Luke Williams
Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies – Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Islands of Decolonial Love – Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Event Factory – Renee Gladman
The Ravickians – Renee Gladman
Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge – Renee Gladman
Houses of Ravicka – Renee Gladman
The Activist – Renee Gladman
Aliens & Anorexia – Chris Kraus
Search History – Eugene Lim
I Hotel – Karen Tei Yamashita
Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) – Hazel Jane Plante
From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate – Nathaniel Mackey
Dark Pool Party – Hannah Black
The Transformation – Juliana Spahr
nîtisânak – Jas M. Morgan
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll – Alvaro Mutis
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa – Jan Potocki
Third Factory – Viktor Shklovsky
Haunted Houses – Lynne Tillman
Motion Sickness – Lynne Tillman
The Hills of Hebron – Sylvia Wynter
The Story of My Accident Is Ours - Rachel Levitsky
The Man Who Cried I Am – John A. Williams
Progress of Stories – Laura Riding Jackson
Mumbo Jumbo – Ishmael Reed
The Seven Madmen – Roberto Arlt
Salt Fish Girl – Larissa Lai
Sitt Marie Rose – Etel Adnan
The Guérillères – Monique Wittig
Indivisible – Fanny Howe
The Fourth World – Diamela Eltit
Artificial Respiration – Ricardo Piglia
Malina – Ingeborg Bachmann
Chapel Road – Louis Paul Boon
Impossible Object – Nicholas Mosley
The King of a Rainy Country – Brigid Brophy
Head in Flames - Lance Olsen
The Girl in the Road - Monica Byrne
Delayed Rays of a Star - Amanda Lee Koe
Gentlemen & Arseholes – Lene Berg
Death in Rome – Wolfgang Koeppen
Meeting at the Milestone – Sigurd Hoel
The Waste Books – Georg Christophe Lichtenberg
The Skull of Charlotte Corday and other stories – Leslie Dick
Oriental Girls Desire Romance – Catherine Liu
Canadian Healing Oil - Juan Butler
Monsieur Teste – Paul Valéry


Non-Fiction
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments – Saidiya V. Hartman
Worthy of the Event: An Essay – Vivian Blaxell
Touching the Art – Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Emergent Strategy - adrienne maree brown
May ’68 and Its Afterlives - Kristen Ross
Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960–1975 – Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War – Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Incognegro - Frank B. Wilderson III
Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World – Lisa Wells
Pollution Is Colonialism – Max Liboiron
The Nutmeg’s Curse – Amitav Ghosh
Ethics Of Luxury: Materialism And Imagination - Jeanne Randolph
Lee Lozano: Dropout Piece – Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer
This Little Art – Kate Briggs
The Mushroom at the End of the World – Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
Debt: The First 5000 Year - David Graeber
Everyday Revolutions - Marina A. Sitrin
Ghostly Matters – Avery F. Gordon
Bodies of Work: Essays – Kathy Acker
Laconia: 1,200 Tweets on Film – Masha Tupitsyn
Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder – Lawrence Weschler
Collected Writing: 1993-2003 – Frances Stark
Drugs Are Nice – Lisa Crystal Carver
Between Dog & Wolf: Essays on Art & Politics - David Levi Strauss
Critique of Cynical Reason – Peter Sloterjik
One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity – Miwon Kwon
Caliban and the Witch – Silvia Federici
Tastes of Paradise – Wolfgang Schivelbusch
The Culture of the Copy – Hillel Schwartz
The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography – A.J.A. Symons
Chromophobia – David Batchelor
Secret Publicity – Sven Lütticken
Terror and the Sublime in Art and Critical Theory – Gene Ray


Poetry
Zong! – M. NourbeSe Philip
Our Gospel of Regicide – Eunsong Kim
Forgery – Amira Hanafi
Bodymap – Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
The Descent of Alette – Alice Notley
Style – Dolores Dorantes
Belleza y Felicidad: Selected Writings of Fernanda Laguna and Cecilia Pavon
Many Glove Compartments - Oskar Pastior
It – Inger Christensen
Thou - Aisha Sasha John
Eruditio ex Memoria - Bernadette Mayer
Selected Works - José Antonio Ramos Sucre
In the Moremarrow - Oliverio Girondo
A Night With Hamlet – Vladimir Holan
The Drug of Art: Selected Poems of Ivan Blatny
Mercury – Ariana Reines
Debbie: An Epic – Lisa Robertson
The Sorrowful Canadians & Other Poems - Wilfred Watson




[I have also made another list which I call Some Favourite Canadian Books.]



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