National Day of Remembrance & Action on Violence Against Women Day

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An image that reads December 6th is National Day of Remeberance & Action on Violence Against Women Day

Thirty years ago today, in 1989, fourteen women were murdered in a senseless and brutal attack at Polytechnique Montréal, and December 6th was thenceforth declared a day for remembrance and action against such violence.

Below, you will find a list of resources and information for those who may be in need of help, would like to support someone in need of help, or would simply like to be better informed on what to do and how to conduct themselves in the face of violence, misogyny, and discrimination. Due to the themes and subject matters within, the listed titles may contain content some readers might find triggering. Please explore with your own well-being in mind.

We hope that with this blog post, we at the Vaughan Public Libraries can offer support, education, and assistance to all those who come to us.

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Babel: An Arcane History

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Babel (full subtitle: Or, the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translator’s Revolution) by R.F. Kuang is a big, bold, incredible conundrum of a novel. Anything clocking in at over 500 pages is already going to be asking a lot from its readers. And that title? Music to my history nerd ears (eyes?), but what a mouthful! From the jump, Kuang is telegraphing what you’re about to sink into, and that is a dense, at times challenging, historical epic. Babel follows Robin Swift as he’s taken from his home in Canton to be raised in England, priming him for a lucrative career in Oxford’s translation department. But things aren’t all what they seem, and Robin quickly gets caught up in an underground, anticolonial movement called the Hermes Society.  

This book is marketed as a fantasy, but it’s light on the magic. In this version of Industrial Revolution era Britain, the gilded Oxford University has a Royal Institute of Translation (I googled: not a real thing) based out of a tower aptly named Babel. This institute works by translating and inscribing words into enchanted silver bars, which function like a source of energy for their owners. So, countries that can afford more silver bars gain more power. Kuang doesn’t imagine much of an alternate history here; Britain is the dominant force in the silver trade and thus has the strongest colonial power—just like real life. Truthfully, not much is different than actual British trade history. I know some readers were frustrated by that, but it doesn’t bother me. Just approach the novel like historical fiction with some slight fantasy elements, and that should mitigate any disappointment. 

Rather than the more typical elements of fantasy fiction, the magic in this world is the act of translation itself. This might be where reader reactions diverge. Kuang, a scholar through and through (she currently has two Masters, one each from Oxford and Cambridge, and a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literature from Yale) is not shy about loading the text with thorough explorations of linguistics and the history of language. Your mileage may vary on how interesting this is; as someone who minored in linguistics, I am always happy to see the word “Proto-Indo-European” appear in the wild. Give me all the etymologies! 

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The World Through a Lens: a Photographic Perspective

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The cover of Wild and Crazy

My bio hints at it, but I’ll state this fact plainly: I am a photographer. Not*1 in an “I take pictures” way, but in the “I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography” way. Yup. I was a weirdo arts school kid before being a*2 library school student. I’m also completely over the art world, primarily because of my bachelor’s. All you “I take pictures” photographers? Keep at it! It’s not a degree that makes you a photographer; it’s taking pictures. At least in my eyes.

So why did going to school for art turn me against the art world? I like taking pretty photographs*3 and trying to ascribe some higher meaning to them just to please critics gives me a headache. I’m an uncomplicated photographer; what you see in the picture is what you choose to see. I just saw something neat and framed it in a way that pleased me.

Not all photographers work like I do, though. Some have missions to complete, subjects they excel in capturing, a desire to push the medium forward, or a cause to champion. They shoot for magazines, competitions, journalism, or any myriad of reasons. Sometimes those photos are collected in massive books. We’ve all been in a bookstore and seen coffee table books, behemoths full of imagery to peruse while taking a break with a nice hot drink. Lovely to look through, but with homes getting smaller, who has space for them these days? This is where the library comes in*4, borrow the book, look through it for a time, and return it when you’re done, knowing it’ll be there again if you want it.

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