Archive for the 'Life Writing' Category

Holocaust Remembrance Day is being celebrated today around the world. In Halifax this evening (April 8), WLU Press author Israel Unger will give the keynote speech and celebrate the publication of his new book, The Unwritten Diary of Israel Unger, a collaboration with Carolyn Gammon. For more events in the Atlantic region, see the press release and tour schedule.

The book is the latest in the Life Writing series from WLU Press, which “promotes autobiographical accounts, diaries, letters, and testimonials written and/or told by women and men whose political, literary, or philosophical purposes are central to their lives.”

We have been fortunate here to have worked with a number of survivors of the Holocaust and to hear their stories firsthand. Without exception these men and women have been deeply principled, humble about their accomplishments, and an honour to know.

Elisabeth Raab: Elisabeth M. Raab was born in Hungary in 1921. In 1944 she was deported with her mother, father and daughter to the concentration camp at Auschwitz. She alone survived and was liberated by the Americans in 1945. Her book And Peace Never Came paints a brief yet moving picture of her idyllic life before her internment and the shock and the horrors of Auschwitz, but it is in the images of life after her liberation, that Raab imparts her most poignant story — a story told in a clear, almost sparse, always honest style, a story of the brutal, and, at times, the beautiful facts of human nature.

Israel Unger: At the beginning of the Nazi period, 25,000 Jewish people lived in Tarnow, Poland. By the end of the Second World War, nine remained. Like Anne Frank, Israel Unger and his family hid for two years in an attic crawl space. Against all odds, they emerged alive. Now, after decades of silence, here is Unger’s “unwritten diary.”

Johanna Krause: Persecuted as a Jew, both under the Nazis and in postwar East Germany, Johanna Krause (1907–2001) courageously fought her way through life with searing humour and indomitable strength of character. Johanna Krause Twice Persecuted is her story.

Michael Englishman: 163256: A Memoir of Resistance is Michael Englishman’s astonishing story of courage, resourcefulness, and moral fibre as a Dutch Jew during World War II and its aftermath, from the Nazi occupation of Holland in 1940, through his incarceration in numerous death and labour camps, to his eventual liberation by Allied soldiers in 1945 and his emigration to Canada. Surviving by his wits, Englishman escaped death time and again, committing daring acts of bravery to do what he thought was right—helping other prisoners escape and actively participating in the underground resistance.

Imre Rochlitz: Accident of Fate is a first-hand account of persecution, rescue, and resistance in the Axis-occupied former Yugoslavia. At the age of thirteen, Imre Rochlitz fled to Yugoslavia from his childhood home in Vienna following the NaziAnschluss, leaving his family behind. In January 1942 the Ustashe (Croatian Fascists) arrested and interned him in the Jasenovac death camp, where he dug mass graves. On the verge of death, Rochlitz was released due to the extraordinary intervention of a Nazi general. He escaped to the Adriatic coast, where he and several thousand other Jewish refugees were protected by the army of Fascist Italy. After Italy’s surrender, he joined Tito’s Partisans, becoming an officer and army veterinarian, and rescued dozens of downed Allied airmen. In 1945, he fled Yugoslavia’s Communist regime and reached liberated southern Italy. In 1947, at the age of twenty-two, he emigrated to the United States.

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On Sunday, June 24, I was privileged to be a part of the Latitudes Storytelling Festival in Victoria Park. Our panel was about food writing on the digital platform, and I was there to talk about the iPad app for Food That Really Schmecks, based on Edna Staebler’s famous cookbook of the same name. On the panel with me were Paula Costa (Dragon’s Kitchen)—who recently commemorated the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic by recreating for friends the eleven-course meal that was served to the first-class passengers on their last night—and Carolyn Blackstock, who is commemorating Kitchener’s 100th birthday by cooking a recipe a day from The Berlin Cookbook. With each post Carolyn uses census data and local history sources to tell a little bit about the person who submitted the recipe. It was wonderful to be part of this panel to hear about the other projects and to talk about all things Schmecks with a captive audience.

After the presentation I took part in a guided tour through downtown Kitchener called Made in Kitchener: Personal Stories from our Industrial Past. At each spot we stopped and, using a QR Code to connect through our smart phones, we listened to stories from people who had worked and/or lived in a nearby historical building (or, in some cases, a building that used to be on that spot). To keep the tour moving along, we abbreviated each presentation, but much more is available on the website, and there participants are encouraged to contribute their insights. This is a fascinating project that links historical buildings in the core to real people, telling their stories of a time past. I was reminded often throughout the tour of the many men and women who have contributed their stories to our Life Writing series.

Kitchener was a thriving hub of industry, but manufacturing has declined and has been mostly replaced by the knowledge industry (thriving in both Kitchener and Waterloo). This digital presentation honours both those traditions. I am looking forward to spending more time on all of these sites and reacquainting myself with fascinating local history.

Related Reading:

Must Write: Edna Staebler’s Diaries (Christl Verduyn, editor)

Haven’t Any News: Ruby’s Letters from the Fifties (Edna Staebler)

Food That Really Schmecks (Edna Staebler)

Liberty Is Dead: A Canadian in Germany, 1938 (Margaret Derry, editor)

Watermelon Syrup (Annie Jacobsen, Jane Finlay-Young, and Di Brandt)

The Battle for Berlin (W.R. Chadwick)

I Have a Story to Tell You (Seemah Berson)

(Thank you to Jasmine Mangalaseril for permission to use the image of the famous Rigglevake Kucha as our icon for the Schmecks app)

post by Clare Hitchens

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For the next week, the talk is all about the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Please drop by and visit us at our booth if you’re in town for Congress and check out some of these new titles. We offer a 20% discount for all titles purchased using the Congress order form.

	Cold War Comforts: Canadian Women, Child Safety, and Global InsecurityTarah Brookfield $39.95 Paper, 270 pp. 978-1-55458-623-3
	Canadian Social Policy: Issues and Perspectives5th Edition Anne Westhues and Brian Wharf, editors $52.95 Paper, 456 pp. 978-1-55458-359-1
	The Daughter’s Way: Canadian Women’s Paternal ElegiesTanis MacDonald $85.00 Hardcover, 350 pp. 978-1-55458-362-1
	Borrowed Tongues: Life Writing, Migration, and TranslationEva C. Karpinski $39.95 Paper, 282 pp. 978-1-55458-357-7
	Listening Up, Writing Down, and Looking BeyondInterfaces of the Oral, Written, and Visual Susan Gingell and Wendy Roy, editors $85.00 Hardcover, 388 pp. 978-1-55458-364-5
	Crosstalk: Canadian and Global Imaginaries in DialogueDiana Brydon and Marta Dvořák, editors $85.00 Hardcover, 330 pp. 978-1-55458-264-8

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March 8 marks International Women’s Day, a day to celebrate women and their accomplishments, and a day to highlight the struggles that still exist for women around the world. Some, like Margaret Wente of The Globe and Mail would say this day is unnecessary, that the the “war for women’s rights is over. And we won.” Others, like Emma Woolley at Shameless Magazine, refute that statement with statistics that show that gross inequalities and injustices remain in women’s lives both at home in North America and abroad, especially in the developing world.

There is no doubt that there is much work to be done, both internationally, as contributors to The Global Food Crisis (Clapp/Cohen) attest, and nationally, as shown in our social work texts, like Cruel But Not Unusual: Violence in Canadian Families (Alaggia/Vine) and Moving Toward Positive Systems of Child and Family Welfare (Cameron et al.). Also troubling are persistent cultural biases in media, as Cheryl Krasnick Warsh explores in her forthcoming collection Gender, Health, and Popular Culture.

But our books also explore the roles and celebrate the accomplishments of women in literature, the arts, politics, and other areas. On this day we celebrate the women who are the authors of these books and the women about whom they are written. Here is just a selection of our women’s studies titles:

The Gendered Screen: Canadian Women Filmmakers (Brenda Austin-Smith and George Melnyk, editors)

Wider Boundaries of Daring: The Modernist Impulse in Canadian Women’s Poetry (Di Brandt and Barbara Godard, editors)

Textual Mothers/Maternal Texts: Motherhood in Contemporary Women’s Literatures (Elizabeth Podnieks and Andrea O’Reilly, editors)

Minds of Our Own: Inventing Feminist Scholarship and Women’s Studies in Canada and Quebec (Wendy Robbins, Meg Luxton, Margrit Eichler, and Francine Descarries, editors)

Florence Nightingale on Women, Medicine, Midwifery, and Prostitution, CWFN Vol. 8 (Lynn McDonald, editor)

The Feminine Gaze: A Compendium of Non-Fiction Women Authors and Their Books, 1836–1945 (Anne Innis Dagg)

Canadian Women in Print, 1750–1918 (Carole Gerson)

Beyond Bylines: Media Workers and Women’s Rights in Canada (Barbara M. Freeman)

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One recent release and a couple of books from earlier in the year stand out to me as gift ideas for this Christmas. Of course, if you have an academic on your list, many of our books would fit the bill. Please look through our catalogue for more ideas.

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