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Aurorans will soon have the chance to get fully immersed
in Scarborough, the acclaimed debut novel of Catherine Hernandez, which is the
Aurora Public Library's selection for their 2020 One Book One Aurora campaign. Over the next eleven months, local readers will be able
to pick up the novel from free lending libraries that will be popping up around
Town, as well as the Aurora Public Library (APL) itself, to enjoy, return or
pass on to new readers, all the while participating in a year-long roster of
programming spearheaded by APL and the many community groups under their
umbrella. “I first read Scarborough when it was nominated for the
OLA Forest of Reading Evergreen Award in 2019,” says Reccia Mandelcorn, APL's
Manager of Community Collaboration, who made this year's One Book One Aurora
selection. “I simply fell in love with the characters and was so moved by the
struggles they faced through economic and social marginalization – and with the
dignity with which the author told their stories.” It was a voice that Ms. Hernandez initially struggled to
find. As The Auroran reported last week, Ms. Hernandez, who
grew up in Scarborough, felt her writing was becoming stifled after moving to
Downtown Toronto. Moving back home after experiencing an abusive relationship,
she says she heard a voice inside her saying, “Stop thinking that Scarborough
is a place you escape and be here. I made Scarborough my home instead of being
ashamed of it and I decided to really and truly listen to the conversations
that were very familiar to me.” In listening to those conversations and setting them down
on paper, she found her words struck a chord with the world around her. “These conversations were similar to those I had when I
was younger and I was just falling in love with this area all over again,” she
explains. “When I moved back here and started a home daycare, I realized there
were so many stories from people in the community, especially when I was
bringing the kids back and forth to different play centres – stories of people
who are surviving quite intense things while raising their children. I realized
this community needed a voice and I had to own up to the fact that I was
ashamed of this area just because of my internalized racism and classism; I was
ashamed of it and I really needed to turn that around for myself, in my body,
and give this community a voice – and also not to make them caricatures but
make them human beings with fibre and soul. “When I started to piece together all of these stories
that were really inspired by the residue of all the people I had met, I was
able to sew it all together as an overall arc of three children in a
neighbourhood over the course of a school year and a facilitator at a literacy
centre who realizes that a community needs so much more support than what she
is being employed to do.” Once the stories were brought together in the form of a
book, Ms. Hernandez says it was “no surprise” that reaction in Scarborough was
“a little bit slow to take.” There was a sense within the communities she was trying
to reflect that literature, in the end, wouldn't reflect the real community,
that their stories would never be covered in any form of “literature” but,
through word of mouth, this conception was challenged. Through social media, particularly Instagram and
Facebook, Ms. Hernandez heard from more and more people from Scarborough who
said “they felt seen, heard and acknowledged” in her words and that the book
was actually “celebrating them.” “These are responses I treasure way more than any book
review in a major magazine or newspaper [because] people said ‘I saw myself,'
or, ‘I am one of these people.' To me, that really meant I had done by job,
that I was respecting the community. It really was a love letter to the people
who are frontline workers to these communities. It doesn't have to be
Scarborough; it can be any community that is an afterthought. Any place that is
a racialized community, it ends up being an afterthought for policy-makers and
it is such a shame. I wanted [of these communities] to be front and centre in
the book because I don't have those powers – I am not a politician, however, I
have absolute power when I am writing. I can make that a reality for them, a
reality where they are front and centre.” For the characters in Scarborough, the measurement of
success depends on who is in the spotlight. For some, the measure of success is
to live abuse-free, find housing that is not precarious, or even simply
realizing some form of financial security. Ms. Hernandez says that through her
words she hopes people understand that the definition of success changes all
the time. For her, success was sometimes “finding enough money to buy a dozen
eggs” or being able to make rent, or afford a music lesson for her daughter. “All of these things are successes. They might be small
successes, but every day was a race to that success, to make sure that my
daughter was safe,” she says. “For this book, as difficult as their lives are,
the truth is that I'm actually showing a community that is full of success, that
every day they are experiencing joy and they are achieving extraordinary
things. “Change is slow to come, but I know [through my work] and
workshops I have done with frontline workers like nurses, lawyers, social
workers, I have been able to inform them that their work is important and to
never forget it – to never forget the vision that they have always had within
themselves of creating stronger communities because I know that the system they
work against often dims that light within them and those tiny changes are
important to me.” This is also important for the Aurora Public Library. “Although the novel's focus is on one community that
Catherine knows intimately, the challenges she describes of intersectionality,
of poverty, and of being ‘othered' are universal, even in more affluent towns
like ours,” says Ms. Mandelcorn. “Storytelling creates empathy and empathy can
create action. I hope that through reading this book together, we can see the
importance of funding the infrastructure that enables all our community members
to enjoy the fundamental rights to food, shelter and education.” For more on One Book One Aurora 2020, visit www.onebookoneaurora.com. By Brock Weir
Post date: 2020-01-10 17:33:03
Post date GMT: 2020-01-10 22:33:03
Post modified date: 2020-01-10 17:36:53
Post modified date GMT: 2020-01-10 22:36:53
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