{"id":25528,"date":"2020-01-02T17:53:47","date_gmt":"2020-01-02T22:53:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=25528"},"modified":"2020-01-10T17:29:54","modified_gmt":"2020-01-10T22:29:54","slug":"acclaimed-novel-scarborough-selected-for-one-book-one-aurora-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/acclaimed-novel-scarborough-selected-for-one-book-one-aurora-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Acclaimed novel \u201cScarborough\u201d selected for One Book One Aurora 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It is said that the best authors write what they know,\nletting their personal experiences inform what they put down on the page.\nThat\u2019s exactly what author Catherine Hernandez did in her acclaimed debut\nnovel, Scarborough. But what she put down on the page also helped challenge her\npreviously-held misconceptions about the Toronto neighbourhood she returned to,\nproviding a voice to individuals who had, unbeknownst to her, felt voiceless\nalong the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Hernandez exploration of the diverse Toronto borough\nis the 2020 selection for the Aurora Public Library\u2019s One Book One Aurora\nprogram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Book One Aurora is the Aurora Public Library\u2019s (APL)\nannual campaign to get all of Aurora reading from the same page. In the months\nahead, small lending libraries will be popping up around the community laden\nwith copies of Ms. Hernandez\u2019 novel to pick up free-of-charge to read, return\nand\/or pass along to other readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A year-long series of programming based on the themes of\nthe novel will also be rolled out, themes of which can be both challenging and\nuplifting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cScarborough is about community, so I am always happy\nwhen a community bands together to go and look at a piece of literature, or any\nkind of piece of art, and then share their thoughts with one another,\u201d says Ms.\nHernandez. \u201cAny possibility for community members to convene and share space\nintellectually and physically is, for me, just a wonderful opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A finalist for the Trillium Book Award and the City of\nToronto Book Award, Scarborough is billed as the story of an inner-city\ncommunity \u201csuffering under the weight of poverty, drugs, crime and urban\nblight. Scarborough, the novel, employs a multitude of voices to tell the story\nof a tight-knit neighbourhood under fire: among them, Victor, a black artist\nharassed by police; Winsum, a West Indian restaurant owner struggling to keep\nit together; and Hina, a Muslim school worker who witnesses first-hand the impact\nof poverty on education. And then there are the three kids who work to rise\nabove a system that consistently fails them: Bing, a gay Filipino boy who lives\nunder the shadow of his father\u2019s mental illness; Sylvie, Bing\u2019s best friend, a\nNative girl whose family struggles to find a permanent home to live in; and\nLaura, whose history of neglect by her mother is destined to repeat itself with\nher father.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking to The Auroran of the themes she hopes the\ncommunity is able to explore through the reading of her work, Ms. Hernandez\nsays the \u201cnumber one thing to consider as community members is whose needs are\nthe priority?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy are those people made priority more often than not?\u201d\nshe asks. \u201cLet\u2019s look at privilege and what does that mean for access to basic\nneeds? Those kinds of questions can be very difficult for people to deal with,\nto question, \u2018Why do I have more access than others?\u2019 and then to consider,\n\u2018Why are those systems in place that make those different levels of access\npresent?\u2019 That\u2019s the number one thing I want people to take away when it comes\nto my book because one character who is the facilitator at the literacy centre,\nshe is dealing with a system that is really working against her and she is a\nfrontline worker who understands the needs of a community and everything she\ndoes that is right, that is just, is actually against policy and against the\nrules. I think we just need to consider why those rules are in place. Who is it\nserving? If we ask ourselves those questions, I think we will build strong\ncommunities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Hernandez asked herself those very questions when she\nfound herself living in Scarborough. Having grown up in the community since she\nwas 10-years-old, she says she always felt it was a place full of stories, but\ndidn\u2019t think \u201cthose stories had any real value.\u201d Earlier writing, she said,\nmade \u201ccaricatures\u201d of people living in the community and \u201csome of the writing I\nhave done in the past I am not entirely proud of because my politics were\ndefinitely different back then.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was always extremely ashamed of my neighbourhood just\nbecause it was low income and I always thought Downtown Toronto was the place\nto be, especially as an artist,\u201d she says. \u201cI always felt like I was on my way\nout of Scarborough and when living downtown my writing sort of had a surface\nquality to it, a really superficial quality. I had these clever moments, but I\nnever felt like it could get any deeper when it came to character development.\nWhat I didn\u2019t know at the time, because of where I was right near Queen\u2019s Quay,\nmy writing was sort of stifled by the superficial nature of the people who are\ndowntown. In Scarborough, there is really nothing to hide between us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of time when we\u2019re sharing space, I find the\nconversations are very in-depth and there\u2019s no pretense, nothing to hide\nbehind. The quality of conversation between you is so much more genuine and I\ndidn\u2019t know any of this until my daughter and I actually had to flee an abusive\nrelationship. We had to come to Scarborough and live with my parents and sister\nfor about six months. We were in precarious housing until I got a basement\napartment where I started a home daycare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI remember being in a room with all of our belongings\nand one of those grocery carts and thinking to myself, I am back at square one?\nI have to rebuild all over again, not knowing this was to be the emphasis of\nwriting this book because when I returned to Scarborough there was this voice\ninside of me saying, \u2018Be still. Stop thinking that Scarborough is a place you\nescape and be here.\u2019 I did exactly that. I made Scarborough my home instead of\nbeing ashamed of it and I decided to really and truly listen to the\nconversations that were very familiar to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next Week: Ms. Hernandez re-discovers her voice, and finds the voice of a community.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is said that the best authors write what they know, letting their personal experiences inform what they put down on the page. That\u2019s exactly what author Catherine Hernandez did in her acclaimed debut novel, Scarborough. But what she put down on the page also helped challenge her previously-held misconceptions about the Toronto neighbourhood she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6DK","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-18 02:02:46","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}