{"id":25622,"date":"2020-01-10T17:33:03","date_gmt":"2020-01-10T22:33:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=25622"},"modified":"2020-01-10T17:36:53","modified_gmt":"2020-01-10T22:36:53","slug":"oboa-2020-novel-scarborough-is-hoped-to-spur-conversation-on-how-empathy-creates-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/oboa-2020-novel-scarborough-is-hoped-to-spur-conversation-on-how-empathy-creates-action\/","title":{"rendered":"OBOA 2020 novel \u201cScarborough\u201d is hoped to spur conversation on how empathy creates action"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Aurorans will soon have the chance to get fully immersed\nin Scarborough, the acclaimed debut novel of Catherine Hernandez, which is the\nAurora Public Library\u2019s selection for their 2020 One Book One Aurora campaign. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the next eleven months, local readers will be able\nto pick up the novel from free lending libraries that will be popping up around\nTown, as well as the Aurora Public Library (APL) itself, to enjoy, return or\npass on to new readers, all the while participating in a year-long roster of\nprogramming spearheaded by APL and the many community groups under their\numbrella. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI first read Scarborough when it was nominated for the\nOLA Forest of Reading Evergreen Award in 2019,\u201d says Reccia Mandelcorn, APL\u2019s\nManager of Community Collaboration, who made this year\u2019s One Book One Aurora\nselection. \u201cI simply fell in love with the characters and was so moved by the\nstruggles they faced through economic and social marginalization \u2013 and with the\ndignity with which the author told their stories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a voice that Ms. Hernandez initially struggled to\nfind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As The Auroran reported last week, Ms. Hernandez, who\ngrew up in Scarborough, felt her writing was becoming stifled after moving to\nDowntown Toronto. Moving back home after experiencing an abusive relationship,\nshe says she heard a voice inside her saying, \u201cStop thinking that Scarborough\nis a place you escape and be here. I made Scarborough my home instead of being\nashamed of it and I decided to really and truly listen to the conversations\nthat were very familiar to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In listening to those conversations and setting them down\non paper, she found her words struck a chord with the world around her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese conversations were similar to those I had when I\nwas younger and I was just falling in love with this area all over again,\u201d she\nexplains. \u201cWhen I moved back here and started a home daycare, I realized there\nwere so many stories from people in the community, especially when I was\nbringing the kids back and forth to different play centres \u2013 stories of people\nwho are surviving quite intense things while raising their children. I realized\nthis community needed a voice and I had to own up to the fact that I was\nashamed of this area just because of my internalized racism and classism; I was\nashamed of it and I really needed to turn that around for myself, in my body,\nand give this community a voice \u2013 and also not to make them caricatures but\nmake them human beings with fibre and soul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I started to piece together all of these stories\nthat were really inspired by the residue of all the people I had met, I was\nable to sew it all together as an overall arc of three children in a\nneighbourhood over the course of a school year and a facilitator at a literacy\ncentre who realizes that a community needs so much more support than what she\nis being employed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the stories were brought together in the form of a\nbook, Ms. Hernandez says it was \u201cno surprise\u201d that reaction in Scarborough was\n\u201ca little bit slow to take.\u201d There was a sense within the communities she was trying\nto reflect that literature, in the end, wouldn\u2019t reflect the real community,\nthat their stories would never be covered in any form of \u201cliterature\u201d but,\nthrough word of mouth, this conception was challenged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through social media, particularly Instagram and\nFacebook, Ms. Hernandez heard from more and more people from Scarborough who\nsaid \u201cthey felt seen, heard and acknowledged\u201d in her words and that the book\nwas actually \u201ccelebrating them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese are responses I treasure way more than any book\nreview in a major magazine or newspaper [because] people said \u2018I saw myself,\u2019\nor, \u2018I am one of these people.\u2019 To me, that really meant I had done by job,\nthat I was respecting the community. It really was a love letter to the people\nwho are frontline workers to these communities. It doesn\u2019t have to be\nScarborough; it can be any community that is an afterthought. Any place that is\na racialized community, it ends up being an afterthought for policy-makers and\nit is such a shame. I wanted [of these communities] to be front and centre in\nthe book because I don\u2019t have those powers \u2013 I am not a politician, however, I\nhave absolute power when I am writing. I can make that a reality for them, a\nreality where they are front and centre.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the characters in Scarborough, the measurement of\nsuccess depends on who is in the spotlight. For some, the measure of success is\nto live abuse-free, find housing that is not precarious, or even simply\nrealizing some form of financial security. Ms. Hernandez says that through her\nwords she hopes people understand that the definition of success changes all\nthe time. For her, success was sometimes \u201cfinding enough money to buy a dozen\neggs\u201d or being able to make rent, or afford a music lesson for her daughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll of these things are successes. They might be small\nsuccesses, but every day was a race to that success, to make sure that my\ndaughter was safe,\u201d she says. \u201cFor this book, as difficult as their lives are,\nthe truth is that I\u2019m actually showing a community that is full of success, that\nevery day they are experiencing joy and they are achieving extraordinary\nthings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cChange is slow to come, but I know [through my work] and\nworkshops I have done with frontline workers like nurses, lawyers, social\nworkers, I have been able to inform them that their work is important and to\nnever forget it \u2013 to never forget the vision that they have always had within\nthemselves of creating stronger communities because I know that the system they\nwork against often dims that light within them and those tiny changes are\nimportant to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is also important for the Aurora Public Library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlthough the novel\u2019s focus is on one community that\nCatherine knows intimately, the challenges she describes of intersectionality,\nof poverty, and of being \u2018othered\u2019 are universal, even in more affluent towns\nlike ours,\u201d says Ms. Mandelcorn. \u201cStorytelling creates empathy and empathy can\ncreate action. I hope that through reading this book together, we can see the\nimportance of funding the infrastructure that enables all our community members\nto enjoy the fundamental rights to food, shelter and education.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more on One Book One Aurora 2020, visit www.onebookoneaurora.com.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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\u2019s 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 […]<\/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-25622","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\/p3D2k4-6Fg","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-18 02:03:33","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\/25622","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=25622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}