Jan Wong’s Red China Blues delivered both entertainment and education. I like her direct sense of humor and honesty. The chapter on Tianamen Sqaure was especially moving. She actually observed the massacre from a Beijing hotel balcony on the north side of the square. I remember that June weekend in 1989 very well because my friend Mindy and I were at an Amnesty International conference in Chicago when the Tianamen atrocity happened. There was an impromptu protest march led by Chinese students at the University of Chicago.

The Toronto Public Library has had all kinds of holds turn up for me recently, so I’ve been turning lots of pages. I finished Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, which was a hit with me. The heroes saved a violin from ideological destruction by saying the name of a tune was “Mozart is Thinking of Chairman Mao.” I also liked The Prophet’s Camel Bell about Margaret Lawrence’s time in pre-independence Somali. She had a neighbor with a pet ostrich. The neighbor kid would greet the ostrich every morning with “Ostrich! Give news of yourself!” Marjan Satrapi’s Embroderies was a quick, funny read. Now I’m reading a book about Vietnam War Restister’s in Toronto. What next?