March Book Club Selection

Lawrence Hill's huge novel, The Book of Negroes, continues to top the bestseller lists, and if you wanted to read it you had to be on our waiting list, it was so popular. And powerful. And if you want to read it in the U.S. you'll find it by another name -- Someone Knows My Name.

You can listen in right here on Lawrence's wonderful interview with George Stroumboulopoulos.

It's the story of a woman's life in 18th century, from being abducted as an 11 year old child in Africa, into slavery, and eventually back to her home land. Now, that's a simplification on an epic scale, but we want you to pick it up, we want you to read it yourself. The name comes from an actual book, kept in the U.K. that records 3000 names of black loyalists who fought for the British army, and were re-located to new lives on the east coast of Canada.

This month, the Book Club is tackling another Lawrence Hill book. Here's what McLean's magazine had to say about Lawrence Hill's ANY KNOWN BLOOD, our Book Club selection for March. Lawrence describes this as a loving but fictional tribute to his family. From Virginia in the time of slavery to the modern suburbs that were once a final stop on the Underground Railroad, Any Known Blood follows the search of Langston Cane V — divorced, 38 and recently fired — to understand himself by giving voice to those who came before him in five generations of an African-Canadian-American family.

McLean's magazine describes it:


"Any Known Blood illuminates 150 years of little-known black experience on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border. At the same time, Hill's characters remain deeply realized creations who exert a strong imaginative pull…It is Hill's subtle treatment of the contemporary obsession with group identity that gives Any Known Blood its power."

The Book club meets the 3rd Tuesday of the month, at 1.30, and everyone is welcome.