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Title details for Denison Avenue by Daniel Innes - Wait list

Denison Avenue

by Daniel Innes
Christina Wong
Audiobook (Includes supplementary content)
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Shortlisted for 2024 Canada Reads

Longlisted for the 2024 Carnegie Medals for Excellence through the American Library Association

A moving story told in visual art and fiction about gentrification, aging in place, grief, and vulnerable Chinese Canadian elders

Bringing together ink artwork and fiction, Denison Avenue by Daniel Innes (illustrations) and Christina Wong (text) follows the elderly Wong Cho Sum, who, living in Toronto's gentrifying Chinatown–Kensington Market, begins to collect bottles and cans after the sudden loss of her husband as a way to fill her days and keep grief and loneliness at bay. In her long walks around the city, Cho Sum meets new friends, confronts classism and racism, and learns how to build a life as a widow in a neighborhood that is being destroyed and rebuilt, leaving elders like her behind.

A poignant meditation on loss, aging, gentrification, and the barriers that Chinese Canadian seniors experience in big cities, Denison Avenue beautifully combines visual art, fiction, and the endangered Toisan dialect to create a book that is truly unforgettable.

This audiobook edition includes an accompanying PDF of illustrations on supported reading platforms. It also includes behind-the-scenes production notes from the author and the illustrator, detailing their inspirations for the story and their personal connections to the community and urban landscape of Toronto's Chinatown and Kensington Market.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 16, 2024

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781778523427
      • File size: 280336 KB
      • Duration: 09:44:01

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Booklist

      October 16, 2023
      In a mixed-media narrative saturated with a sense of poignancy and grief, Wong Cho Sum navigates the sudden death of her husband by a hit and run driver. She starts to collect cans--not just for the income, but also to give her something to do--and finds a new community filled with both kindness and racist actions. As an ""invisible"" elderly observer, she compares the old Chinatown she remembers with this new, slowly gentrifying one, and not all the changes are for the better. As she goes through the days, weeks, months, and years, she attempts to age in place despite her everlasting grief for both her dead husband and the community that has passed her by. Wong and Innes have created something truly special in this multi-faceted book. Innes' detailed and beautiful hand-drawn illustrations depicting the changes in the community are eye-catching complements to Wong's writing and can stand on their own.

      COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Christina Wong is a multidisciplinary artist who wrote and now narrates this slice-of-life novel. It's about an elderly Chinese Canadian widow who pushes a cart through Toronto's Chinatown, gathering bottles, cans, and reliving memories. David Innes's outstanding pen-and-ink illustrations, available on an accompanying pdf, are described by the narrator as the story proceeds. Wong delivers part of the dialogue in Toisan, a nearly forgotten Cantonese dialect that was once spoken by many immigrant Chinese. Its singsong cadence, at least to these Western ears, provides verisimilitude but somewhat distracts from the conversational flow. Nonetheless, Wong's performance captures the isolation and displacement often experienced by the elderly, along with the scourge of gentrification. It's a thought-provoking lament for what used to be. D.L.G. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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