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Us, Now
Us, Now roves from Indonesia to the Middle East, Taiwan, Mexico, China, Africa, Jamaica, Barbados, India, Pakistan, and points in between, converging in Newfoundland. These stories by racialized Newfoundlanders are by turns joyous, tender, hilarious, and heart-wrenching. They confront racism and celebrate the act of enduring. They are about settling and getting unsettled, about parents and their children, about language, about facing down the horrors of homophobia, about the joy of love, about lifelong relationships or the glee of a magnificent crush. Here social and domestic violence are countered with tenderness and the penetrating power of narrative. This is a book about distance and coming together, about what it means to be seen and understood, or—devastatingly—to be seen and judged, or to be invisible and misunderstood. What it means to belong. These are new writers and new visions of an in-the-present-moment Newfoundland, stories shaped by powerful voices, stories urgent, radical, and sparking with beauty.
184 pages, Paperback
Published May 15, 2021
15 people want to read
About the author
Lisa Moore
75 books291 followersLisa Moore has written two collections of stories, Degrees of Nakedness and Open, as well as a novel, Alligator.
Open and Alligator were both nominated for the Giller Prize. Alligator won the Commonwealth Prize for the Canadian Caribbean Region and the ReLit Award, and Open won the Canadian Authors' Association Jubilee Prize for Short Fiction.
Lisa has also written for television, radio, magazines (EnRoute, The Walrus and Chatelaine) and newspapers (The Globe and Mail and The National Post).
Lisa has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She also studied at Memorial University of Newfoundland, where she became a member of The Burning Rock Collective, a group of St. John's writers.
Open and Alligator were both nominated for the Giller Prize. Alligator won the Commonwealth Prize for the Canadian Caribbean Region and the ReLit Award, and Open won the Canadian Authors' Association Jubilee Prize for Short Fiction.
Lisa has also written for television, radio, magazines (EnRoute, The Walrus and Chatelaine) and newspapers (The Globe and Mail and The National Post).
Lisa has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She also studied at Memorial University of Newfoundland, where she became a member of The Burning Rock Collective, a group of St. John's writers.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 31, 2022
To quote the narrative voice of “Ondu Nenapu”, one of the stories in Us, Now [Breakwater Books] — “The brain is this hapless mess of electricity.”
This line is aptly put — albeit a tad out of context — to underscore a remark that perhaps I scribble with some redundancy: There’s no accounting for what pops into one’s noggin as one reads a story, a book.
Hold the thought.
Edited and published in Covid Times, Us, Now is a collection of stories by and about “racialized” Newfoundlanders.
Pop! There goes my “hapless mess of electricity”.
I do not presume to be racialized, but I do relate — on a miniscule level I admit — to what it is to be foreign, to be categorized as different and … ? … inferior.
I’ve remarked elsewhere about how during the time when JFK was King of Camelot, I was uprooted from my bay-boy home, plucked from my ancestral clay, so to speak. My parents broke up housekeeping in our familial outport village and shifted, kit and kaboodle, a foreign province…
… where, with my bay-boy cap in hand, my cap-head curls crushed, I was soon introduced to a Grade 8 class of … well, foreigners.
In a voice that to my ears sounded like the wak-wak of Charlie Brown’s teacher, Miss Harris (?) presented me and my brief bay-boy biography to the gaping scholars.
Immediately, a foreign yahoo sitting front and center, said, “Oh no, not another Newfy.”
Foreign tee-hees and titters all around.
B’ys, until that moment, I had no idea I was a Newfy and, therefore — in certain eyes and minds (hapless electricity perhaps, but no excuse) — a lesser breed of human.
Shaowei and Puy from “The Chinese Lady” might permit me a smidgen of similarity — they as “coolies”, me as “Newfy”.
And another thing …
Editor Lisa Moore wants this book, in part, to show how Newfoundland literature has evolved from … insular colonial prose? … to something more embracing of all of us, now, eh b’ys?
Pop! Again goes my hapless mess of electricity.
Not long after my family’s migration to the foreign province I read Tomorrow Will Be Sunday, I discovered Harold Horwood, a — get this — Newfoundland writer.
Well b’ys, I was tickled forty shades of pink. I’d encountered a Newfoundland writer with a “real” hardcover book, putting Horwood on a shelf alongside — dare I say Steinbeck? — in my bookcase anyway.
Of course, since those days when Horwood was among the few internationally recognized Newfoundland writers, Newfoundland literature has — not so much evolved, as exploded, erupted, spewing forth prize-winning authors and books like chunks of splendid volcanic ejecta.
Here, with Us, Now (!), we have a cross-section, some gem-dandy examples, of present day Newfoundland writers as fresh and hot as magma.
I admit these stories have not set my noggin ablaze as did Tomorrow Will Be Sunday, yet I applaud their existence. I will place them in my bookcase but assign them to a lower shelf.
Favorite story in this collection? “Water Buffalo Boys”.
I can relate to those two young whipper-snappers left in charge of the family buffalo.
For me it was chickens.
Thank you for reading.
This line is aptly put — albeit a tad out of context — to underscore a remark that perhaps I scribble with some redundancy: There’s no accounting for what pops into one’s noggin as one reads a story, a book.
Hold the thought.
Edited and published in Covid Times, Us, Now is a collection of stories by and about “racialized” Newfoundlanders.
Pop! There goes my “hapless mess of electricity”.
I do not presume to be racialized, but I do relate — on a miniscule level I admit — to what it is to be foreign, to be categorized as different and … ? … inferior.
I’ve remarked elsewhere about how during the time when JFK was King of Camelot, I was uprooted from my bay-boy home, plucked from my ancestral clay, so to speak. My parents broke up housekeeping in our familial outport village and shifted, kit and kaboodle, a foreign province…
… where, with my bay-boy cap in hand, my cap-head curls crushed, I was soon introduced to a Grade 8 class of … well, foreigners.
In a voice that to my ears sounded like the wak-wak of Charlie Brown’s teacher, Miss Harris (?) presented me and my brief bay-boy biography to the gaping scholars.
Immediately, a foreign yahoo sitting front and center, said, “Oh no, not another Newfy.”
Foreign tee-hees and titters all around.
B’ys, until that moment, I had no idea I was a Newfy and, therefore — in certain eyes and minds (hapless electricity perhaps, but no excuse) — a lesser breed of human.
Shaowei and Puy from “The Chinese Lady” might permit me a smidgen of similarity — they as “coolies”, me as “Newfy”.
And another thing …
Editor Lisa Moore wants this book, in part, to show how Newfoundland literature has evolved from … insular colonial prose? … to something more embracing of all of us, now, eh b’ys?
Pop! Again goes my hapless mess of electricity.
Not long after my family’s migration to the foreign province I read Tomorrow Will Be Sunday, I discovered Harold Horwood, a — get this — Newfoundland writer.
Well b’ys, I was tickled forty shades of pink. I’d encountered a Newfoundland writer with a “real” hardcover book, putting Horwood on a shelf alongside — dare I say Steinbeck? — in my bookcase anyway.
Of course, since those days when Horwood was among the few internationally recognized Newfoundland writers, Newfoundland literature has — not so much evolved, as exploded, erupted, spewing forth prize-winning authors and books like chunks of splendid volcanic ejecta.
Here, with Us, Now (!), we have a cross-section, some gem-dandy examples, of present day Newfoundland writers as fresh and hot as magma.
I admit these stories have not set my noggin ablaze as did Tomorrow Will Be Sunday, yet I applaud their existence. I will place them in my bookcase but assign them to a lower shelf.
Favorite story in this collection? “Water Buffalo Boys”.
I can relate to those two young whipper-snappers left in charge of the family buffalo.
For me it was chickens.
Thank you for reading.
October 9, 2021
As I have said before short fiction has been my favorite genre this year and US, Now was a great collection, I really loved it! Anything it Lisa Moore puts her name on is sure to be wonderful!
It began as a six-week creative writing workshop with participants who formed a racialized group of writers called the Quilted Collective.
It's wonderfully moving as it explores belonging and acceptance on many levels. These are stories about coming together, queer love stories, parent-child relationships and more. With humor, heartbreak and cheer each entry was so interesting! Rich with cultural and diversity. And I loved how all the stories connected with Newfoundland and brought all of these refreshing voices together.
Thank you @breakwaterbooks for sending me this book in exchange for an honest review.
For more of my book content check out instagram.com/bookalong
It began as a six-week creative writing workshop with participants who formed a racialized group of writers called the Quilted Collective.
It's wonderfully moving as it explores belonging and acceptance on many levels. These are stories about coming together, queer love stories, parent-child relationships and more. With humor, heartbreak and cheer each entry was so interesting! Rich with cultural and diversity. And I loved how all the stories connected with Newfoundland and brought all of these refreshing voices together.
Thank you @breakwaterbooks for sending me this book in exchange for an honest review.
For more of my book content check out instagram.com/bookalong
October 15, 2021
A mix of beautiful short stories, all varying in voice and intensity. A short, but brilliant glimpse into very different people who find themselves in Newfoundland.
January 16, 2022
There are a couple of gems in here, but overall this is the unpolished work of a writing class and I am surprised that it was published.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews