CBC Canada Reads
These are the winners and shortlisted books for CBC's Canada Reads award from the last 5 years!
Last updated: September 14, 2023
The boat people
Bala, Sharon, author
2018
When a rusty cargo ship carrying Mahindan and five hundred fellow refugees from Sri Lanka's bloody civil war reaches Vancouver's shores, the young father thinks he and his six-year-old son can finally start a new life. Instead, the group is thrown into a detention processing center, with government officials and news headlines speculating that among the "boat people" are members of a separatist militant organization responsible for countless suicide attacks--and that these terrorists now pose a threat to Canada's national security. As the refugees become subject to heavy interrogation, Mahindan begins to fear that a desperate act taken in Sri Lanka to fund their escape may now jeopardize his and his son's chance for asylum. Told through the alternating perspectives of Mahindan; his lawyer, Priya, a second-generation Sri Lankan Canadian who reluctantly represents the refugees; and Grace, a third-generation Japanese Canadian adjudicator who must decide Mahindan's fate as evidence mounts against him.
Brother
Chariandy, David, 1969- author
2018
Michael and Francis are the sons of Trinidadian immigrants, their father has disappeared and their mother works double, sometimes triple shifts so her boys might fulfill the elusive promise of their adopted home. Coming of age in The Park, a cluster of town houses and leaning concrete towers in the disparaged outskirts of a sprawling city, Michael and Francis battle against the careless prejudices and low expectations that confront them as young men of black and brown ancestry. But their bright hopes are violently, irrevocably thwarted by a tragic shooting, and the police crackdown and suffocating suspicion that follow.
Butter honey pig bread
Ekwuyasi, Francesca, 1990- author
2021
This is the interwoven stories of twin sisters, Kehinde and Taiye, and their mother, Kambirinachi. A devasting childhood trauma causes the family to fracture in seemingly irreversible ways. After more than a decade of living apart, Taiye and Kehinde have returned home to Lagos to visit their mother. It is here that the three women must face each other and address the wounds of the past if they are to reconcile and move forward.
By chance alone : a remarkable true story of courage and survival at Auschwitz
Eisen, Max, author
2016
This autobiography of Canadian Max Eisen details the rural Hungarian deportations to Auschwitz-Birkenau, back-breaking slave labour in Auschwitz I, the infamous 'death march' of January 1945, the painful aftermath of liberation, and a journey of physical and psychological healing.
Five little Indians
Good, Michelle, author
2020
Taken from their families when they are very small and sent to a remote, church-run residential school, Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie are barely out of childhood when they are finally released after years of detention. Alone and without any skills, support or families, the teens find their way to the seedy and foreign world of Downtown Eastside Vancouver, where they cling together, striving to find a place of safety and belonging in a world that doesn't want them. The paths of the five friends cross and crisscross over the decades as they struggle to overcome, or at least forget, the trauma they endured during their years at the Mission. With compassion and insight, Five Little Indians chronicles the desperate quest of these residential school survivors to come to terms with their past and, ultimately, find a way forward.
From the ashes : my story of being Métis, homeless, and finding my way
Thistle, Jesse, author
2019
From the Ashes is a remarkable memoir about hope and resilience, and a revelatory look into the life of a Métis-Cree man who refused to give up. Abandoned by his parents as a toddler, Jesse Thistle briefly found himself in the foster-care system with his two brothers, cut off from all they had known. Eventually the children landed in the home of their paternal grandparents, but their tough-love attitudes meant conflicts became commonplace. And the ghost of Jesse's drug-addicted father haunted the halls of the house and the memories of every family member. Struggling, Jesse succumbed to a self-destructive cycle of drug and alcohol addiction and petty crime, spending more than a decade on and off the streets, often homeless. One day, he finally realized he would die unless he turned his life around. In this heartwarming and heartbreaking memoir, Jesse Thistle writes honestly and fearlessly about his painful experiences with abuse, uncovering the truth about his parents, and how he found his way back into the circle of his Indigenous culture and family through education. An eloquent exploration of what it means to live in a world surrounded by prejudice and racism and to be cast adrift, From the Ashes is, in the end, about how love and support can help one find happiness despite the odds.
Hench
Walschots, Natalie Zina, 1983- author
2020
A novel of love, betrayal, revenge, and redemption follows a young woman as she discovers that the greatest superpower--for good or evil--is a properly executed spreadsheet.
Life in the city of dirty water : a memoir of healing
Thomas-Müller, Clayton, author
2021
There have been many Clayton Thomas-Müllers: The child who played with toy planes as an escape from domestic and sexual abuse, enduring the intergenerational trauma of Canada's residential school system; the angry youngster who defended himself with fists and sharp wit against racism and violence, at school and on the streets of Winnipeg and small-town British Columbia; the tough teenager who, at 17, managed a drug house run by members of his family, and slipped in and out of juvie, operating in a world of violence and pain. But behind them all, there was another Clayton: the one who remained immersed in Cree spirituality, and who embraced the rituals and ways of thinking vital to his heritage; the one who reconnected with the land during summer visits to his great-grandparents' trapline in his home territory of Pukatawagan in northern Manitoba. And it's this version of Clayton that ultimately triumphed, finding healing by directly facing the trauma that he shares with Indigenous peoples around the world. Now a leading organizer and activist on the frontlines of environmental resistance, Clayton brings his warrior spirit to the fight against the ongoing assault on Indigenous peoples' lands by Big Oil.
The marrow thieves
Dimaline, Cherie, 1975- author
2018
Humanity has nearly destroyed its world through global warming, but now an even greater evil lurks. The indigenous people of North America are being hunted and harvested for their bone marrow, which carries the key to recovering something the rest of the population has lost: the ability to dream. In this dark world, Frenchie and his companions struggle to survive as they make their way up north to the old lands. For now, survival means staying hidden - but what they don't know is that one of them holds the secret to defeating the marrow thieves.
The midnight bargain
Polk, C. L. (Chelsea L.), author
2020
A sweeping, romantic new fantasy set in a world reminiscent of Regency England, where women's magic is taken from them when they marry. A sorceress must balance her desire to become the first great female magician against her duty to her family.
Radicalized
Doctorow, Cory, author
2019
"A timely collection ... connected by social, technological, and economic visions of today and what America could be in the near, near future"-- Provided by publisher.
Scarborough
Hernandez, Catherine, 1977- author
2017
Scarborough is a low-income, culturally diverse neighbourhood east of Toronto, the fourth largest city in North America; like many inner-city communities, it suffers under the weight of poverty, drugs, crime, and urban blight. Scarborough the novel employs a multitude of voices to tell the story of a tight-knit neighbourhood under fire: among them, Victor, a black artist harassed by the police; Winsum, a West Indian restaurant owner struggling to keep it together; and Hina, a Muslim school worker who witnesses first-hand the impact of poverty on education.
Small game hunting at the local coward gun club
Coles, Megan Gail, 1981- author
2019
February in Newfoundland is the longest month of the year. Another blizzard is threatening to tear a strip off downtown St. John's, while inside The Hazel restaurant a storm of sex, betrayal, addiction, and hurt is breaking. Iris, a young hostess from 'round the bay, is forced to pull a double despite resolving to avoid the charming chef and his wealthy restaurateur wife. Just tables over, Damian, a hungover and self-loathing server, is trying to navigate a potential punch-up with a pair of lit customers who remain oblivious to the rising temperature in the dining room. Olive, a young Indigenous woman far from home, watches it all unfurl from the fast and frozen street. It is through Olive, largely unnoticed by the others, that we glimpse the truth behind the scathing lies and unrelenting abuse, and it is her resilience that proves most enduring in the dead of this winter's tale.
Two trees make a forest : in search of my family's past among Taiwan's mountains and coasts
Lee, Jessica J., 1986- author
2020
Jessica J. Lee embarks on a journey to discover her family's forgotten history and to connect with the island they once called home. After unearthing a hidden memoir of her grandfather's life, Lee seeks to piece together the fragments of her family's history as they moved from China to Taiwan, and then on to Canada. But as she navigates the tumultuous terrain of Taiwan, Lee finds herself having to traverse fissures in language, memory, and history, as she searches for the pieces of her family left behind.
Washington Black
Edugyan, Esi, author
2018
Eleven-year-old George Washington Black - or Wash - a field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is intially terrified when he is chosen to be the manservant of his master's brother. To his surprise, however, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is intiated into a world where two people, separated by an impossible divide, can begin to see each other as human. But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash's head, they must abandon everything and flee. Spanning the Caribbean to the frozen Far North, London to Morocco, Washington Black is a story of self-invention and betrayal, of love and redemption, and of a world destroyed and made whole again.
What strange paradise
El Akkad, Omar, 1982- author
2021
Another over-filled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers - all desperate to escape untenable lives in their homelands. And only one has made the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who has the good fortune to fall into the hands not of the officials but of Vanna: a teenage girl who lives inside her own sense of homelessness. In alternating chapters, we learn the story of the boy's life and how he came to be on the boat; and we follow the girl and boy as they make their way toward a vision of safety.
The woo-woo : how I survived ice hockey, drug raids, demons, and my crazy Chinese family
Wong, Lindsay, 1987- author
2018
In this jaw-dropping, darkly comedic memoir, a young woman comes of age in a dysfunctional Asian family whose members blamed their woes on ghosts and demons when in fact they should have been on anti-psychotic meds. On one hand a witty and touching memoir about the Asian immigrant experience, and on the other a harrowing and honest depiction of the vagaries of mental illness, The Woo-Woo is a gut-wrenching and beguiling manual for surviving family, and oneself.