09/27/2025
Visited one of our favourite local Zunzun Reading Community on Markwell in Orléans this morning 🧡📚
They currently have an incredible selection of books by Indigenous authors in honour of upcoming National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and banned books in honour of banned books week. Swing by and browse the curated selection and pick up your next great read.
I picked up two books that have been on my TBR:
🧡 52 Ways to Reconcile: How to Walk With Indigenous Peoples on the Path to Healing, by David A Robertson. Description: An accessible, friendly guide for non-Indigenous people eager to learn, or Indigenous people eager to do more in our collective effort towards reconciliation, as people, and as a country. As much as non-Indigenous people want to walk the path of reconciliation, they often aren’t quite sure what to do, and they’re afraid of making mistakes. This book is the answer and the long overdue guide.
The idea of this book is simple: 52 small acts of reconciliation to consider, one per week, for an entire year. They’re all doable, and they’re all meaningful. All 52 steps take readers in the right direction, towards a healthier relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and a time when we are past trauma. By following these steps, we can live in stronger and healthier communities equally, and respectfully, together.
🐦⬛ I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou. Description: Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.
This book has been banned or challenged in various school libraries in the US for “being sexually explicit and profanity.” It explores themes of racism, sexual abuse and trauma, and was published in 1969, during the time of the Civil Rights movement in the US.
“Due to steady parental and educator pushback against its ban, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings has become one of the most-taught non-fiction books in U.S. schools. As one of the first autobiographies to explicitly address childhood sexual assault, Angelou encouraged open conversation about this often difficult and taboo topic. She strongly believed that as children are commonly victims of sexual offences, they should have the opportunity to learn about and discuss them within the safety of their schools. With regards to this unimaginable crime, Angelou truly felt that “the unspeakable is far more dangerous when left unspoken.”” (From article entitled THESE MOST BANNED, MOST BEAUTIFUL BOOKS, by Angela Slater-Meadows).
