I loved, absolutely loved, Mary Lawson's Crow Lake. Her first novel was stunningly contained and perfectly paced. I'm not too sure what to make of The Other Side of the Bridge.
Alas, I'm only on p. 41 of Gabriele's novel, but I'm beginning to favour the book cover over the story.
While Williams more or less details linguistic minorities in "favourable positions," (i.e. Québec, Gaelic Scotland, the Basque Country, etc), I found his book depressing. Although, the most utterly depressing book on language rights (and their necessity) belongs to Tove Skutnabb-Kangas. Her "
Linguistic Genocide in Education - or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights?" is not for the faint of heart. Quite frankly, I've always been fascinated by unilingualism (especially of the Anglo variety). I've encountered so many Canadians who wear unilingualism like a badge of honour and just assume that "English" is the "default universal language" (without questioning neo-colonialism or its consequences.) But, let's all move to Korea to teach ESL because that's surely going to make us all "one."
I loved, absolutely loved, Mary Lawson's Crow Lake. Her first novel was stunningly contained and perfectly paced. I'm not too sure what to make of The Other Side of the Bridge. 
Alas, I'm only on p. 41 of Gabriele's novel, but I'm beginning to favour the book cover over the story. 
While Williams more or less details linguistic minorities in "favourable positions," (i.e. Québec, Gaelic Scotland, the Basque Country, etc), I found his book depressing. Although, the most utterly depressing book on language rights (and their necessity) belongs to Tove Skutnabb-Kangas. Her "Linguistic Genocide in Education - or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights?" is not for the faint of heart. Quite frankly, I've always been fascinated by unilingualism (especially of the Anglo variety). I've encountered so many Canadians who wear unilingualism like a badge of honour and just assume that "English" is the "default universal language" (without questioning neo-colonialism or its consequences.) But, let's all move to Korea to teach ESL because that's surely going to make us all "one."
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