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music

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pub month: april

isbn 978-1-55152-396-5

8 x 10 | 224 pp | paper

$24.95 / $24.95 us

b&w & colour images

The history of punk band D.O.A. through vintage photographs, posters, and various ephemera over the past thirty years.

The punk band D.O.A., established in 1978, is consid-ered one of the founders of hardcore punk, along with such other seminal groups as Black Flag and Minor Threat. Their raw, melodic sound, which drew compari-sons to the Clash and the Ramones, has always been matched by the band’s acute political sensibility; known for its uncompromising and outspoken anarchist viewpoints, D.O.A. has been active on behalf of many issues, including anti-racism, anti-globalization, free-dom of speech, women’s rights, and the environment. Its slogan, “Talk - Action = Zero,” refers to the impor-tance of artists and others who need to “walk the walk” when it comes to their politics.

After more than thirty years, D.O.A. remains as active as ever, touring internationally (including a trip to China, the first punk band to do so) and recording regularly (its thirteenth studio album was released in 2010); its fan base now spans three generations. This large-format book is a sprawling visual history of the group by lead singer/guitarist Keithley—made up of vin-tage photographs, posters, handwritten lyrics, and other various ephemera—that offers a visceral glimpse into the hardcore life of one of the hardest-working punk bands in the business.

Full-colour throughout, the book also includes an intro-duction by Keithley and a foreword by Greg Hetson of the Circle Jerks.

Joe Keithley is the founder of D.O.A. His autobiography, I, Shithead: A Life in Punk (page 13), was published by Arsenal in 2003; now in its third printing, it has been translated into French, German, and Italian.

Joe KeithleyJoe Keithley, Canada’s godfather of punk, has long been an activist,

including as a candidate for the Green Party, and is the founder of Sudden

Death Records. He lives in Burnaby, BC, with his wife and their three

children.

TALK - ACTION = ZEROAn Illustrated History of D.O.A.

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lesbian / gender studies

anthologies

soc017000

pub month: april

isbn 978-1-55152-397-2

6 x 9 | 256 pp | paper

$21.95 / $19.95 us

A powerful and moving anthology of writing on butch and femme identities.

In the summer of 2009, butch writer and storyteller Ivan Coyote and gender researcher and femme dynamo Zena Sharman wrote down a wish-list of their favourite queer authors. They wanted to continue and expand the butch femme conversation. The result is Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme. The stories in these pages resist simple definitions. The people in these stories defy reductive stereotypes and inflexible categories. The pages in this book describe the lives of an incredible diversity of people whose hearts also pounded for some reason the first time they read or heard the words butch or femme.

Contributors such as Jewelle Gomez (The Gilda Stories), Thea Hillman (Intersex), S. Bear Bergman (Butch Is a Noun), Chandra Mayor (All the Pretty Girls), Amber Dawn (Sub Rosa), Anna Camilleri (Brazen Femme), Debra Anderson (Code White), Anne Fleming (Anomaly), Michael V. Smith (Cumberland), and Zoe Whittall (Bottle Rocket Hearts) explore the parameters, history, and power of a multitude of butch and femme realities. It’s a raucous, insightful, sexy, and sometimes dangerous look at what femme and butch can mean in today’s ever-shifting gender landscape, with one eye on the past and the other on what is to come.

Includes a Foreword by Joan Nestle, renowned femme author and editor of The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader, a landmark anthology originally published in 1992.

Ivan E. Coyote and Zena Sharman, eds.Ivan E. Coyote is the author of seven books, including the award-winning

novel Bow Grip, the Lambda Award-nominated The Slow Fix, and most

recently 2010’s Missed Her (see page 30 for all); Ivan has also released

three albums and four short films. A renowned storyteller, Ivan frequently

performs for live audiences internationally. Zena Sharman has a PhD in

Interdisciplinary Studies and works in gender and health research and

education. Zena is active in femme community building and mentorship,

leading workshops, hosting social events, and organizing fundraisers. Both

live in Vancouver.

PERSISTENCEAll Ways Butch and Femme

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history (canadian)

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isbn 978-1-55152-373-6

6 x 9 | 220 pp | cloth

$27.95 / nyp us

25 b&w photos

Daniel FrancisBorn and raised in Vancouver, Daniel Francis is the author of two dozen

books, principally about Canadian history. He was editorial director of

the mammoth Encyclopedia of British Columbia (Harbour), hailed

on its appearance in 2000 as one of the most important books about

the province ever published. His book L.D.: Mayor Louis Taylor and the

Rise of Vancouver won the City of Vancouver Book Award

in 2004. His other books available from Arsenal are National Dreams,

The Imaginary Indian, and the anthology Imagining Ourselves.

At the end of World War I, Canada was poised on the brink of social revolution. At least that is what many Canadians, inspired by the success of the Russian Revolution in 1917, hoped and others dreaded. Seeing Reds tells the story of this turbulent period in Canadian history during the winter of 1918–19, when a fearful gov-ernment led by Prime Minister Robert Borden tried to suppress radical political activity by branding legitimate labour leaders as “Bolsheviks” and “Reds.” Canada was in the grip of a widespread Red Scare promoted by the government and the media in order to discredit radical ideas and to rally public support behind mainstream political and economic policies. The story builds toward the events of the Winnipeg General Strike in May–June 1919 when the authorities, believing that the expected revolution had begun, sent soldiers into the streets to put down with force a legitimate labour dispute.

Author Daniel Francis examines Canada’s Red Scare in a global context, including government responses to similar activities in the United States and western Europe, as well as its ramifications for the contempo-rary war on terror, in which issues of free speech and political dissent are similarly compromised in the name of national security. Based on government documents and first-hand accounts by the participants themselves, Seeing Reds is a gripping account of a little known epi-sode in Canadian history.

A turbulent story in Canadian history.

SEEING REDSThe Red Scare of 1918–1919, Canada’s First War on Terror

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black studies /

cultural studies

soc056000

pub month: may

isbn 978-1-55152-374-3

5.5 x 8 | 176 pp | paper

$19.95 / nyp us

After Canaan, the first nonfiction book by acclaimed Vancouver poet Wayde Compton, repositions the North American discussion of race in the wake of the tumultu-ous twentieth century. It riffs on the concept of Canada as a promised land (or “Canaan”) encoded in African American myth and song since the days of slavery. These varied essays, steeped in a kind of history rarely written about, explore the language of racial misrecog-nition (a.k.a. “passing”), the subjectivity of black writers in the unblack Pacific northwest, the failure of urban renewal, black and Asian comedy as a counterweight to official multiculturalism, the poetics of hip hop turn-tablism, and the impact of the Obama phenomenon on the way we speak about race itself. In After Canaan, Compton marks the passing of old modes of antiracism and multiculturalism, and points toward what may or may not be a “post-racial” future, but will without doubt be a brave new world of cultural perception.

Written with the same poetic perceptiveness as Canadian cultural theorists Rinaldo Walcott and Dionne Brand, After Canaan is a brilliant and thoughtful consid-eration of Canadian culture that ought to be required reading for all.

cover image by stan douglas

The culture of race in the 21st century, according to Wayde Compton.

Wayde ComptonWayde Compton is a Vancouver writer whose previous books are the poetry

collections 49th Parallel Psalm and Performance Bond

and the anthology Bluesprint: Black British Columbian Literature and

Orature. He and Jason de Couto perform turntable-based sound

poetry as a duo called the Contact Zone Crew. Compton is also a co-

founding member of the Hogan’s Alley Memorial Project, an organization

dedicated to preserving the public memory of Vancouver’s original black

community. He is also one of the publishers of Commodore Books.

Wayde Compton teaches English composition and literature at Emily Carr

University of Art + Design and Coquitlam College.

AFTER CANAANEssays on Race, Writing, and Region

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fiction

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isbn 978-1-55152-375-0

5.5 x 8 | 304 pp | paper

$22.95 / nyp us

Gabriella GoligerGabriella Goliger’s first book, Song of Ascent, won the 2001 Upper

Canada Writer’s Craft Award. She was co-winner of the 1997 Journey

Prize for short fiction, a finalist for this prize in 1995, and won the Prism

international Award in 1993. Her work has been published in a number of

journals and anthologies including Best New American Voices 2000 and

Contemporary Jewish Writing in Canada. Goliger has been involved in

the Canadian Jewish peace movement for 25 years and is currently co-chair

of the Ottawa chapter of Canadian Friends of Peace Now.

A powerful tale of the burdens and blessings of his-tory, the divided self, and the quest to be whole, Girl Unwrapped is a coming-of-age story set in 1960s Montreal. Toni Goldblatt’s awakening to forbidden desire conflicts with the expectations of her Holocaust-scarred parents and with the conservative mores of her times. Yearning to re-invent herself, she flees to Israel in the wake of the 1967 war, but the Zionist dream doesn’t save her; instead, she finds the realities of life in the Middle East more complex than she imagined, and that her quest for normalcy has been thwarted. Only on her return to Montreal, when she discovers kindred spirits in the underground lesbian bar scene, does Toni begin to accept herself and experience a sense of true com-munity.

Achingly honest, Gabriella Goliger’s Girl Unwrapped is a novel about forbidden love, isolation, and the search for personal truth despite the stranglehold of family history.

The chatter in Loulou’s is both in English and French. She sees a great variety of girls and women ... Some faces are plain, some attractive, and a few are heart-stoppingly beautiful. Toni finds herself seeking out those special faces. Their loveliness strikes her as especially poignant here in this warm, smoky room, sealed off from the outside world. Her senses keenly alive, she thinks she might be turning into the kind of animal Maggie alluded to, but she has no regrets. And this transformation has happened almost instantly, as if the air at Loulou’s were a secret, powerful potion that made you anew.

A remarkable coming-of-age novel about the imperfections of history, both political and personal.

GIRL UNWRAPPED