Chia buồn is how one expresses condolences in Vietnamese. Instead of my thoughts are with you or sorry for your loss, the term literally means to divide (chia) sadness (buồn). If only I could have invited others to hold pieces of my shattered heart when Ông Nội died...
Someone has cut the brakes on modern life. Car doors slam and trolleys scramble. The lips and nose of strangers are covered by a blue screen. Behind closed doors the bombardment of news stories causes the heart to panic. It feels as though the ground has been pulled...
Traditional Iranian dishes take hours to make. Each family has their own recipes and preferences passed down from previous generations experimenting in the kitchen, but I did not grow up in a culture that allowed for time to be spent making food, unless you were...
“Memories and Where to Keep Them” is the honourable mention for Room’s Creative Non-Fiction Contest 2020. Before my mother left, when my mind was still small and pink like two fists held together, we saw a miracle in the sky. I was still allowed outside then. Whenever...
The first emotion I remember feeling was anger. Then anxiety. Then determination. I was in Toronto, attending a concert with a friend I had met online years earlier. It was the first time that we had occupied a public space together in person; the first time I could...
After the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Rayshard Brooks—unarmed African Americans killed by white police officers—the protests that followed, and all in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the time for a global reckoning for...
What else did Barthes write? I cannot decipher you because I do not know how you decipher me. I learn to pull the signified from the mouths of other women who once looked like me. I learn to pour water from one vase into another heirloom. There is the slight residue...
“Baby Shark” is the honourable mention for Room’s Short Forms Contest 2019. Many years ago, when I was four, I made a bargain with dida. If she took me for a movie in the evening, I would eat my lunch without fuss, like a bhalo meye. “Okay,” she said, “It has to be a...
“Dazzle Camouflage” is the honourable mention for Room's Creative Non-Fiction Contest 2019. Here's what the judge, Terese Marie Mailhot, has to say about the essay: “‘Dazzle Camouflage’ was full of beautiful language and the depth of the work was wonderful to sit...
This is what I can tell you: On a June night in 1986, my mother drinks from a tall glass of ice water. The radio might be on. If it is on, she is listening to Patti or Luther or The Pointer Sisters or Whitney. She might be singing, voice off-key but still rising...
ROOM 49.3 NO CANADA
In the new era of CanCon, as feminists and writers it is our task to reject this Canadian exceptionalism, this too-comfortable back-patting. How can we begin to imagine alternative arts economies, Indigenous economies around art, that start with treaty, that align with BDS? What art, what literature, would such a system free us to create?
Seeking members who love literature, events, merchandise, and supporting marginalized creators.
No Canada | 49.3
Price range: $15.00 through $25.00
Science | 49.2
Price range: $19.00 through $29.00
No Future For Who? | 49.1
Price range: $15.00 through $25.00
REST/UNREST | 48.3
Price range: $15.00 through $25.00
Travellers | 48.2
Price range: $15.00 through $25.00
Wits End | 48.1
Price range: $15.00 through $25.00
Full Circle | 47.4
Price range: $15.00 through $25.00
Bodies | 47.3
Price range: $15.00 through $25.00
Seedpod | 47.2
Price range: $12.00 through $25.00
Utopia | 47.1
Price range: $12.00 through $25.00
