
The Languge of Family: Stories of Bonds and Belonging
by Michelle van der Merwe
Description:
Publisher's description (Royal BC Museum, 2017):
What is family? Is it defined by blood and birth? Or can we invite whomever we want into that intimate embrace?
The Royal BC Museum's new book, The Language of Family: Stories of Bonds and Belonging, invites readers to pull up a guest chair at the family table.
Twenty contributors from across British Columbia -- museum curators, cultural luminaries, writers and thinkers young and old, from First Nations, LGBTQ, Japanese Canadian and Punjabi communities, among others -- share their vastly different perspectives on what family means in this superb collection of personal narratives, poems and essays.
This collection will provoke, tease, enlighten and infuriate. Isn't that what family does best?
Stories, poems and essays by Sadhu Binning, Martha Black, Don Bourdon, Kathryn Bridge, Tzu-I Chung, Shushma Datt, Mo Dhaliwal, Zoé Duhaime, barbara findlay, Lynn Greenhough, Judith I. Guichon, Lorne F. Hammond, Joy Kogawa, Patrick Lane, Jack Lohman, Luke Marston, Bev Sellars, Monique Gray Smith, Ann-Bernice Thomas and Larry Wong. Note: This book contains contributions from Indigenous writers, which is why it is included in this collection. There are, however, many other contributors who are not Indigenous whose works are also included.
Editor biography (Royal BC Museum):
Michelle van der Merwe came ot Victoria via South Africa, Alberta, and Vancouver and has been the publisher at the Royal BC Museum and Archives since 2015. Her blood family is scattered around the globe, which she has travelled extensively, building families of association wherever she lands long enough to do so.
Resource type: Novel
Age recommendation: Grade 7 - 12, University
Keywords: family, personal narratives, poetry, essays, multicultural, LGBTQ, kinship, museum curators, cultural luminaries, writers, thinkers, First Nations, LGBTQ, Japanese-Canadian, Punjabi communities, settler, Indigenous, history, Canada, perspective, personal narrative, poem, poetry
Year of publication: 2017
Publisher information: Royal BC Museum
Teaching and Learning Ideas
Our team collaborated with new teachers, alumni of the Werklund School of Education’s Bachelor of Education program, to create teaching and learning plans for texts in this website. With audiences ranging from Pre-Kindergarten to Post-Secondary, lesson plans across this resource address a wide range of school subject areas, inclusive approaches, and Indigenous education topics, such as the revitalization of Indigenous languages. As this website was designed with Undergraduate Programs in Education instructors, as well as teachers in mind, connections to UPE courses have been flagged on each lesson plan. These lessons are intended as a starting place for educators, to help you envision ways in which you might bring Indigenous literatures, as well as ways of knowing, being, and doing, into your teaching contexts. Please adapt, use, and share these lessons in ways that are generative for your teaching practice. We offer our sincere thanks to the dozens of new teachers who gifted us with these creative ideas!
The Language of Families - Stories of Bonds and Belonging Grades 10-12 Lesson
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