Reviews with content warning for Torture - The Skin We're In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power

🦋 "When I was young I loved to write for myself. I wrote stories and poems and kept a journal. I always imagined that if I ever wrote anything for others to read, it would be fiction. I never dreamed of writing for a newspaper. And I never thought that after getting a job with one of the biggest in Canada, I'd ultimately walk away from it."

The Skin We're In by Desmond Cole takes you from one January to another by documenting racism, historical and ongoing, and its impact on Black people in Canada. I used to think about journalistic objectivity in a different way before I got to know of the writer's work + his experiences. I found the book very relevant with the ongoing discussion on BLM, abolition, journalism vs activism, Canada's military and white supremacy, honouring Indigenous treaties, & (as seen in the recent arbitration decision by Lorne Slotnick) who gets to follow codes of conduct of newsrooms.

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liteartha's review against another edition

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challenging informative

this was incredibly eye opening and a book i honestly think should be required reading for canadians, especially those who preach canadian exceptionalism in the face of anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism in the US

white canadians have a massive problem of pretending we don’t have the same problems that exist south of the border. nothing has ever highlighted that fact to me more clearly than first hearing of the murder of a mentally ill Black man committed by the police — which occurred within a few minutes’ walking distance from my home — in this book. that is a massive failure both of mine, for not being better informed, and of local media and culture for not shining the same light it does on killings of this kind in the US

canadians, by and large, do not talk about this. canadians point the finger at the states and disparage their violently racist law enforcement while voicing relief that “things are much better here” as if we aren’t two sides of the same coin

canada is a deeply racist, ableist, queer- and transphobic country. our police are the perpetrators of the same violence we scorn in the US while ignoring at home. the intersectional lens this book employs while still remaining focused on the Black experience within canada was a revelation to me and will inform how i seek, receive, and act on news going forward. cole's journalistic background lends itself extremely well to this format, and his narration of the audiobook is clear and compelling. i can’t recommend this more highly

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