Christian Allaire and Malia Baker go head-to-head in the Canada Reads 2022 finale
On the final day of Canada Reads 2022, two contending books were left as Objiway author and Vogue writer Christian Allaire and actor/activist Malia Baker debated over why their book is the one all of Canada should read.
Allaire is championing Michelle Good's novel Five Little Indians — a story about five survivors of Canada's residential school system who are struggling to heal from their trauma and rebuild their lives as adults.
Baker is championing Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez, a debut novel which tells a moving multi-voiced story about a Toronto neighbourhood that refuses to fall apart in the face of poverty and crime.
Host Ali Hassan asked the panellists how their books brought readers inside the hearts and minds of characters.
Below is a condensed version of their discussion. Watch the video above for their full debate.
Malia Baker: I feel like with the hearts and minds of Scarborough — since there is such a vast difference in all the perspectives that we shift through, I'm going to have to lead with the dialogue that happens. Catherine Hernandez has that playwright background, and that's one of the strengths of Scarborough. We can hear these people speaking into our heads. We can hear the voices behind the stories. That's one of the most authentic references from it.
Christian Allaire: I think the dialogue of Scarborough, I agree, was the strongest part of the book. I loved the dialogue. I can imagine these conversations. I also think that was kind of its biggest downfall. I think the structure and the building up of the character arcs were not there. You think of a character in Five Little Indians — Maisie — she's very brief, but she has an arc. She's actually the most put together at first, and then she kind of unravels. So she's short, but she has a full story.
I felt like a lot of the characters in Scarborough — someone like Victor, who I think is so important at making a point about racial profiling, that's such an important character. And he was given maybe two chapters, and I didn't understand who he was outside of that experience.
Canada Reads host Ali Hassan: Malia, what's your response to that?
Malia Baker: It's interesting that you say that because Five Little Indians was the only book that I also read both in paperback and as an audiobook. While I was reading, I didn't feel like people spoke that way. I felt the dialogue was something that kind of took me out of it... because it just felt very inaccurate to how people speak day-to-day.
The Victor background that you were talking about, I feel like she made a point of speaking about it, but not too much that he became such a sole focus of the book.
I mean, we're talking about three young kids and their families and how they expand throughout their communities. Especially when Laura passes, we see how a community reacts to a tragedy. I feel like cities like Scarborough that are all over Canada and in the world as a whole, they're ruled by how they're seen on the news. You never really hear the perspectives and stories within that story in a real and raw way.
And so with Victor, I feel like Catherine did an excellent point of speaking and giving us a glimpse into it, but not so much that it took us out of everything else and focusing on a new story.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Canada Reads 2022
Meet the champions and their chosen books:
- Ojibway author and Vogue fashion writer Christian Allaire champions Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
- Actor and activist Malia Baker champions Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez
- Entrepreneur and former Syrian refugee Tareq Hadhad champions What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
- Forest ecologist and author Suzanne Simard champions Life In the City of Dirty Water by Clayton Thomas-Müller
- Olympian and LGBTQ2S+ advocate Mark Tewksbury champions Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
Here's how you can tune into Canada Reads 2022:
- DAY ONE: CBC Books, CBC Gem, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, CBC Listen
- DAY TWO: CBC Books, CBC Gem, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, CBC Listen
- DAY THREE: CBC Books, CBC Gem, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, CBC Listen
- FINALE: CBC Books, CBC Gem, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, CBC Listen
WARNING: The books chosen for Canada Reads deal with difficult topics, such as trauma and abuse. These stories may be shared during the broadcast. Click this link to find publicly available resources for support.
