Tessa McWatt

Interrogating our ideas of race through the lens of her own multi-racial identity, novelist Tessa McWatt turns her eye on herself, her body and this world in a new work of non-fiction. Through a close examination of her own body - nose, lips, hair, skin, eyes, ass, bones and blood - which holds up a mirror to the way culture reads all bodies, she asks why we persist in thinking in terms of race today when racism is killing us

An Anatomy of Race and Belonging

Shame on Me

Northern India, 2009. Four travellers disembark from the Dhauladhar Express, having arrived in Punjab to attend a wedding. As they gather with other guests at the traditional Indian wedding, Jackson and Reema develop a reluctant, unlikely friendship that grows through mutual need and a slowly developing trust, and together with Yosh and Monica, they embark on a post-wedding journey to the Himalayas. As they travel together, secrets are revealed, and each of them is opened up to more questions than answers. Author of "Where Are You Agnes?" Hometown: Toronto, ON. Print run 5,000.

The Snow Line

In her most powerful and resonant novel to date, the acclaimed writer Tessa McWatt explores the ways in which people find love in desperately uncertain times. Against a backdrop of 21st-century east London, where cuts and job crunches and unemployment are ugly, unrelenting realities, three very different love stories bloom. Francine, a university administrator who firmly believes that she is unattractive and unloveable, is unhinged after witnessing a tragic road accident. Cracked open, she is also on the verge of realizing that she is worth something to someone. Meanwhile Robin, a young film prof who Francine has lusted after from afar, is awoken to beauty in the form of the young Polish waitress in his local café, who cannot believe that he might love her back. And then there is Olivia, Robin's charismatic student, a mixed race girl growing up in a racist household, who thought she'd been abandoned by her father, Ed. Conducting research for a law school project on what society owes the dead, she stumbles across him working in a council office, where he's in charge of burying the indigent and unclaimed. Soon she realizes that Ed is not the kind of man who would abandon anybody. Thoughtful, poignant and profound, Higher Ed is a brilliantly observed novel that illuminates the human capacity for love, and lingers in the soul long after the last page is read.

A Novel

Higher Ed

Set in London, Toronto and Guyana, this title conveys secrets that usually remain untold - those of desire, loss, identity, and of love lost and found.

This Body

Victoria, a chef living in North London, can't seem to shakeher ghosts. But when her sister dies in Guyana, leaving behind a young son,Victoria's life changes in ways she could never have predicted. Suddenly sheis forced to confront both the death of her past and the frightening promise ofher future. A tender portrait of two people searching for truth, love andidentity, this is an astonishingly wise novel.

Stephen Maddison

Sam Dodd

An Anthology of Life Writing

EastLife

Tessa McWatt's breathtaking new novel explores love and endurance in the face of change and violence, and how people find wholeness and belonging when their own identities feel shattered. Northern India, 2009. Four travellers disembark from the Dhauladhar Express at the Pathankot train station, having arrived in Punjab to attend a wedding. Yosh, 30, a yoga teacher from Vancouver; Monica, 30, the bride's cousin from Toronto; Reema, 26, the bride's childhood friend, a mixed-heritage Londoner in search of her Indianness; and Jackson, 86, who is returning to India after a long hiatus in Boston, and who carries with him a small tea canister in which he has placed his wife Amelia's ashes. As they gather with other guests at the traditional Indian wedding, Jackson and Reema develop a reluctant, unlikely friendship that grows through mutual need and a slowly developing trust, and together with Yosh and Monica, they embark on a post-wedding journey to the Himalayas, seeking the perfect place to scatter Amelia's ashes. As they travel together, secrets are revealed, and each of them is opened up to more questions than answers. These intergenerational and intercultural relationships are a meeting of the past and the future, a reconciliation of past wrongs and a possibility that the future might be less violent, less selfish, less segregated. But can it be?

"Shame on me est un récit hybride qui aborde de front l'identité féminine, les corps forgés par la violence de l'esclavage et par la honte coloniale. Explorant chaque partie de son corps, le nez, les lèvres, les yeux, les cheveux, les os, les fesses, la peau, le sang, d'un chapitre à l'autre, Tessa McWatt, écrit les convulsions de l'histoire contemporaine condensées dans le corps de la femme métissée qui porte les stigmates et blessures de la rencontre coloniale. Les personnages dans Shame on me incarnent la Guyane et ses multiples couches de mémoire : colonisation, anéantissement des peuples autochtones, les Arawak, esclavage et créolité. Récit poignant qui pose un regard aussi novateur que percutant sur le corps, Shame on me reflète les nouveaux narratifs émergeants de l'écriture des femmes racisées."--

Anatomie de ma honte

Résumé Le pauvre, le criminel, le sauvage, le barbare. L’autre. Comment la langue fait d’une personne « l’autre » de quelqu’un ? Comment les corps sont-ils mis à part et vilipendés ? Nez, lèvres, yeux, cheveux, cul, os, peau, sang. C’est par cette déclinaison que Tessa McWatt aborde de front l’identité féminine, porteuse des blessures et des stigmates de la rencontre coloniale. Anatomie de ma honte incarne le Guyana aux prises avec les strates de son histoire : colonisation, anéantissement des Arawaks, esclavage et créolité. Tessa McWatt pose un regard percutant sur le corps de la femme racisée. Récit inédit qui interroge les idées sur la race, l’appartenance, la honte, le destin, le désir et l’identité. Tessa McWatt raconte avec la confiance et la force du vécu. QUILL AND QUIRE L’autrice Née au Guyana, Tessa McWatt écrit des romans, des livres jeunesse et des essais. Elle enseigne la création littéraire à l’Université de l’East Anglia. Elle a grandi à Toronto et vit actuellement à Londres.

FINALIST FOR THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD FOR NON-FICTION Interrogating our ideas of race through the lens of her own multi-racial identity, critically acclaimed novelist Tessa McWatt turns her eye on herself, her body and this world in a powerful new work of non-fiction. Tessa McWatt has been called Susie Wong, Pocahontas and "black bitch," and has been judged not black enough by people who assume she straightens her hair. Now, through a close examination of her own body--nose, lips, hair, skin, eyes, ass, bones and blood--which holds up a mirror to the way culture reads all bodies, she asks why we persist in thinking in terms of race today when racism is killing us. Her grandmother's family fled southern China for British Guiana after her great uncle was shot in his own dentist's chair during the First Sino-Japanese War. McWatt is made of this woman and more: those who arrived in British Guiana from India as indentured labour and those who were brought from Africa as cargo to work on the sugar plantations; colonists and those whom colonialism displaced. How do you tick a box on a census form or job application when your ancestry is Scottish, English, French, Portuguese, Indian, Amerindian, African and Chinese? How do you finally answer a question first posed to you in grade school: "What are you?" And where do you find a sense of belonging in a supposedly "post-racial" world where shadism, fear of blackness, identity politics and call-out culture vie with each other noisily, relentlessly and still lethally? Shame on Me is a personal and powerful exploration of history and identity, colour and desire from a writer who, having been plagued with confusion about her race all her life, has at last found kinship and solidarity in story.

London. Now. And here come the new Londoners. Francine would prefer to be thinner, but is happy enough to suffer her boss' manhandling of her ample hips if it helps her survive the next cull in Quality Assurance. She just wishes she could get the dead biker's crushed face out of her mind's eye. Robin is having a baby with the wrong woman, wishes he were with the perfect Polish waitress instead, leans hard on Deleuze for understanding, and wonders if his work in film will continue to be valued by the university management. Olivia is angry — angry with her layabout mother, with her too-casual BFF, and with her own timidity and anxiety. Perhaps the wisest of her lecturers will help? Knowledge is power, right? And she's beautiful when she's angry. Ed wishes he’d never gone back to Guyana to help his rass brother as it lost him his mini-Marilyn wife and the possibility of watching his only child grow up — until someone surprising crops up at the crematorium. Katrin is starting not to miss Gdansk or Mamunia so much, and starting to understand London living. But if she works and hopes harder, maybe she’ll secure a full British future for herself and her mother with the Good Englishman. The five of them cross paths and cross swords to bring London living unforgettably to life. Real London lives. PRAISE FOR TESSA MCWATT ‘[C]ombines campus novel (historically a distinctly white-male genre) with a Zadie Smith-like sense of a thoroughly multicultural London … satirises with sharp wit the precariousness of academic life.’ The Age ‘Tessa McWatt brings the traditional campus novel bang up to date … This polyphonic novel owes an obvious debt to Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, but nevertheless [McWatt] manages to make this exuberant but bittersweet tale something all of her own.’ The Observer

This stunning picture-book imagining of artist Agnes Martin’s childhood gives readers a glimpse into the life and work of one of the most esteemed abstract painters of the twentieth century. Agnes Martin was born on the Canadian prairies in the early twentieth century. In this imagining of her childhood from acclaimed author Tessa McWatt, Agnes spends her days surrounded by wheat fields, where her grandfather encourages her to draw what she sees and feels around her: the straight horizon, the feeling of the sun, the movement of birds’ wings and the shapes she sees in the wheat. One day, Agnes’s family moves to a house in a big city. The straight horizon and wheat fields are gone, but Agnes continues to draw what she sees and feels around her. No one except her grandfather understands what she is trying to capture — not her mother, who asks, “Where are you, Agnes?” when she sees her daughter engrossed in her drawing; nor her siblings, who think her art is ugly. Still, Agnes keeps trying to capture what she sees inside her mind. Agnes Martin grew up to become a famous abstract expressionist artist. Tessa McWatt has written a beautiful story of Agnes’s childhood and how it might have shaped her adult work. Zuzanna Celej’s watercolors adeptly capture Agnes’s world, including hints of the grid paintings that she was later known for, against the backdrop of prairie and city landscapes. Includes an author’s note with more information about Agnes Martin’s life and the inspiration behind this story. Key Text Features author's note art history Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.4 Identify words and phrases in stories or poems that suggest feelings or appeal to the senses. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.3 Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.4 Describe how words and phrases (e.g., regular beats, alliteration, rhymes, repeated lines) supply rhythm and meaning in a story, poem, or song. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.3 Describe characters in a story (e.g., their traits, motivations, or feelings) and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.7 Explain how specific aspects of a text's illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting) CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.3 Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character's thoughts, words, or actions). CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.6 Compare and contrast the point of view from which different stories are narrated, including the difference between first- and third-person narrations. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.7 Make connections between the text of a story or drama and a visual or oral presentation of the text, identifying where each version reflects specific descriptions and directions in the text. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.1 Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.9 Compare and contrast texts in different forms or genres (e.g., stories and poems; historical novels and fantasy stories) in terms of their approaches to similar themes and topics.

Where Are You, Agnes?

Rabindranath Maharaj

Dionne Brand

Twenty-six writers in Canada were asked to contribute pieces of original work describing how they see writing today. From Atwood’s opening, through writing from Indigenous writers, the reader is given a sense of how twenty-seven of the country’s finest writers see their world today. With an introduction by the editors, Dionne Brand, Rabindranath Maharaj, and Tessa McWatt. Contributors include: Margaret Atwood Michael Ondaatje Madeleine Thien, M G Vassanji, Lawrence Hill Pascale Quiviger Nino Ricci Sheila Fischman Heather O’Neill Camilla Gibb Eden Robinson Lee Maracle Rawi Hage Michael Helm Lisa Moore Rita Wong Hiromi Goto George Elliott Clarke Nicole Brossard Judith Thompson David Chariandy Richard Van Camp Marie-Hélène Poitras Stephen Henighan Greg Hollingshead Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Tessa McWatt

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