Pub date, 1 Oct. 2024 – Pre-order now. Free shipping in North America

Cate, 43, is a university professor in an unfulfilling marriage. When Nuna, the young Inuk woman she mentors, disappears, Cate and her new friend, Isabel, 28, set out on a journey to find her. On the road, their friendship is tested, Nuna remains elusive, and Cate must contend with her ever-demanding husband who wants her to come home. As lead after lead falls through and the search reaches a critical impasse, Cate makes an important decision to stop living for others and finally live life on her own terms. Without knowing it, Cate has made the same decision that Nuna had when she left Montreal.

Set in Montreal, Ottawa and Nunavik (Northern Quebec), Looking for Her explores the intersecting lives of three women in search of themselves.

Carolyn Marie Souaid is the Montreal-based author of nine poetry collections and the acclaimed novel, Yasmeen Haddad Loves Joanasi Maqaittik set in Nunavik (Northern Canada), where she lived and worked for three years in the 1980s. Author of nine poetry collections, Carolyn has performed at literary events in Canada and abroad. Her work garnered a top prize at the 2012 Berlin Zebra Poetry Film Festival Her literary papers (1967–2022) are housed in the Rare Books and Special Collections of McGill University’s McLennan Library.

About Carolyn Souaid’s first novel

“Her language naturally pairs with the physicality of the story … Unsettling realism is enhanced by Souaid’s understanding of the complications of race and complicity.”  Starred Review, Foreword Reviews

“Carolyn Marie Souaid has a brave honest voice and a love for northern Canada and its people that is genuinely moving to read about.” Tomson Highway

“Yasmeen Haddad Loves Joanasi Maqaittik is the lyrical and absorbing result of a sincere mission to come to grips with another culture. That it took decades to commit to the writing is a tale in itself.” Ian McGillis, The Montreal Gazette

Pub date, 1 Oct. 2024 – Pre-order now. Free shipping in North America

In a rich, diversified and international career, Carla Blank has been dramaturge, choreographer, stage director, writer, art and architecture critic, defender of women’s rights and of a multicultural America, and more. Fortunately, she has recorded much of her experience in essays now gathered in a single volume.

From her role as stage director in Ramallah through a searing critique of bigotry on Broadway, the storming of the old boys’ citadel in architecture, a fine analysis of great women dancers and choreographers, such as the late great Suzushi Hanayagi, to the taking down of “mainstream” cultural historians on abstract art and postmodernism, Carla Blank brilliantly puts words to what the “ocean” of multicultural America feels.

In an exclusive interview with her partner Ishmael Reed, we learn how a curious young Jewish woman from Pittsburgh developed into a committed and eloquent public intellectual.

A Renaissance woman, Carla Blank has distinguished herself as a dancer, choreographer, author, director, dramaturge, teacher, editor, journalist, and Jazz musician (violinist). She has written or edited five books, including Bigotry on Broadway, Storming the Old Boys’ Citadel, and Rediscovering America: The Making of Multicultural America, 1900-2000. In dance, she has collaborated with directors/designers or choreographers such as Robert Wilson and Suzushi Hanayagi. In theater, she has directed plays and multimedia performances in many cities in the United States, in China, in West Bank Palestinian cities, including at the Palestinian National Theatre in Jerusalem. Her articles have appeared in publications including The Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, and  El Païs (Spain). Carla Blank lives in Oakland.

Praise and Reviews

On Bigotry on Broadway

“Blank and Reed offer an incisive, critical take on Broadway’s past and present; discuss an alternative vision that incorporates the perspectives missing from Broadway; and look toward a more inclusive future. A book for all readers interested in the history of Broadway musicals, theater criticism, and the role of whiteness in Broadway’s misrepresentations.” Library Journal

On Rediscovering America

“An effective, valuable historical reference work. A worthwhile acquisition for academic, public, and high school libraries.”  Library Journal

On Storming the Old Boys’ Citadel

“Books like this one are vital in highlighting what our history notes have left out. They remind us to redefine our views and question our records. If we need to redefine the history of architecture today, let it include women.” Montreal Review of Books

CONTENTS

1                 Author Carla Blank Interviewed by Ishmael Reed

2                Postmodernism

3                Whose Abstract Art?

4                America the Beautiful

5                 Elvis Presley: King or Apprentice?

6                Neglecting a Grand Old Lady

7                 A new New Deal for the Arts

8                When Kabuki is Not Kabuki

9                Apollo Could Be a Bitch

10              How Buffalo’s Lafayette Hotel Went from Fleabag to Fabulous

11               The Education of Paul Ryan

12              Storming the Old Boys’ Citadel

13              Prince: Dance and Pain

14              Purging History: Was Orlando Really the Worst Massacre in U.S. History?

15               The Sorrows of Young Alfonso by Rudolfo Anaya

16              Suzushi Hanayagi at Mulhouse

17               L’arte è per 1’1% ispirazione e per il 99% duro lavoro /Art is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, an interview with Carla Blank by Corinne Bergamini

18              Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over by Nell Painter

19              The Resurrection of Sister Aimee

20              A Grande Dame of Dance

21              Is Broadway About Dollars and Cents

22              Public Purpose, Public Art

23              Finding Nature in a Built Environment

24              A Jew in Ramallah