By Maureen Tai, 27 January 2019
“All that suffering, all that death, for nothing. I will never understand, as long as I live, how a country could change overnight from only a line drawn.” – Nisha
The year Nisha turns 12 is the year that newly independent India is rent in two. A line is hastily drawn by the governing British, separating mostly Hindu India from mostly Muslim Pakistan, formally partitioning a country that had lived as one for centuries before. Nisha is a keen observer and the diarist in The Night Diary. Writing only after the sun has set each day, Nisha records her impressions and thoughts, hopes and fears. Hers is a compelling yet fragile and bewildered voice during the defining and possibly most devastating event in the history of the Indian subcontinent. This is not only Nisha’s story, but the true story of so many millions of others affected by Partition. Continue reading
M: Do you like chocolate?
There are some graphic novels that take your breath away not only because they are so exquisite to look at, but because you’ve always dreamed of being able to draw like the illustrator. The Prince and the Dressmaker is such a book, telling the charming story of the unlikely friendship (and ultimate romance) between a dress-wearing Crown Prince and his talented personal seamstress. And the fashion? To die for. 
I remember coming across a pro-wrestling match on TV when I was an anxious high schooler in Canada. I watched oil-slicked, beefy men-monsters grapple, headlock, punch, kick and throw each other around under glaring lights, egged on by cheering crowds that included, to my incredulity, children. I didn’t understand the entertainment, and I must confess that I still don’t. But a slim non-fiction graphic novel, Andre the Giant: Closer to Heaven has opened my eyes, and my heart, to one of pro-wrestling’s great heroes. Underneath that hulking mass of flesh, there was a man with a soul, a mind, doubts and feelings like any one of us. This is his story. 
Stories That Stay With Us 