by Tamai Kobayashi
Recommended by Jael Richardson
The Amnesty International Book Club is pleased to announce that Jael Richardson, founder of Canada’s Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD), has selected Prairie Ostrich as our November 2016 novel. Her selection of Prairie Ostrich by Tamai Kobayashi, is an opportunity to not only examine what it is to feel like an outsider in one’s community, but also bears witness to the dangers of passively allowing injustice.
Prairie Ostrich tells the story of eight-year-old Egg Murakami as she lives a day-to-day existence on an ostrich farm in Alberta. Since her brother’s death, Egg’s mother has curled up inside a bottle and her father has exiled himself to the barn. And yet Egg, despite her family’s loss, continues to discover the world – the good and the bad. She wishes Anne Frank was her best friend, idolizes her older sister, runs from bullies, and wonders what it takes to be a hero.
This month, Amnesty International expands upon Prairie Ostrich’s themes of action vs inaction. What exactly does it mean to take action, and what makes a person an advocate? In the guide, we’ll share Amnesty’s approach to advocacy, and share stories of how individuals have stood up for their values in their own unique ways.
Click below to download the discussion guide.
Jael Richardson
Jael Richardson is the author of The Stone Thrower: A Daughter’s Lesson, a Father’s Life, a memoir based on her relationship with her father, CFL quarterback Chuck Ealey. The book received a CBC Bookie Award and earned Richardson an Acclaim Award and a My People Award as an Emerging Artist. The Stone Thrower was adapted into a children’s book in 2016. Her essay “Conception” is part of Room’s first Women of Colour edition, and excerpts from her first play, my upside down black face, are published in the anthology T-Dot Griots: An Anthology of Toronto’s Black Storytellers. Richardson has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph, and she lives in Brampton, Ontario where she serves as the Artistic Director for the Festival of Literary Diversity (The FOLD).
Follow Jael on Twitter @JaelRichardson and learn more about FOLD at www.thefoldcanada.org
About the Author
Tamai Kobayashi
Born in Japan, raised in Canada, Tamai Kobayashi is a writer, song-writer, and videographer. She is the author of two story collections, Exile and the Heart and Quixotic Erotic, whose vivid, electric prose has garnered considerable critical acclaim. Prairie Ostrich is her first novel. It was included in CBC’s list of 100 Young Adult Books That Make You Proud to be Canadian. The novel has also won the Writer’s Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT Emerging Writers.
