even this page is white
Published by Arsenal Pulp Press
Vivek Shraya’s debut collection of poetry, even this page is white, is a bold, timely and personal interrogation of skin—its origins, functions and limitations. Poems that range in style from starkly concrete to limber break down the barriers that prevent understanding of what it means to be racialized. Shraya paints the face of everyday racism with words, rendering it visible, tangible and undeniable.
Featured in the CBC documentary Where Have All The Poets Gone? and longlisted for the 2017 edition of Canada Reads.
“call in sick” also appears in The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care, edited by Zena Sharman.
Essays by Vivek
“#PublishingSoWhite: 13 Ways to Diversify Your Press”
“The Poetics of Racism”
Winner
- Publishing Triangle Award · Trans and Gender-Variant Literature
Finalist
- Lambda Literary Awards · Transgender Poetry
This brave and very contemporary lyrical collection dares to ask the unspoken yet screaming questions, to finish the sentence that hurts, that reveals, that provokes, that celebrates. Like a Durga goddess, Shraya juggles with deft hands the multiple aspects of desire, race, gender, queerness and contemporary pop culture.
Vivek Shraya radically centres radiant darkness in even this page is white. In and around and between the lines I see multi-dimensional reflections of myself; all the possibilities of my becoming. Beasts are everywhere, outside and in, and Vivek’s words root my courage to face them in love-a-lutionary soil.
even this page is white demands that all of us account for our visions of ‘colour’ and/or ‘race’ frontally and peripherally, with ocular proofs. Shraya is the poet-optometrist, correcting our vision and letting us see our identities without rose-coloured glasses, but with naked optics. even this page is white isn’t even-handed, but dexterous and sinister, in demonstrating, in revelatory poem after revelatory poem, why ‘often brown feels like but’ and why even a good white person—with a ‘golden heart’—‘can be racist.’ Reader, you have work to do!
A provocative meditation on what it means to grow up anything other than white in Canada, tackling institutional racism and sexual identity from a unique viewpoint, all delivered with astute observation and trenchant insight.
If there’s an award for the fusion of a book’s design with its content, surely it should go to even this page is white, the first poetry collection of author, filmmaker, and singer/songwriter Vivek Shraya. In even this page is white, Shraya offers an accessible and intimate primer on white supremacy, starting with the borders between internalized and externalized racism in embodied craving, and expanding to interrogate hierarchies of belonging, from anti-black racism among people of color to displacement and colonialism in everyday experience, activist spaces, cruising mentalities, families of origin, and families of choice. Shraya indicts not just the places and spaces where white supremacy makes itself visible and invisible, but also her own participation, guiding us through the pages, stages, and rages of awareness, inspiration, collaboration, and defiance.
Vivek Shraya’s even this page is white was a fantastic book of poems. It challenges complacency and widens your scope of the world. And you will enjoy having your perception heightened. It is a delicate play between pop cultural references and profound reflections on systematic inequality. I gave it to my daughter’s friend who refuses to read books, because it is so seductive.
I predict it’s going to be one of the foundational texts writers and artists, especially QTPOC ones, will look back on and come back to as the groundwork that informed their practices and inspired their work, artistic and political… It’s not hyperbolic to say that this is a book everyone should read. It’s the kind of poetry collection that makes you feel privileged just to have read it.
Featured
- 2017 Longlist
(Canada Reads) - 2016 Best Books of the Year
(The Writers’ Trust of Canada) - Best Books of 2016
(CBC Books) - Best Books of 2016
(The Walrus) - Top Bestselling New Books
(Glad Day Bookshop) - Top Queer and Feminist Books of 2016
(Autostraddle) - Books of the Year 2016
(Running in Heels) - Our Fave Books of 2016 (Authors’ Edition)
(BookThug.ca) - Our Favorite Under-the-Radar Books Published in 2016
(Bookriot) - The Best Canadian Book Covers of 2016
(CBC Books) - 2016 Read New Voices Booklist
(All Lit Up) - Most Anticipated: Spring 2016 Poetry
(49th Shelf) - Poetry Collections You Need to Read This Spring
(CBC Books) - Books to Read to Get Into the FOLD
(CBC Books) - Great Canadian Books to Read During Pride
(CBC Books) - Books Written by 50 Canadian Women of Colour
(Room Magazine) - Best Poetry 2016
(Goodreads) - The Best Queer Reads of 2016 So Far
(After Ellen) - Nonfiction Books About Race, Written by Women of Color
(Bustle) - Your Ultimate Canadian Poetry List
(CBC Books) - A Trans Literary Canon
(The Paris Review) - The Best Queer, Lesbian and Bisexual Books of the Decade
(Autostraddle) - Poetry Collections About Being a Queer Person of Color
(Electric Literature) - The Best Unconventional Poetry Collections
(Bookriot)
More Press
- Jason Purcell
- Leopardskin & Limes
- Woodland Secrets
- Toronto Arts Council
- 49th Shelf (2, 3)
- All Lit Up
- VUE Weekly
- Winnipeg Free Press
- Paul Vermeersch
- CBC Arts
- PRISM international
- The Town Crier
- SAD Mag
- Book Riot (2)
- Can’t Lit
- The Hardest Thing About Being A Writer
- Vagabond City
- Librairie Drawn & Quarterly
- Jugni Style
- Plenitude Magzine
- Rob McLennan
- The Radical Notion
- Daily Xtra
- Open Book Toronto (2)
- Apt613
- Autostraddle (2)
- Tethered by Letters
- CBC Radio
- Bogi Reads the World
- The Borrowed Bookshelf
- Guernica
- CBC Books (2, 3, 4)
- Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian (2)
- Bustle
- Writer’s Trust of Canada
- The Charlatan
- CBC Arts
Listen to a clip of “white dreams”
white dreams
Every copy of even this page is white comes with a link to a free download of the exclusive single “white dreams.”
Gallery
Related projects
“white dreams”
Single ·