The first-ever New Shoots anthology features work from students across six schools in the Vancouver School Board. In this first of three decades of student work, these writers immerse readers into transcontinental narratives that are historical and contemporary, experiment with form and content, and address social concerns of the time – more notably, homosexuality at the height of the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.
The opening story, “The Survivor,” takes the reader into a small city in Northern China, where a family struggles with political dissent. Another piece, “The Party,” is a travelogue about the small town of Laboe, in what was then known as West Germany. “Memories” is a short and sweet poem that compares the eponymous title to desserts. A variation on the sonnet form, “A Cat’s Revolution” portrays a scrawny cat against the laughter and scrutiny of children. The flash fiction “Glory in a Moving Bus,” enters the mind of a commuter pondering the logic of transit times – a small concern that many of us wonder about to this day.
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