RaveThe Los Angeles Review of Books... resonated so strongly with me that I cannot pretend to be objective about how much I loved the book. I was captured by its compelling themes of global desi homelessness and what it means to love places that are not our own — what it means when none of the places we love are our own, but we belong to them anyway ... This is not a book with easy answers ... Ali gives the reader a crash course on Canada’s history of problematic relations with its Indigenous communities. The book is not exhaustive on that subject, and does not intend to be. But for me, a non-Canadian, the brief contextual snippets were eye-opening, to the point where my notes in the margins frequently degenerated into repeated exclamation marks ... forces the reader to keep thinking and engaging, throughout. That demand for engagement helps the book cut through the reader’s own baggage, based on every other story they have heard about an Indigenous community in trouble ... By carrying us along on his journey to understand his love for a place, and by refusing to extract the \'truth\' of tragedy from what he encounters, Ali draws readers into his own complicity, his own complex, frustrated love.
Kazim Ali
RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksI cannot pretend to be objective about how much I loved the book. I was captured by its compelling themes of global desi homelessness and what it means to love places that are not our own ... This is not a book with easy answers ... he chooses not to quiz community members about their ongoing traumas, adopting the role of listener instead. The result is a warm, empathetic portrait ... Ali gives the reader a crash course on Canada’s history of problematic relations with its Indigenous communities. The book is not exhaustive on that subject, and does not intend to be. But for me, a non-Canadian, the brief contextual snippets were eye-opening ... The prose is far clearer, the issues more cleanly expressed, than a more technical book might achieve ... Ali does not hide his own face as an interviewer, nor try to deny his own stake in the narrative. Which felt to me like a deeply important step, given how the pretense of objectivity has been misused by colonialist authorities to tell precisely this kind of story. Ali describes in luminous detail the impression this remote area of Northern Canada left on him as a child, while also making it clear that, through his family, he feels complicit in the region’s troubles. Even so, he never slips entirely into memoir mode. Ali makes himself visible while shifting the reader’s focus to Cross Lake ... As I read, I kept wondering why it was so easy for Manitoba Hydro to break its promises to the community of Cross Lake. Why did the community have to keep litigating to get promised funds? Why were the kids committing suicide? ... A few times, I found myself scribbling frustrations in the margins ... But then, interrogating my own frustrations, I looked slantwise at the book, and realized that I was reading it wrong ... Northern Light forces the reader to keep thinking and engaging, throughout. That demand for engagement helps the book cut through the reader’s own baggage, based on every other story they have heard about an Indigenous community in trouble.
