Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez

It's always interesting reading a book that's set in an area that's familiar. While this isn't exactly the case in that I'm only aware of Scarborough by name and knowing it's located fairly close to where I grew up, it felt fitting that I read the back half of this book while on a train heading to Toronto. Gazing intermittently through the window at the passing landscape, much of which was marked with graffiti, felt appropriately fitting if one were to pair a view with a book. The neighborhood of Scarborough is the setting of this book, more specifically the most rundown, inner city area of Scarborough. We are shown this city mainly through the eyes of three families who live there, as well as some peripheral characters whose presence reinforces the economic, social and diverse climates that are in constant tension. The characters we meet are struggling in every way possible. They're living in low-income housing or shelters, fleeing abusive relationships and/or drug abuse. They're culturally diverse families who are tied together not only in their poverty-level status, but more positively through the Ontario Reads Literacy Program, a community centre located within the children's elementary school. This centre plays a large part in the book, as does its new Program Facilitator, Hina, an eager woman who clearly cares deeply about the families who come to the program. Though for doing so she often receives passive-aggressive disapproval from her supervisor, Hina follows her heart and provides a warm, welcoming place for the kids and their parents to obtain resources, much-needed food and anything else they need - basic help that many of us take for granted. While there wasn't necessarily a grand storyline per se, there were definitely common threads and intertwined characters that formed a cohesive unit. The book felt like more of a snapshot: a year in the life of each of these struggling families, the different depictions provided to us via the personal experiences of the young school kids and their parents. We meet Laura and her former skinhead father, Cory, who has a lot of anger issues and residual opinions from his youth. Sylvie, a Native girl, is the sister of a Johnny who has special needs. She lives in a shelter with her parents who are trying to cope with an accident that left her father paralyzed. Sylvie is also friends with Bing, a flamboyant Vietnamese boy who is happily supported by his hardworking mother Edna. Hunger is a central theme of this book. Not only physical hunger - though literal hunger is certainly persistent throughout the novel - but hunger to be seen as a person and not just a cultural stereotype, hunger for proper healthcare and decent housing. Hunger for a better life. The book demonstrates that no matter our circumstances, we're not all that different from each other if only we show a little empathy. Kids will be kids: they are, for the most part, understanding, forgiving and resilient. And parents, despite their income, their pasts, no matter how the outside world perceives them are, for the most part, trying their best with what they've got to provide the best for their children. Shortly after finishing this book, I pulled into the Toronto train station. Did it make me want to stop in Scarborough to see it for myself? To be honest, no. But did it make me contemplative and grateful for my mostly easygoing childhood and sympathetic to those not as fortunate? Absolutely. And, as a parent, it reinforced that if we were all a little more empathetic, understanding and a lot less quick to judge, we're all really a lot more similar than we might appear at first glance.