Yasmeen Haddad Loves Joanasi Maqaittik [Paperback]

A 23-year-old woman enters a whole new world of attraction in a community struggling with generations of loss of land and culture. Yasmeen’s tradition-bound mother wants her to stay in Montreal, get married, and have babies. But the young Syrian-Canadian wants more. Her appetite for adventure leads her to a teaching job in the northern Quebec village of Saqijuvik. Eager to adopt her new home and its Inuit inhabitants, Yasmeen embraces every experience that comes her way: camping on the tundra, hunting for ptarmigan, sewing with the local ladies. She plunges into her northern adventure, no holds barred. But it’s 1983 and instead of the ideal, pristine Arctic Yasmeen imagined, she uncovers a contradictory world of igloos and pool halls, Sedna and Jesus, raw caribou and alcohol. In the middle of everything is Joanasi, a beautiful but volatile man who leads her into territory that is almost as unsettling as the land itself.

About her poetry: "Montreal-based Carolyn Marie Souaid has written a gorgeous book of poetry celebrating life and, in particular, a life dedicated to the arts. Deeply meditative, insightful and moving—and delightfully inflected by visual and other art techniques (...) Souaid is particularly adept at portraiture, shading in characters in light of their surroundings." —Mariianne Mays' review ofThis World We Invented.

"Souaid’s sentences are straightforward and remarkably clear in their depictions. Her language naturally pairs with the physicality of the story . . . Indeed, dualities and contrasts are the driving force of the novel. Unsettling realism is enhanced by Souaid’s understanding of the complications of race and complicity." —Constance Augusta A. Zaber,Foreword Reviews

“Carolyn Marie Souaid's first novel is rooted in a deep engagement with Inuit culture . . . . Souaid’s layered portrait of [Joanasi] is crucial to thlcÁ