abuse – Speculating Canada: Canadian Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy

May 4, 2020

Why Star Wars is Important To Me As An Abuse Survivor

By Derek Newman-Stille I am a child abuse survivor. My biological father beat me throughout my life until my mother, sister, and I were able to escape when I was 15. This may not seem to be related to Star Wars… but it is. As a child, I read about abuse to try to understand what was happening to me....

Editorials Comments: 0

December 23, 2019

Bad Kid

As many of you long-time followers of Speculating Canada know, I try to have a little gift for you around the holidays – a tale inspired by this time of year. There is a long history of telling stories (and especially spooky stories), after all, for those of us living in the northern hemisphere, this is the time of year...

Fiction Comments: 0

February 10, 2018

Abuse and Ideas of Home

Abuse and Ideas of Home A review of Tonya Liburd’s “Superfreak” in Shades Within Us: Tales of Migrations and Fractured Borders Edited by Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law (Laksa Media Group, 2018). By Derek Newman-Stille Tonya Liburd’s “Superfreak” is an intensely powerful and intensely painful tale that examines ideas of safety, security, and home. I should start my review...

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 2

April 22, 2016

Hawkeye’s Deafness

Hawkeye’s Deafness A review of Jeff Lemire and Ramon Perez’ “Hawkeye #5: All New Hawkeye” (Marvel Comics, 2015). By Derek Newman-Stille As a disability scholar and a fan of Jeff Lemire’s work, I was extremely excited to discover that Lemire had taken on the writing of the Hawkeye comics. Hawkeye has been recently reinvented as a deaf character (I...

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

January 26, 2016

Steam Until Completion

Steam Until CompletionA Review of OnSpec 100 (Spring 2015, Vol 27) By Derek Newman-Sille Steampunk is a complicated category and OnSpec’s much anticipated 100th issue was a great opportunity to explore some of the complexities of the genre. For this volume, OnSpec pushed the boundaries of the *punk genre, exploring areas like fairypunk, alternative histories, and diselpunk while...

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

May 19, 2014

Life Drained by Residential Schools

A review of David Jon Fuller’s “Sin A Squay” in Tesseracts Seventeen: Speculating Canada from Coast to Coast (Edge, 2013) By Derek Newman-Stille Residential schools were a real life horror for indigenous Canadians. Taken from their homes, punished for speaking their own language, forced to abandon their own culture and lifestyle, subject to abuse and starvation, Canadian aboriginals from the...

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 2

April 14, 2013

Transformative Art

A Review of OnSpec #91 Vol 24, No 4 (Winter 2013) By Derek Newman-Stille One of the key narrative threads running through Volume 24, number 4 of OnSpec is the transformative power of art and writing. This thread is most potent in Kevin Cockle’s Palimpsest, a short story about a man who learns how to transform the world and people...

Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 2

Tag: abuse

Why Star Wars is Important To Me As An Abuse Survivor

Bad Kid

Abuse and Ideas of Home

Hawkeye’s Deafness

Steam Until Completion

Life Drained by Residential Schools

Transformative Art