Today is Black Friday—the busiest shopping day of the year across North America. And what could be more thoughtful than buying a new book for the reader on your list?

Over the holiday season, we'll be posting articles recommending a variety of books. Here's the first edition, which includes five titles put out by B.C. publishers.

Burning Sugar

by Cicely Belle Blain (VS. Books/Arsenal Pulp Press)

One of Vancouver’s leading intersectional racial-justice advocates, Blain has written a thought-provoking book of poems on the experiences of a Black/mixed queer femme immigrant from London living on unceded Indigenous land.

“I do fight—in ways I’ve told myself are not enough,” Blain writes. “Not enough because I carry a sort of survivor’s guilt. Not enough because my ancestors gave me a freedom I’m not quite sure how to use. Not enough because I am hopeless, inevitably, against thousands of years of systemic oppression. Yet, most notably, my brain says, Not enough because I am not enough.” It’s a powerful passage.

Carpe Fin: A Haida Manga

by Michael Nicoll Yaghulanaas (Douglas and McIntyre)

Winner of the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, Yaghulanaas’s brilliantly illustrated book centres around a man abandoned by his fellow sea-lion hunters on an isolated rock in the sea.

Yaghulanaas’ ability to combine Haida story-telling with Japanese-style illustrations known as manga make him unique among B.C.’s writers and artists. He truly is a national treasure.

Takaya: Lone Wolf

by Cheryl Alexander (RMB)

Many of us learned about Takaya, the lone wolf who spent much of his life on Discovery and Chatham islands near Victoria, after he was found wandering in the heavily populated James Bay neighbourhood near the B.C. legislature.

Conservation officers let him loose on Vancouver Island and tragically, Takaya was shot by a hunter near Shawnigan Lake in March. Alexander, a Victoria conservation photographer, spent seven years documenting this unusual animal’s life, first in a spectacular film and more recently in this B.C. bestseller.

The Bushman’s Lair: On the Trail of the Fugitive of the Shuswap

by Paul McKendrick (Harbour Publishing)

It was a story that travelled around the world—the Bushman of the Shuswap, who kept breaking into peoples homes and then contacted the media to taunt the police about his crimes.

This bushman, an escaped prison inmate and conspiracy theorist, was later identified as John Bjarnstrom when he was captured in 2002.

McKendrick, a first-time author, has diligently researched Bjarnstrom’s life, discovering that he was a child of Romani refugees raised by outdoor enthusiasts in Norway.

Un-Canadian: Islamophobia in the True North

by Graeme Truelove (Nightwood Editions)

Truelove’s wide-ranging exploration of discrimination against Muslims was a finalist for the Ottawa Book Prize in the English nonfiction category.

It covers everything from a questionable Vancouver police response to British tourists taking photos at a local mall to the hassles that Canadian Muslims routinely endure at borders and airports.

If you thought state discrimination was a thing of the past, guess again. Truelove’s first book, Svend Robinson: A Life in Politics, is genuine page-turner.