An Alphabet for Joanna

A QUILL & QUIRE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

“An Alphabet for Joanna is a braid of tiny stories that weaves us into a nest of belonging despite circumstance and injury . . . A memoir of stunning thoughtfulness, Rogers presents us with a loving treatise on what it means to be human.” —Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

“Succinct, evocative, beautifully written, heartbreaking. . . . of special interest to all whose loved ones suffer from dementia.” —Margaret Atwood

“Told in brilliant prose inter-animated by form and image, this is a poetic narrative and portrait of a mother’s life in fragments. Themes of mother-child, love and separation, memory and forgetting, the violence and fragility of the world next to creative endurance shaped by love–it’s a book that will break your heart and mend it.” — Hoa Nguyen

“Written in a sharply etched and sometimes deadpan style . . . [An Alphabet for Joanna] is both an attempt to ‘release’ her mother’s story—in all of its previously hidden complexity—and a moving portrayal of their life together. Rogers uses prose, poetry, photographs, artwork, a short playscript, a chronology and reproductions of Joanna’s notebooks to present the multifaceted nature of their relationship with often startling poignancy. . . . [A] depiction of love that overcomes friction, insecurity, distance and time.” —Toronto Star

“Poet Rogers excavates family history and ephemera to piece together the stories of her artistically talented mother’s life.” —Quill & Quire 

“[A]n emotional look at secrets, trauma and healing . . . a meditation on the stories we tell ourselves, and how we create and hold onto memories.” —Shelagh Rogers, CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter