RAD RIOT BOOKS

RAD RIOT BOOKS Decolonize your bookshelf, your mind, and your soul through literary works that centre global voices A safe space where curious people can educate themselves.

Rad Riot Books is a bookstore highlighting global voices, revolutionary reads and unbound joy. A sanctuary for those who find solace and comfort in the company of books. A validating space for those who have been historically invalidated. A space to question the binary and challenge the status quo. A revolutionary space to rise up in the name of progress and justice.. A space for joy, love and acceptance. A space for you.

Join us this Sunday, April 27 at 3pm EST on zoom as we discuss One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, the...
04/26/2025

Join us this Sunday, April 27 at 3pm EST on zoom as we discuss One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, the debut non-fiction book from the award-winning novelist and journalist unpicks the hypocrisy and injustices of the West at a volatile and shocking time.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is an urgent and necessary reckoning about what it means to live in the West today. As an immigrant, Omar El Akkad believed the West offered freedom and justice for all. Over the past twenty years he reported on the various Wars on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more. He won awards for his journalism and his fiction. But now, watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, he comes to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie.

This powerful book is a chronicle of Omar’s painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means – as a citizen, as a father – to carve out some sense of possibility during these devastating times. This is a book for those that have tired of moral emptiness. This is a book for everyone who wants something better.

Please DM us your email address and we'll send you a zoom link!

It's our favorite time of year - it's Canadian Independent Bookstore Day! And we really need your support - with the con...
04/26/2025

It's our favorite time of year - it's Canadian Independent Bookstore Day! And we really need your support - with the constantly changing rules on tariffs from our neighbors down south, supporting local independent bookstores is more important that ever!

Canadian Independent Bookstore Day (CIBD) is the annual day when readers, writers, illustrators, publishers, and others come together to celebrate indie bookstores across Canada. By joining the celebration, you are advocating for independent businesses, supporting a flourishing bookselling community, and investing in Canadian culture.

Celebrate with us and ! Support our store by shopping their audiobook sale, and get two free audiobooks when you start a new monthly membership.

Learn more: libro.fm/ibd?bookstore=radriotbooks

After a series unfortunate personal events including an attempt at renoviction, followed by multiple court hearings, cou...
02/28/2025

After a series unfortunate personal events including an attempt at renoviction, followed by multiple court hearings, coupled with constant burnout, we're back with the Rad Riot Book Club! To be consistent with our previous meetings, the book club will meet on the last Sunday of every month for the next six months at 3pm EST on zoom.

This year, we're reading

MARCH - The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
APRIL - One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
MAY - Original Sins by Eve L. Ewing
JUNE - Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H
JULY - North Woods by Daniel Mason
AUGUST - We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, translated by Robin Myers

We hope you will join us as we explore ideas through literature to try and make sense of the world we live in!

Love spreading the joy of books🌻📚Our next Books & Brews market is Dec 7 at
11/16/2024

Love spreading the joy of books🌻📚

Our next Books & Brews market is Dec 7 at

Hello riotous readers!🍉It has been almost a year of the genocide that's ongoing in Palestine. Therefore, it is more impo...
09/03/2024

Hello riotous readers!

🍉It has been almost a year of the genocide that's ongoing in Palestine. Therefore, it is more important than ever that we read Palestinian voices. That's why, this month, we're looking forward to reading Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad on Sunday, September 29 at 3pm est on zoom.

🍉In Enter Ghost, the protagonist Sonia, a British-Palestinian actress, returns to Haifa after her tumultuous relationship ends. Her original plan is to spend time with her sister Haneen and rejuvenate in this coastal city. Instead, she is coxed into performing in a production of “Hamlet” in the West Bank – a decision that leads to a painful political awakening.

🍉A stunning rendering of present-day Palestine, Enter Ghost is a story of diaspora, displacement, and the connection to be found in family and shared resistance. Timely, thoughtful, and passionate, Enter Ghost is an exquisite feat, an unforgettable story of artistry under occupation.

If you'd like to join the discussion, please send us a DM and we'll send you the zoom link.

Hello riotous readers!To celebrate Women in Translation this month, we're reading Tongueless by Lau Wee-Wa translated by...
08/19/2024

Hello riotous readers!

To celebrate Women in Translation this month, we're reading Tongueless by Lau Wee-Wa translated by Jennifer Feeley!

Tongueless follows two rival teachers at a secondary school in Hong Kong who are instructed to switch from teaching in Cantonese to Mandarin—or lose their jobs. Apolitical and focusing on surviving and thriving in their professional environment, Wai and Ling each approach the challenge differently. Wai, awkward and unpopular, becomes obsessed with Mandarin learning; Ling, knowing how to please her superiors and colleagues, thinks she can tactfully dodge the Mandarin challenge by deploying her social savviness. Wai eventually crumples under the pressure and dies by su***de, leaving her colleague Ling to face seismic political and cultural change alone as she considers how far she will go to survive such a ruthlessly competitive work environment.

Provocative contemporary Hong Kong noir, blending together politics and personal rivalry into an explosively exciting debut, Tongueless is a taut, compelling novel of betrayal, power imbalance and rapid social change.

We hope you'll join us on Sunday, August 25 at 3pm EST on zoom! Please send us a DM if you'd like the zoom link!

Hello riotous readers! 🌻It's August - which means it's Women in Translation (WIT) Month! 📚WIT Month is an annual celebra...
08/01/2024

Hello riotous readers! 🌻

It's August - which means it's Women in Translation (WIT) Month! 📚
WIT Month is an annual celebration of women writers from around the world, writing in languages other than English. Started by Meytal Radzinski in 2014, WIT Month has grown to become a staple of the online literary community, as well as a prominent presence in independent bookstores around the world.
very August, readers from all continents around the world gather to read, review, and discuss works by women writers in translation. The idea is to spread the word about the Women in Translation project at large, and promote individual women writers in translation specifically.

So, we decided to spotlight some of our favorite translated books written and/or translated by women! 🪷

Have you read any of these books? Sound off in the comments!

07/18/2024

Books & Brews! It’s a Scholastic Bookfair for Adults!
SATURDAY JULY 20th, 12pm - 5pm

Join us with our pals Stelliform Press Coach House Books Invisible Publishing Dundurn Press RAD RIOT BOOKS Aaron Millard - Illustration Great local small presses, awesome merch, and tasty beer. The perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon!

Hello riotous readers,This month in July, we're reading The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Taylor!Born Kathleen to an immig...
07/08/2024

Hello riotous readers,
This month in July, we're reading The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Taylor!

Born Kathleen to an immigrant Irish farming family in southern Ontario, Kit McNair has been a troublesome changeling since, at ten, they fell through the river ice and drowned—only to be nursed back to life by their mother's Celtic magic. A daredevil in boy's clothes, Kit chafes at every aspect of a farmgirl's life, driving that same mother to distraction with worry about where Kit will ever fit in. When Rebekah Kromer, an elegant German-Canadian doctor's daughter, moves to town with her parents in April 1939, Rebekah has no doubt as to who 19-year-old Kit is. Soon she and Kit, and Kit's older brother, Landon, are drawn tight in a love triangle that will tear them and their families apart, and send each of them off on a separate path to war.
Landon signs up for the Navy. Kit, now known as Christopher, joins the Royal Air Force, becoming a bomber navigator relied on for his luck and courage. Rebekah serves with naval intelligence in Halifax, until one more collision with Landon changes the course of her life and draws her back to the McNair farm—a place where she'd once known love. Fallen on even harder times, the McNairs welcome all the help she is able to give, and she believes she has found peace at last. Until, with the war over, Kit and Landon return home.
Evocative, magical and luminously written, The Cure for Drowning is not only a brilliant, boundary-pushing love story but a Canadian historical novel that boldly centres q***r and non-binary characters in unprecedented ways. Told in the vivid, unforgettable voices of Kit and Rebekah, The Cure for Drowning is a powerfully engrossing novel that imagines a history that is truer than true.

Our book club discussion this time will be guest facilitated by a celebrated artist here in Kitchener-Waterloo - Brenda Mabel Reid (they/them). They will join us on Sunday, August 4 at 3pm est on zoom! (DM us for the zoom link)

We hope you will join us!

***rlit

We are so excited to collaborate with Idea Exchange yet again, this time for our first in-person event we're calling Lib...
06/26/2024

We are so excited to collaborate with Idea Exchange yet again, this time for our first in-person event we're calling Liberate Yourself Through Your Bookshelf! On Wednesday, June 26, from 6:30pm to 8pm at the Magazine Lounge at Idea Exchange in Queen's Square!

In this lecture/interview hybrid, Aashay Dalvi, (chief curator, Rad Riot Books) will delve into the transformative power of inclusive literature, how their personal journey has shaped their advocacy work, and tips and tricks for decolonizing your bookshelf. This event will conclude with a brief opportunity to ask questions. At the event, they will be discussing the importance of q***r, migrant, and anti-colonial representation in literature.

We truly hope you will join us for this empowering and affirming workshop on q***r joy and q***r resistance!

***rcambridge ***rlit

Hello riotous readers!This month, we're reading Bad Girls written by Camila Sosa Villada and translated by Kit Maude!Aun...
06/25/2024

Hello riotous readers!

This month, we're reading Bad Girls written by Camila Sosa Villada and translated by Kit Maude!

Auntie Encarna's is the q***rest boarding house in the world! For Camila, it is a refuge, and the raggle-taggle band of queens who gather there are like family. At night they dress up and head out to Sarmiento Park to earn money. They stand together in the cold, sharing stories and a hip flask of whiskey, waiting for a car to slow down. Until, one freezing evening, Auntie Encarna hears crying in the bushes and wades in to investigate. When she finds an abandoned baby boy, she will hear no arguments: she is bringing him home to care for him. Life for Camila and the others will never be the same again.

With a cast of larger-than-life, unforgettable characters, Bad Girls combines brutal, unflinching realism with flourishes of surrealism to tell a story about the clash of hope with prejudice and fear. Wildly imaginative, darkly funny and devastatingly sad, it is a q***r fairy tale about s*x work, gender identity and chosen family; an anguished howl of pain and rage; and an unruly hymn to love and care on the outskirts of society.

"The heroines are transgender women whose lives are absolutely complicated… They are rejected by the whole society and especially by those who use to deal with them as s*x workers. The novel shows a solidarity and a humanity that delighted us. And even though the story is rather tragic there is a craziness and a hymn to life and joy that makes this book unforgettable." – Bibliothèques municipales de Genève, Switzerland.

Join us as we discuss this dark trans fairy tale on Sunday, June 30 at 3pm EST on zoom. If you would like to join the book club, please DM us your email address and we'll send you a zoom link!

***rlit

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