Anthony De Sa

If I hadn't already read de Sa's Kicking the Sky, I think I would have been more impressed by this novel in short stories. It's all about the Portuguese immigrant experience, beginning in Barnacle Love with a Portuguese fisherman washed up on the coast of Newfoundland. (That was actually the best story.) By the 1970s, his family is living in Toronto and still embarrassing the current crop of kids with "old-country" customs such as the annual pig-butchering.
"It was an annual event—a matança—the killing. This was the kind of thing that embarrassed me; here we were in a big city with butcher shops throughout Kensington Market and yet the farmer mentality brought over from the Azores had continued. ".

I believe De Sa writes from experience, but it's the same experience we read about in Kicking the Sky. It seemed derivative here.… (más)

Kicking the Sky by Anthony De Sa is the story of Antonio, a 12 year old boy growing up in the tight-knit Portuguese community in Toronto in the summer of 1977. It describes the impact of the real-life kidnapping and sexually-motivated murder of Emanuel Jaques on Antonio and his community. The characters were well-developed, though they sometimes seemed much older than 11 or 12. As a book that deals with child abuse, homophobia, and racism, it was unettling in places, but overall, a worthwhile read.… (más)

Many adults can look back remember that moment in their childhood when innocence was lost. I grew up roaming the streets, empty fields and parks of my suburban neighbourhood, unsupervised and relatively fearless, Aside from the occasional bullies who might claim our "fort" we had few worries. Two things changed all of that for me 1) my younger sister had an encounter with a flasher, and 2) in the Fall of 1970 the radical separatist FLQ group, at the time considered terrorists, carried out a string of kidnappings and a murder. For me, at age 8, the most memorable result of this was the cancellation of Halloween. It was not safe to let children out to Trick or Treat!! My view of my world as a safe and carefree place was changed forever. Those were my "Loss of Innocence Moments".

Kicking the Sky tells the story of Antonio, a young boy living in a Portuguese enclave in downtown Toronto. The community at the time was about 100,000 strong and comprised of mostly first generation immigrants. The parents worked hard, long hours and the children were often unattended. Like many first generation families there were conflicts between the parents, trying to cling to the traditions of the small villages of the old country, and the children, torn between the old world and their new, modern Canadian country.

Toronto in the 70's was a fairly staid city with strong Protestant values, despite it's many immigrant communities. Commercial enterprises were closed on Sundays, bars and clubs closed at 1 a.m at the very latest ...it was considered a safe, rather dull, business obsessed city. Tourists visiting Toronto were invariably amazed with how utterly clean the streets were; sadly that was the strongest impression the city had on it's visitors.

In the summer of 1977 the kidnapping and sexually based killing of a young Portuguese boy who had been working on the street with his brothers, shining shoes, shocked the city. Mothers throughout the city pulled in the reins on their children. There was fear, there were awkward conversations between parents and children, there were rumours, there was anger and there was misguided retribution. For an entire generation this murder was their "Loss of Innocence Moment". To this day, on anniversaries, newspaper articles will revisit the tragic event and the impact it had on the city of Toronto.

This book tells the story of how the murder affected Antonio, and from his perspective, his community. His immediate community includes his parents, both of whom are working, his teenage sister, his "almost aunt", his two best friends; Manny and Ricky, Agnes the hot girl across the street, James, the newcomer living in a garage off the alley, and various others on the street and in the alleyways. Not all is well on Palmerston Ave, in fact, no one is doing well in this book. The degree of dysfunction and sordid situations in the book have angered many readers, especially since this is not how the book is marketed. The anger is understandable. Readers deserve some warning; if you have been a victim of abuse this book may be too painful for you to read. However, with the knowledge that this is a difficult, often disturbing book, it is quite an engrossing read. De Sa holds nothing back in his portrayal of the Portuguese community at that moment in time. He shows us the good, the bad, the funny and the devastatingly sad. He has angered many, as he must have known he would. No one wants their dirty laundry aired for all to see. Good for him for telling his story, his way. His main characters are complex, multi-dimensional, engaging and memorable. The writing is strong, almost poetic. Words are not wasted.

Ultimately this is a coming of age story, a difficult, sad, beautiful and yet hopeful one.… (más)