22 books from 2022
As 2023 approaches and The Blueprint prepares for its first anniversary, we’re looking back at 22 of the best books of 2022.
Many of these titles are books I reviewed ahead of their releases, while others helped shape my coverage of the year.
The vast majority of titles chosen are non-fiction, but there were a few fiction reads I hope you will consider in the new year if you didn’t get a chance to read them in 2022.
The Summer Between Us by Andre Fenton (Apr. 8)
For many teenagers, dating is a cringy, embarrassing, fire-and-ice sort of experience. But rather than cashing in on the cliches of young love, Andre Fenton challenges himself, and readers alike, to emulate the exact opposite in his latest novel, The Summer Between Us.
As Fenton explained in his debut novel, Worthy of Love, Adrian is like hip-hop and Mel is like punk rock. Now, in The Summer Between Us, Mel wants to make her dream a reality by taking her band, Black, Brown and Infamous, on a cross-country tour, leaving Adrian struggling to decide where his future lies. The book asks the classic coming-of-age question: How do you make young love work without sacrifice?
It Should Be Easy To Fix by Bonnie Robichaud (Mar. 8)
In It Should Be Easy to Fix, union activist and public speaker Bonnie Robichaud reflects on the decade-long legal battle to hold employers responsible for sexual harassment in their workplaces.
The title of the book harkens back to Robichaud’s response to a high ranking military officer who said nobody had ever complained about sexual harassment in the workplace.
“Well then,” she said more than 40 years ago, “it should be easy to fix.”
The Heart of Toronto: Corporate Power, Civic Activism, and the Remaking of Downtown Yonge Street by Daniel Ross (Apr. 1)
Ross’ book encapsulates the political nature of Yonge Street’s development over the decades, from remaking the hub of the city into an urban mall one-stop shop to becoming a car-free public space.
The thorough look back at the reconfiguration of one of Canada’s most notable streets came at a price, with crackdowns on the sex industry and efforts to push unhoused individuals away from the community.
This Has Always Been A War: The Radicalization of a Working-Class Queer by Lori Fox (May 3)
Near the end of Lori Fox’s memoir, the author has a realization that reshapes their perspective on the working class.
“If the rich will not give us what is ours—if they will not pay us fairly, if they will not let us eat what we grow, live in the houses we build, and use the energy, goods, and services our hands and feet create in ways that allow us to live good honest lives—what if we made them,” reads an excerpt of This Has Always Been a War, which is Fox’s first book after years of working in journalism telling the stories of others.
Fox’s book provides both a candid and introspective look at some of the author’s darkest moments, writing of carrying an empty beer bottle in their purse for protection, as well as the sexual harassment experienced over nearly two decades.
Finding Edward by Sheila Murray (June 15)
This powerful novel follows Cyril Rowntree as he migrates to Toronto from Jamaica in 2012. While learning to navigate a society built on systemic racism, Rowntree finds a suitcase with letters and pictures inside dating back 90 years.
Rowntree is compelled by the story of a white mother who was forced to give up her baby, Edward, because he was half-Black. The journey of Edward’s mother hits close to home for Rowntree, who was abandoned by his white father as a young boy, prompting him to trace Edward’s steps while uncovering near-forgotten Black history in Canada.
The Betrayal: How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America by Ira Shapiro (May 17)
Fewer presidencies have resulted in more controversy than that of Donald Trump. From firing the FBI director and mischaracterizing the Mueller Report, to seating three Supreme Court justices and surviving two impeachments, Trump survived scandal after scandal.
How a president can withstand such devastating derelictions of duty is the subject of Ira Shapiro’s new book, The Betrayal: How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America, where Shapiro makes the case that McConnell aided and abetted the Trump presidency to the bitter end.
Shapiro is uniquely positioned to write about McConnell’s leadership after spending more than a decade working in senior positions in the U.S. Senate as well as serving as Bill Clinton’s chief trade negotiator with Canada and Japan. Overall, Shapiro spent 45 years in Washington focusing on international trade and national politics.
While Shapiro covers the Senate’s response to the Trump administration in chronological order, somehow his book reads as a horror story that continues devolving until the insurrectionist denouement.
Abortion to Abolition: Reproductive Health and Justice in Canada by Martha Paynter (May 25)
In this book, Dr. Paynter details the intersections between parenting, bodily autonomy, and policing and the carceral system.
Panyter is uniquely positioned to pen this type of comprehensive look at reproductive justice. A registered nurse who specializes in abortion and postpartum care, she’s also the founder and chair of Wellness Within, an organization in Nova Scotia that provides support and advocacy for mothers navigating the criminal justice system.
Abortion to Abolition traces the reproductive justice movement to Black feminists in the United States, describing their focus on the impact of racism and limiting choice, while also considering how other layers of oppression impact choice-making.
Heroin: An Illustrated History by Susan Boyd (May 15)
Understanding the opioid epidemic taking thousands of lives across North America began more than 200 years ago.
That’s how far back Susan Boyd chronicles the history of opioid use and regulation, with a focus on heroin, which was discovered in 1898.
While heroin was touted as a pain reliever and cough suppressant until the early 1950s, Boyd writes about how systemic racism can be traced back to the first anti-heroin legislation in Canada.
By debunking outdated myths about heroin use while shedding light on the experiences of those who were criminalized for using heroin, Boyd highlights just how violent and destructive drug policies can be.
Electable: Why America Hasn’t Put a Woman in the White House … Yet by Ali Vitali (Aug. 23)
Vitali’s journalism career took off in 2016 when the young reporter was assigned to cover the Trump campaign. Taking lessons from that contentious race, Vitali returned to her role as a campaign embed four years later, following and reporting on candidates like Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Amy Klobuchar in the race to become the 2020 Democratic nominee.
The decision to pen Electable came in the wake of the end of Warren’s campaign, as Vitali and the rest of America shifted from what she described as one of the most diverse fields of candidates in a nomination race, to ending up with a nominee that looked exactly like every president who came before him.
Ultimately, if readers take just one word away from Vitali’s book, it’s the final word of the subtitle on the cover… Yet.
They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent by Sarah Kendzior (Sept. 13)
In her newest book, Kendzior re-examines the meaning of a “conspiracy theory” and how the term has been weaponized against individuals searching for the truth.
Examining corruption is something Kendzior has spent decades doing, dating back to her studies on the former Soviet Union and, in particular, Uzbekistan.
They Knew also examines the issues around normalcy bias—the idea that if a situation is truly dangerous, then surely somebody would intervene.
Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies by Leslie Kern (Sept. 6)
In her book, Kern analyzes and dissects the many false narratives about the process of gentrification, while also challenging the very definition of what it means to gentrify.
Kern’s book tests the false narratives of gentrification being natural, but perhaps more expertly, she opens up the concept of gentrification past the idea of taste and class, to different metaphors of gentrification like yoga studios, tattoo parlours, and the practice of veganism.
By connecting the monetization of activities and lifestyles previously associated with marginalized communities to cultural appropriation, Kern expands the way we think about gentrification.
Writing with my Eyes: Staying Alive While Dying by Angela Parker-Brown (Sept. 15)
Angela Parker-Brown was 46 when she was diagnosed with ALS. A young, healthy Black woman, Parker-Brown is hardly a typical ALS patient. The disease isn’t commonly found in people under the age of 55, and white men are slightly more prone to contracting ALS.
Now in her early 50s, Parker-Brown can no longer move and requires round-the-clock care. But with her eye-gaze technology, known as PCEye, she can use a text-to-speech software that allows her to communicate, find a show on Netflix, and use social media all through the movement of her eyes.
The memoir, Writing with my Eyes: Staying Alive While Dying, captures Parker-Brown’s day-to-day life, while also offering a glimpse into her troubled childhood, an online relationship gone wrong, and most importantly, becoming a mother.
Our Long Struggle for Home: The Ipperwash Story by the Aazhoodenaang Enjibaajig (Oct. 15)
Compiled as an oral history and authored by the Aazhoodenaang Enjibaajig Nation, Our Long Struggle for Home tells the story of the Ipperwash Crisis from those who experienced it firsthand.
The Ipperwash Crisis began in 1942, when Canada expropriated Nishnaabeg land to form a military base. While officials promised to return the land after World War II, more than 50 years went by before the elders decided to take matters into their own hands. But efforts to reclaim their land proved fatal after police shot and killed demonstrator Dudley George.
This book aims to correct the record of history books and give settlers a glimpse into the destruction of colonialism and the power of resistance.
Displacement City: Fighting for Health and Homes in a Pandemic by Greg Cook and Cathy Crowe (Nov. 7)
In Displacement City, outreach worker Greg Cook and long-time street nurse Cathy Crowe collect stories which shed a light on infrastructure of displacement through prose, poetry, and photography.
Contributors to the book include those who have lived experience of homelessness in Toronto. Each chapter reports on different areas of the realities of this crisis and how community members reacted. Whether that be by providing disaster-relief supplies and tiny shelters for encampments, by advocating for shelter-hotels where people could physically distance, by taking the city to court, or by rising up against encampment evictions.
Abolitionist Intimacies by El Jones (Nov. 2)
El Jones never stops when it comes to fighting for those without a voice.
In her new book, Abolitionist Intimacies, the professor, author, poet, and social justice leader takes readers behind the bars and into the minds of those who are suffering from human rights violations inside Canadian prisons.
A conduit to the public for individuals being silenced, Jones relies on her decade of experience working with incarcerated people and their loved ones to showcase the humanity of her subjects.
Abolitionist Intimacies is an act of resistance and mutual aid — a book about love and the complexity of relationships interrupted by the criminal justice system.
The Life Sentences of Rik McWhinney by Rik McWhinney (Oct. 8)
One of the year’s most important books was penned by a man who didn’t live to see its publication.
But thanks to editor Jason Demers, McWhinney’s story is finally being told through poetry, letters, essays and interviews.
McWhinney spent more than 34 years in Canadian federal penitentiaries. Nearly half of his time behind bars was in solitary confinement.
From failing to treat McWhinney’s Crohn’s disease to witnessing another prisoner gauge his own eye out, the book offers a damning perspective of the justice system and the failure to fulfill its purpose: rehabilitation.
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (Aug. 9)
There’s a reason this memoir received such critical acclaim.
Not only is Jennette McCurdy a charismatic and talented writer, she articulates her experience under the bright lights of Hollywood in ways that anyone who grew up with an abusive parent can connect with.
What sets this celebrity memoir apart is McCurdy’s ability to seamlessly weave humor with her lived experiences navigating eating disorders, substance use, and painful relationships.
A masterclass in memoir.
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng (Oct. 15)
Celeste Ng has cemented herself as my favorite author of fiction with her third novel, Our Missing Hearts. The book follows 12-year-old Bird, who lives in a dystopian America that, in many ways, mirrors the rhetoric of some of the country’s most prominent politicians.
Taking place ten years after legislation to preserve “American culture” was enacted, Bird discovers his mother, a Chinese-American poet, didn’t abandon their family after all. She ran away and went into hiding after her poetry was deemed to be unpatriotic.
Putting the pieces of the puzzle together, Bird learns what his mother sacrificed for his freedom — at the cost of her own.
This classic story told anew reminds readers of a mother’s unconditional love while warning of the harm that can be done under the name of “patriotism.”
A Billion Years: My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology by Mike Rinder (Sept. 27)
A billion years.
That’s how long you’re forced to agree to serve scientology when you join the cult-like organization.
Rinder, who worked alongside L. Ron Hubbard and David Miscavige, escaped the church of scientology, but his two daughters still remain.
The book serves as an explanation to his daughters about his departure from the church, noting that they may have questions about his decision someday, questions he may no longer be here to answer.
A Billion Years offers readers a sobering and harrowing look into the behind-the-scenes of scientology, a view that the church has spent millions to hide from the public.
Making Love with the Land by Joshua Whitehead (Aug. 23)
Part memoir, part poetry, part literary criticism, Whitehead explains how this genre-bending of traditional colonial literary standards is a “radical act of freedom” and more similar to an Indigenous form of storytelling.
Making Love with the Land marks Whitehead’s non-fiction debut, exploring what it means to be both Indigenous and queer.
It also examines the relationship and responsibility of being a steward of the land, and how that land has shaped ideas, histories, and even our bodies.
It’s Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO by Felix Gillette and John Koblin (Nov. 1)
As HBO Max sheds millions of dollars on streaming (and removing much of its original programming from its service altogether), Gillette and Koblin chronicle the creation and legacy of HBO — the network responsible for releasing Game of Thrones, The Wire, and The Sopranos.
Following the inside story of HBO, It’s Not TV details the meteoric rise of the cable network’s popularity, before exploring its vulnerabilities in the age of streaming.
His Name is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa (May 17)
Two years after the murder of George Floyd, two Washington Post reporters trace the life of the man tragically and unnecessarily killed by a police officer and the uprising that followed his death.
The book covers Floyd’s heritage, revealing how systemic racism shaped nearly every aspect of his short life.
Floyd’s story speaks to a range of racial and social inequities in America, from housing and education, to policing and the criminal justice system.