Christina Wong is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist who is a playwright, director, prose writer, photographer and creator of sound installations and documentaries. Wong grew up in proximity to Toronto’s downtown Chinatown and Kensington market.
Fiction
Denison Avenue
Illustrated by Daniel Innes, text by Christina Wong.
Toronto: ECW Press, 2023.
E-book (Access restricted to members of the university community)
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Bringing together ink artwork and fiction, Denison Avenue by Daniel Innes (illustrations) and Christina Wong (text) follows the elderly Wong Cho Sum, who, living in Toronto’s gentrifying Chinatown–Kensington Market, begins to collect bottles and cans after the sudden loss of her husband as a way to fill her days and keep grief and loneliness at bay. In her long walks around the city, Cho Sum meets new friends, confronts classism and racism, and learns how to build a life as a widow in a neighborhood that is being destroyed and rebuilt, leaving elders like her behind.
A poignant meditation on loss, aging, gentrification, and the barriers that Chinese Canadian seniors experience in big cities, Denison Avenue beautifully combines visual art, fiction, and the endangered Toisan dialect to create a book that is truly unforgettable.