Hope in Shadows

Stories and Photographs of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside

by Brad Cran & Gillian Jerome

tagged: poverty & homelessness, photojournalism

Description

Winner of the City of Vancouver Book Award

Shortlisted for the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize (BC Book Prizes)

Longlisted for the George Ryga Book Award for Social Issues

Excerpted in The Globe and Mail and The Vancouver Sun and on TheTyee.ca

Residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside are not bound by poverty or addiction but rather driven by a sense of community, kinship, and above all, hope. For each of the past five years, Pivot Legal Society's annual Hope in Shadows photography contest has empowered residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside by providing them with 200 disposable cameras to document their lives--thus giving them an artistic means to enter the ongoing and often stormy dialogue over the place they call home. Since the contest's inception, DTES residents have taken over 20,000 images of their neighbourhood. Working with this archive, Brad Cran and Gillian Jerome have collected the personal stories behind these stunning photographs.

Hope in Shadows offers readers an intimate and honest look at what it really means to live in Canada's poorest neighbourhood. The result is not at all bleak, but rather is full of grace, dignity, and plain simple truths that put a human face on the single most misunderstood community in Canada. This, then, is its story: about First Nations people who survived the residential school system; sex workers whose poor treatment at the hands of authorities precipitated the murder of dozens of women; those who cope with addiction and inadequate living conditions; those who overcome loss and search for loved ones; and the transformative power of hope and forgiveness.

In surprising and astounding ways, Hope n Shadows will not only change the way you think about the Downtown Eastside and other impoverished neighbourhoods; it will also change your view of society as we know it, and of those who are forced to live in its shadows.

A co-publication with Pivot Legal Society, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization located in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Its mandate is to take a strategic approach to social change, using the law to address the root causes that undermine the quality of life of those most on the margins. Pivot believes that everyone, regardless of income, benefits from a healthy and inclusive community where values such as respect and equality are strongly rooted in the law.

About the Authors

Brad Cran is a writer and social entrepreneur who served as Poet Laureate for the City of Vancouver from April 2009 until October of 2011. Cran published his first book, The Good Life, in 2001 and his most recent book, Hope in Shadows: Stories and Photographs of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (with Gillian Jerome), won the City of Vancouver Book Award and has raised over $60,000 for marginalized people in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. He is currently finishing his second book of non-fiction The Truth about Ronald Reagan: How Movies Changed the World.

Gillian Jerome is a mother, writer, teacher who lives on the unceded land of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, land and water she is grateful for and responsible to. Her first book of poems, Red Nest (Nightwood Editions, 2009), was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and won the 2010 ReLit Award for Poetry. She co-edited an oral history project, Hope in Shadows: Stories and Photographs from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2008), which won the 2008 City of Vancouver Book Award. Recently her poems have appeared in Hunger Mountain, New Poetry and Geist. Having taught literature at UBC for two decades, she is turning her attention toward teaching language arts to Vancouver teenagers.

Age:: 15
Grade:: 10

Awards

Short-listed, Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize
Winner, City of Vancouver Book Award

Editorial Reviews

A sense of kinship and peer support, above all else, comes through in the 32 intimate, engaging stories in Hope in Shadows.... The stories crackle with energy, individuality, and often a determination to be heard.
-Georgia Straight

— Georgia Straight

— Rabble.ca

Although coverage of the Downtown Eastside may be increasing, I don't think anything that has been written about the area has really captured its essence as well as the book Hope in Shadows has.... [It] should be essential reading for every Vancouverite.... This book, and groups such as Pivot Legal Society, are essential to our understanding of this often neglected corner of our city.
-re:place Magazine

— re:place

An honest portrayal of what it's like to live on Canada's poorest streets.
-Where Vancouver

— Where Vancouver

— The Tyee

— Seven Oaks

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Librarian review

Hope In Shadows: Stories and Photographs of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside

by [ABPBC]

The diverse stories in Hope in Shadows offer readers an intimate look at what it means to live in Canada’s poorest neighbourhood. We learn that residents of Downtown Eastside are driven by a sense of community, kinship and hope. This book, which includes black and white photographs from a resident photography contest, was initiated by Pivot Legal Society, a non-profit legal advocacy organization located in Vancouver’s Eastside. Told in the voices of the residents themselves, we learn of their life histories—the addiction, mental illness, family violence, sexual abuse—that led these men and women here. This book puts a human face on the community and illustrates how, with the support and compassion of fortunate persons, marginalized members of society can be empowered.

Source: The Association of Book Publishers of BC. BC Books for BC Schools. 2008-2009.