Description:
Drawing on social research, pop culture and literature, as well as his experience as an activist, father and teacher, James Cairns explores the ecological crisis, Trump's return to power amid the so-called crisis of democracy, his own struggle with addiction and other moments of truth facing us today.
Brief description:
James Cairns lives with his family in Paris, Ontario, on territory that the Haldimand Treaty of 1784 recognizes as belonging to the Six Nations of the Grand River in perpetuity. He is a professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies, Law and Social Justice at Wilfrid Laurier University, where his courses and research focus on political theory and social movements. James is a staff writer at the Hamilton Review of Books, and the community relations director for the Paris-based Riverside Reading Series. James has published three books with the University of Toronto Press, most recently, The Myth of the Age of Entitlement: Millennials, Austerity, and Hope (2017), as well as numerous essays in periodicals such as Canadian Notes & Queries, the Montreal Review of Books, Briarpatch, TOPIA, Rethinking Marxism, and the Journal of Canadian Studies. James' essay "My Struggle and My Struggle," originally published in CNQ, appeared in Biblioasis' Best Canadian Essays, 2025 anthology.
Review Quotes:
"How do we live knowing that bad things can happen? How do we live knowing that bad things will happen? In these essays - which delve into Trumpism, apocalyptic reading, whether we are in fact living through a crisis of democracy, midlife crises and Karl Ove Knausgaard, fatalism and Sylvia Plath, the experience of moving during a pandemic, if now is a 'post-truth' moment, fears and anxieties about his children and their futures in the face of the climate crisis - Cairns delves deep into these questions and urges the reader to leave room for possibility."
--Kerry Clare "Pickle Me This"