Avalanche

A middle-class, white Canadian echo of The White Lotus, the stories in Avalanche combine humour with an earnest examination and indictment of white entitlement, guilt, shame, and disorientation in the wake of waking up to the reality of racism. Focusing on the perspective of white, cis, straight, mostly middle-aged and middle-class characters who lack self-awareness, Westhead shines a light on the obliviousness of white privilege, the violence of polite, quiet racism hiding just under the surface of mundane, everyday situations, and the anguished flailing of “well-intentioned white ladies” desperate to confirm their essential goodness at all costs. The author writes with compassion and empathy for both her frustrating and frustrated white protagonists and the racialized characters who encounter them, and uses humour not to comfortably distance white readers from the harmful behaviour of her self-absorbed protagonists, but to pull them in close to recognize—and reckon with—those familiar parts of themselves, and to become more aware of the insidious systems of white supremacy at work behind the scenes.

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