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Liberal MP Marci Ien’s Eclectic Reading Taste Is Reflected in Her Favourite Books
The Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth learned a valuable lesson from "A Prayer for Owen Meany." / BY Shinan Govani / November 16th, 2022
From Canada AM to the House of Commons, Marci Ien has covered a lot of ground. The first Black woman to host a national morning show in Canada — one of several posts Ien held at CTV during a long and illustrious journalism career — she veered into politics in 2020 when she won the Liberal seat in Toronto Centre. More recently, she was appointed Canada’s Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth, a portfolio that allows her to build on the journey she chronicled in her 2021 memoir, Off-Script: Living Out Loud.
What is she reading when she is not scouring ministerial briefs these days? Ien filled us in.
What’s the best book you’ve read this year?
Self-Care for Black Women by Oludara Adeeyo. I found this gem at an airport bookstore. I’m a caregiver by nature, but I don’t always do a great job when it comes to taking care of myself. Each chapter is a nugget of wisdom that prioritizes mental, physical and emotional health. It’s a small but mighty book!
What book can’t you wait to dive into?
Love in Colour by Bolu Babalola. It was published in 2020 to great fanfare. I snapped up a copy and it’s been sitting on my bookshelf ever since. I want to make time for it and savour it properly, but that time just hasn’t come. I’m looking at it as I write this — it’s calling my name. I’m getting to it this year!
What’s your favourite book of all time?
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. This has been a 30-plus-year love affair. The friendship between John Wheelwright and his best friend Owen is a story for the ages. I loved — and still do — that Owen was small in stature but wise beyond his years. The fact that Irving uses capital letters when Owen speaks put me over the top. The lesson: Listen to the little guy with the big voice and bigger heart. I’ve often said that it’s young people (my kids are at the top of the list) that teach me the biggest lessons. They just lay things out. No sugar-coating. Just like Owen Meany.
What book completely changed your perspective?
Books for Living by Will Schwalbe. I used to do author interviews at the Toronto Reference Library. I loved doing them, and Will was a guest author. I read his book in preparation for our interview, and then I read it again. So many life lessons! There’s a part (and I wrote about it in my book) that literally changed the course of my life. Will uses a golf analogy to stress how important it is to be empathetic — to serve. He reminds us that it’s not about “being at the top of the leaderboard,” but about lifting as we rise. How Will brilliantly weaves his personal journey through the lessons of legendary titles (Ulysses, Stuart Little and others) is beyond me. But he does, and in doing so, shows the awesome power of books.
If you could have dinner with any author, living or dead, who would it be?
August Wilson. The power of this man’s pen! August Wilson won his first Pulitzer Prize for Drama as well as a Tony Award for the play Fences (the second was for The Piano Lesson.) I saw it on Broadway. Denzel Washington and Viola Davis were brilliant in their award-winning roles of Troy and Rose Maxson. Troy, brash and bitter and living a life of unfulfilled dreams, and Rose, searching for her own voice while trying to protect her family against a civil rights-era backdrop, made me feel all sorts of things: sadness, rage, sympathy — you name it. Only a great writer, inserting their lived experience into their work, can do that. Oh, the questions I’d have for Mr. Wilson.