V6a: Writing from Vancouvera’s Downtown Eastside

V6A is the postal prefix for Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Canada’s poorest neighborhood and a prime example of the ramifications of urban blight in North America; it is also the epicenter of a notorious missing women’s case in which many sex workers and others were murdered, and home to a controversial safe-injection site for drug users. This anthology refracts the experience of those who live and work in the Downtown Eastside, reappropriating the coding of the area and recasting the neighborhood as a site of creative energy, community spirit, and human dignity. Cathleen With (Having Faith in the Polar Girls’ Prison) writes about the area’s street kids. Michael Turner (Hard Core Logo) recalls years living in an apartment on Powell Street. Madeleine Thien (Certainty) examines the effect of the neighbourhood on her family’s dynamic and its role in her development as a writer. Wayde Compton (After Canaan) writes about Hogan’s Alley and the history of Vancouver’s black community. Other pieces explore the sex trade and the Missing Women of the DTES, the culture of Chinatown and other ethnic communities, and the simple, human truths around poverty, kinship, forgiveness, and faith, and remind us that expression flourishes regardless of barriers.

Includes a preface by writer Gary Geddes. Partial proceeds from the sale of this book will fund Thursdays Writing Collective, a program for DTES writers directed by co-editor Elee Kraljii Gardiner.