Book reading:
I am Full Moon by Lily Hoy Price
Thursday, June 27 4:00 to 5:00 pm
Location:
Sun Yat Sen Classical Gardens
at Hall of a Hundred Rivers
Filled with love, confusion, family celebrations and family tragedies, stories featured in I am Full Moon open a window on an era long past. Rich with the author’s own insight, the stories are at times sad and humourous, but always thoughtful and interesting. I Am Full Moon creates an intimate portrait of life in an unusual, gifted family and is a significant addition to the historical literature of British Co In this lyrical memoir, Lily Hoy Price writes with moving detail about her childhood and adolescence in a large Chinese Canadian family in the Cariboo country of northern British Columbia. The ninth daughter in a family of 12 children, Lily is an observant child who tucks away every image of life in rugged Quesnel during the 1930s for one unforgettable tale after another. She has carefully selected many of her father’s early photographs to illustrate her stories. The celebrated pioneer photographer Chow Dong Hoy left a legacy of more the 1,500 photographs taken after 1909, and created an invaluable record of the cultural diversity of the Cariboo region. With similar sensitivity and the same eye for detail, Lily Hoy Price seamlessly weaves both the innocence and expectations of a young child and the struggles of her parents, who came to Canada during the racially charged days of the imposed $100 head tax.
Lily Hoy Price grew up in Quesnel, British Columbia and is the ninth daughter of twelve children in the Hoy family. She has lived in England, Nigeria, Uganda and Nova Scotia. At 70, she took a creative-writing workshop at North Island College and started setting down her life story. Her writing has been published in Ricepaper magazine and in the collection of essays, Verve (2006). Her first book is I Am Full Moon: Stories of a Ninth Daughter, stylishly published by Brindle & Glass. The photos are by her father, Chow Dong Hoy, who documented the Cariboo through much of the 20th century His photographs were also shown in the /who am I? Exhibition Lily is a member of the Federation of BC Writers, the Comox Valley Writer’s Society and the Valley Women of Words (out of Comox Valley). Lily also participated in the 2009 Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts as one of “20 new voices”,[2] along with Rebecca Hendry, who is also published by Brindle & Glass. She lives in Courtenay, BC.