Happy Birthday to Us!

Posted on
Happy Birthday Recomp! We turned 5! We’ve been working hard to look good for our birthday, so we’re launching a new site that looks all caught up with the times! There’s still a lot of work to be done but we couldn’t wait to share and celebrate with all of you, our readers, contributors, and our own fellow editors. Below you’ll find a piece written by John O’Reilly, and Monica Kostas that looks back on the past 5 years, and looks forward to another great 5 years for Recomposition. Check it out! Read More

A Worthless Piece of Plastic

Posted on
Surprise – by Monica Kostas This week’s piece comes to us by a regular Recomposition contributor, Invisible Man. In the face of fierce debates on racism, profiling, protests, and riots, his anecdote detailing an altercation with cops in Alberta feels painfully relevant. A Worthless Piece of Plastic by Invisible Man There’s nothing to do on a Saturday night in Lacombe. We want to see a movie. In the fall of 1999, the nearest theatre is half an hour’s drive away in Red Deer, Alberta. So, as usual, we drive into town with a borrowed ride – Terry at the wheel. (He’s white, you have to think of these things.) We turn into the theatre parking lot to read the lighted billboard on the north side of the building. As usual, there is nothing worth seeing. “Let’s go to the cheap theatre. At least we won’t be wasting our money on a crappy movie.” “You wanna walk?” “Yeah, let’s walk.” Read More

C’est pas un pays, c’est un hiver

Posted on
  A friend of ours who blogs anonymously as Invisible Man sent us this three part story about his experiences at work and beyond. It’s powerful stuff about work, class, race, and the struggle to keep on keeping on.       C’est pas un pays, c’est un hiver The Suit Shop It was late in the afternoon and the sweaty, noisy, humid factory day was almost finished. It was bitterly cold outside, but you wouldn’t know it from the inside of the suit factory. And you could easily forget that it was winter, because at Men’s Clothiers International where I worked, there were no windows to the outside. But 2003, my first winter in Montreal, was one of the coldest winters on record. Read More