In Other Words: A German Canadian Story
by Norbert Ruebsaat
In Other Words is the story of a young German boy coming of age in small-town Canada. Immigrating to British Columbia after WWII, struggling with new words in a new country, the quiet boy in lederhosen tries to fit in with the loud boys in jeans, exploring new friendships amidst wide-eyed adventure in the valleys and mountains of the Kootenays.
As young Norbert gradually captures and holds his new language, he learns to be Canadian while remaining German: he becomes multicultural. This book is at once an absorbing memoir, a valuable document on German Canadian experience, and a deep meditation on how language shapes our sense of time and place.
“Norbert Ruebsaat’s In Other Words is a book that moves deftly among a range of voices — voices at di erent ages, and in different languages and cultures, voices that take us from echoes of the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm to a child’s life in the Canadian West, which was still a frontier in the mid-twentieth century. Above all, it is about an adventure in language, about how we are shaped by moving into a realm of “other words" . . . A riveting tale for all of us.” — Stan Persky, author of Letter from Berlin
As young Norbert gradually captures and holds his new language, he learns to be Canadian while remaining German: he becomes multicultural. This book is at once an absorbing memoir, a valuable document on German Canadian experience, and a deep meditation on how language shapes our sense of time and place.
“Norbert Ruebsaat’s In Other Words is a book that moves deftly among a range of voices — voices at di erent ages, and in different languages and cultures, voices that take us from echoes of the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm to a child’s life in the Canadian West, which was still a frontier in the mid-twentieth century. Above all, it is about an adventure in language, about how we are shaped by moving into a realm of “other words" . . . A riveting tale for all of us.” — Stan Persky, author of Letter from Berlin