Join author, Denise Da Costa, on a tour of Rivertowne near Dundas and Broadview. See where the characters of her recent novel, And the Walls Came Down, grew up in the 1990s. Visit Delia’s old stomping grounds where the now demolished city housing development, Don Mount Court, once stood and glimpse the nearby surviving historical structures like the infamous Don Jail.
A copy of the book is included with your ticket.
To purchase your ticket please go to: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/rivertowne-walking-tour-with-denise-da-costa-tickets-713267601597?aff=oddtdtcreator&mc_cid=b57c2e16f5&mc_eid=3178bc6b84
About the Author
Denise Da Costa is a Canadian author and visual artist whose debut novel And the Walls Came Down, was published in Summer 2023. She studies Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia and is an alumna of the Humber School of Writers and the Diaspora Dialogues mentorship program. Her work explores the complications of love and the impact of gender, race and class on identity formation.
About the Presenter
Diaspora Dialogues (DD) supports emerging writers to turn their craft into a career through mentorship, professional development and opportunities to publish and present their work. Our mentoring programs are the most successful in the country for alumni getting published. More than 800 writers/artists have participated as mentors or mentees, emerging playwrights or dramaturges, commissioned artists or panelists, readers or performers. 600+ new literary works have been created through DD programs, 400+ events produced and a live audience well in excess of 350,000 Canadians has attended those events. DD also publishes TOK Magazine, an online platform for fiercely honest, freshly original writing and convenes TOK Symposiums, multi-day events for readers and writers which combine author talks and professional development seminars.
And The Walls Came Down by Denise Da Costa
“A scintillating debut full of nuanced and achingly human characters.” — Zalika Reid-Benta, author of Frying Plantain
Back in the low-income neighbourhood where she was raised, a young woman rediscovers the importance of community, home, and finding one’s voice.
Just before the demolition of her childhood home in east Toronto, Delia Ellis returns to retrieve her beloved diary. Using it as a compass, she rediscovers life as a precocious teen growing up in the nineties.
Delia’s writings reveal her anxieties following a move to Don Mount Court, a Toronto government housing complex, where she struggles to navigate life with an overprotective Jamaican mother and her father’s inept replacement, “Neville the nuisance.” Delia’s troubles compound when she enlists her naive younger sister in a scheme to reunite their parents and recapture the idealistic life she yearns for.
Yet, through the lens of adulthood, Delia’s entries take a wrecking ball to the perception of her parents’ love story she’d long built up in her mind, uncovering a child’s internalization of a failed marriage, poverty, and a mother come undone.