StAl2LiGhT
The year is 1962, and eighteen year old Birdie Thymes is beginning her first year at York University who's incredibly selective of which applicants it accepts. It'll take everything she had to prove herself in a man's world in which her peers and teachers all laugh at her dreams of becoming an investigative journalist. They continue to try to steer her towards housewife columns and fashion magazines, talking down to her as if she's a child who's in the wrong place.
If not for her new friends - black twins working on their doctorates, a Russian exchange student full of hatred and prejudice, a bisexual poetry professor and his rebellious anarchist of a boyfriend - she'd feel much more alone.
The newspaper and television continue to show horrific scenes in the states where racial divides are revealed for all to see - riots, police brutality, cries for equality and peace. The Vietnam War is front and center, The Cold War lingering still, and pleas for peace and love are heard from every street corner. The group of friends feel helpless as they watch the world fall apart. Fear leaves them voiceless, and the elitists of their own country feel exposed and uncomfortable when their sins are being called out.
Wanting to prove herself as a journalist, along with wanting to fight for the five men she's falling for - Birdie grabs her camera and typewriter and starts causing a stir as she writes the stories of the silenced for all to see.
She wants to fight for a world where white patients aren't screaming at Hamilton to not touch him, where Theodore's peers don't laugh at the black man who wants to teach English at Oxford, where James and Ezra can safely love one another without fear of imprisonment, where Arkady isn't constantly afraid of being deported. She wants a world where they can all love each other without retaliation, without fear, without hate.